What Pierre Bastien does is makes these fairly complex instruments out of a frame of meccano, old record players, chopped up harmonicas, woodwind reids and hundreds of other things it would seem. The instruments are "looped" using cogs powered by dismantled record player motors, that push down the notes, and an electronic pump "pumps" wind through the whole thing. He then plays the muted trumpet over the top. He also has a live feed camera that gets right into the guts of the contraption and shows you, to some extent, whats going on.
Thats the deal of the show I watched, in a nut shell, but according to his website he has created lots of other mechanically played instruments over the years. He also can explain what is going on better than I. Pretty fascinating.
It was really really good, better than I imagined, and better than the brief youtube video I watched the night before. The overall sound that he creates is awesome. As a fan of loop based music (usually more hip hop in nature), but also having a big interest in more organic and eclectic type sounds (including artists like Tom Waits, Ennio Morricone, Tin Hat Trio, Beirut and so on), this was, strangely, a great mix of these two tastes.
1 comments:
mmm, you can make anything out of macaroni. food for thought icy.
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