The Telemegaphone Dale loudspeaker will continue to “speak” incoming phone calls until September 20th, 2008. For those of you who don’t know, Telemegaphone Dale is a 23-foot-tall wind-powered loudspeaker sculpture that picks up incoming calls and projects them into the mountains of Norway and the nearby village of Dale. Read more about this [...]

Pyrophones, also known as explosion/fire organs, are musical instruments which are sounded by explosions, fire, rapid combustion, rapid heating, and other thermoacoustic devices. The combustion occurs inside of the actual resonance chamber (the pipe). Fire organs are said to have been around since the 1700s! Modern pyrophones are usually powered by propane [...]

The ringing sounds coming out of the lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Warf, London are blips from a 1,000-year-long opus. This millennial organism, entitled Longplayer, was born at midnight on the 31st of December 1999 and will (hopefully) continue living until that same moment in 2999. The Longplayer can be heard from various listening [...]

A beautiful rendition of the song “Carol of the Bells,” played on array mbira (which, like all fixed-at-one-end tongue instruments, is classified as a lamellophone).

Browsing through Madrid, New Mexico today, I stumbled across some wonderful wind bells/gongs on display at the Range West gallery. These bells, made by the Truchas, NM artist Bill G. Loyd, are cut from recycled gas tanks (e.g. scuba tanks, CO2 canisters, O2 firefighter tanks, etc.). From Loyd’s bio, “the qualities of each [...]

Ken Butler’s “hybrid instruments” - Axe, crossbow, and assault rifle violins? Shovel tablas, easel guitars, umbrella igils, and toothbrush violas? Oh my! Watch Ken put a mic in his mouth and play his entire face!

Instrument ridiculousness!