Music Thing: The Cracklebox

Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:

It's a handmade, battery powered, vintage analog synth that fits in your pocket and costs just €50 ($64). The Cracklebox was designed in the late '60s by Michel Waisvisz, a Dutch artist who grow up playing with his father's shortware radios. He'd touch their circuit boards to make weird noises. Inevitably, he became the kind of experimental musician who talks about "fueling culture into cosmic dimensions." The cracklebox is essentially a half-working oscillator where the conductivity of your fingers completes the circuit to make whooping, bleeping, semi-random noises. The STEIM foundation sold 4,000 Crackleboxes in the mid seventies. Inspired by the original Cracklebox becoming a collectors item, and lots of interest from glitch musicians and laptop techno people, they produced another 1,000 in 2004, which are still available today.