2022 was the 10th anniversary of Music Thing Modular, and after a lot of procrastination, some new things finally made their way to Thonk’s shelves in 2022:
In October…
Easel Clock, a clock interface for a Buchla Music Easel.
I liked the tiny format of this and the satisfying Grayhill switches. I have a few other ideas for the format and prototyped a strobe module - a bank of bright white LEDs synced to the various clock sources, but I’m not sure there’s a big market for such a thing.Easel Proto, a prototyping and patching kit for the Buchla Music Easel.
I was pleased with this because it really does expand the Easel in fun ways, and it looks so pleasingly crazy covered in patch leads. As Suren said: “This is ridiculous and makes me want an Easel NOW” which was certainly the idea.
In December:
Move, a ridiculous movement-to-clicky-relay-switch module. Now that I’ve been designing electronic things for 10+ years, it can sometimes be a quick and effortless process. I was watching Tim Hunkin talking about PIR sensors, and a few days later I had a working PIR-to-relay module working on perfboard, and a few months later it was on sale at Thonk (thank you, Steve). It’s a sort of companion for Control in the ‘listen, don’t tweak’ area.
Twin Drive, a predictable but nice stereo version of Mini Drive, which has been a suprising hit. I think Thonk now owns most of the world’s remaining supplies of Moog-style incandescent bulb holders.
London Drive, which is to theVCS-3 what Mini Drive is to the Minimoog. I’ve always been suspicious about boutique guitar pedal companies and their 300 different varieties of ‘drive’, and this is just 3 slightly different transistors in a very slightly different arrangement, but I can hear a difference. It was a lovely post-Christmas gift to see Ben DivKid making magic with all these drives.
Other things on the way…
8mu, the little midi faderbank is finally finished-ish, and will be going into production in the new year. Thank you to all the beta testers who’ve given so much advice and feedback this year, and apologies to everyone who msged me saying ‘hey, this looks great, can I buy one?’
I’m still reading You Nakai’s Reminded by the Instruments about David Tudor, and designed a module roughly based on Fred Waldhauer’s Proportional Control System. It looks cool, and seems like it might be useful, but I just haven’t had time to learn how to play it yet.
What else did I do in 2023?
Projects:
Slow Movie: So pleasing how this project has been picked up by a community of open source maintainers. It’s now so well-done that I was able to make a colour version in a few minutes as a Christmas present.
Making speakers: Inspired by Ojas I’ve been thinking about speakers for the last couple of months. It’s a black hole.
AI: What an extraordinary distraction: obsessed with Dall-E for a few months in the summer, now with GPT-3.
Books:
The Sound of the Machine by Karl Bartos: The best and funniest Kraftwerk book yet.
Chaise Longue by Baxter Dury: Short and memorable autobiography by Ian’s son.
The Islander by Chris Blackwell: What a life!
Adventures in Modern Recording by Trevor Horn: Good but not great.
Tales from the Colony Room by Darren Coffield: Like time travel to a lost London.
Worn by Sofi Thanhauser: Mind-bending history of clothing.
Constellation of Genius by Kevin Jackson: About 1922 and the start of modernism.
Bacon in Moscow by James Birch: Francis Bacon vs the collapsing Soviet Union.
Shows:
Grace Jones at Royal Festival Hall: Wow.
This museum is (not) obsolete: A miracle: go to see Sam’s treasure house in Ramsgate if you can.
La Monte Young on Zoom: Legendary.
Abba at the Abba Arena: So so so interesting in so many ways.
Mylar & K.A.S: Obviously essential.
In the Black Fantastic at Hayward Gallery: Just as incredible as it looks.
Perimeter Jam at Iklectik Arts Lab: So much fun.
Harold Cohen at Gazelli Art house: Organic AI art from the 70s.
Walter Sickert at Tate Britain: Went three times, got obsessed.
Songs
People make the World go Round by Hortense and the Sound Dimension
Money is the One True God by Blake Mills
What a Waste by Ian Dury
Churchyard Entertainment by Meredith Monk
HAHA by Charlotte Adigery
Visit Croatia by Albaster dePlume
King in my Empire by Rhythm and Sound (yep, making speakers)
Mother of Pearl by Roxy Music
Please send your projects and books and shows and songs in the comments or emails or DMs and I hope you have a tolerable and productive and lazy 2023.