Circuit Bending creates unorthodox sounds

The musicians use things such as children's instruments to express themselves.
By DAVID SEGAL
WASHINGTON POST
NEW YORK -- The Homicidal Choir is not actually a choir. However, the group sounds like murder and it will put you in the mood to kill. There aren't many noises in the world as chaotic and as grating as the noise made by this duo on a recent weeknight, at the second annual Circuit Bending Festival.
For 10 minutes, the two members of the choir -- known by the stage names Nobody and T-Bone -- whip up a plague for the ears made almost exclusively with a pair of children's toys. Nobody -- who for some reason wore a hockey goalie's mask for half the show -- plays a kiddie guitar, the sort of starter instrument that is supposed to make mellow synthesizer tones when you press its buttons. But this instrument's mellow days are behind it. Nobody had rewired it to make menacing blips and random gurgles. T-Bone has done something similar to her kiddie drum machine. Together the two make a cacophony that in most places would clear the room.
'Circuit bending'
But everybody here at a run-down performing-arts space called the Tank, in a soon-to-be-bulldozed part of far West 42nd Street, stays put. Even odder, they cheer. Fans of "circuit bending" aren't interested in hummable melodies or danceable beats. On this night, they are not disappointed.
"Wow," murmurs one fan after the applause dies down. "That was tight." Tight, maybe. Bizarro for sure. Circuit bending started about 10 years ago when a geographically diverse group of basement tinkerers began to experiment with soldering guns and the cast-aside first-generation electronic Christmas gifts of their childhood. They discovered that if you pop the top off anything that has a simple circuit board and makes a sound -- an '80s-era talking doll, for instance -- you can hot-wire it and produce squawks that the manufacturer never had in mind, squawks that in some cases had never before been heard.
United by the Internet, circuit benders started sharing notes and trading pointers, and now they're a certified subculture. They tend to view themselves as outsiders, fed up by the hackneyed (to them) sounds that are emitted by conventional instruments. They also sneer at laptop computers, which are featured ever more prominently in electronica and hip-hop.
"It definitely has a defiant edge to it," said Peter Edwards, who says he makes a full-time living modifying such toys and, indeed, claims he can't keep up with demand. "It's become this new punk culture, a new do-it-yourself culture. But mostly it's people looking for unusual sounds."
Edwards started soon after he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied sculpture. After attending a live performance of circuit benders, he bought 30 Speak & amp; Spells in an online auction for a total of $250. It turns out that the Speak & amp; Spell -- which was made by Texas Instruments as a learning tool for children -- is gold to benders, beloved for its durability and its amazingly rich circuitry.