Tim
Kaiser’s been on tour, 14 cities in 15 days, through the Rust Belt and to
the company of local musician Paul Metzger–both were flogging their new CDs.
And he’s featured in this month’s "Make" magazine.
Kaiser is an experimental
musician who also builds unusual instruments, mostly electronic, for musicians
all over the country, as well as a performance artist and devoted husband and
dad o twins. His work is vivid, often tragic, often funny, always interesting.
Whence the fame? Back in
October, he was playing on some of his brightly colored plastic pets at Bent
Fest, a circuit-benders music festival in
with an experimental group called Beatrix
Jar.
Circuit bending is making new
musical instruments out of battery-driven toys and devices. Tim explains its
origins: In 1966 Reed Ghazala,the father of circuit
bending, left a toy amp in a drawer with its casing broken open, where it began
to make strange noises. It was shorting out because its circuitry was nudged by
something metal. This is the basis of circuit-bending: the circuit is literally
bent by a short circuit, and thus the device makes different kinds of sounds.
Tim notes that opening cases and messing around with the innards of electronic
devices definitely voids the warranty. But prying open the Speak n Spell and
rearranging it can be lots of fun.
"Wired" magazine’s review of this year’s Bent Fest gives you more detail:
"The only skills you need," said Mike Rosenthal, managing
director of The Tank, are patience, curiosity and the willingness to explore.
Oh, and a wet finger. (Remember, friction burns and the first step in bending
is to slide a finger over the circuit traces to see what noise emerges.)
Rosenthal, also the curator of the festival, explains that anyone can
bend circuits: "We get people off the street who have never had anything
to do with electronic music before, and within a few minutes kids as young as 5
or 6 are ripping apart their toys and creating amazing new musical
instruments."
At this Bent Fest (brought to
Minnesota in part by the persistence of Logan Erikson–you may remember him from
latenight gigs at the old NorShor–he’s in St. Paul now, part of the Duluth diaspora),
Kaiser’s cool instruments caught the attention of the good people at
"Make," the hot bible of DIY people nationwide. This movement consists of
people trying to take back technology, to make tech of all kinds do what they want. "Make" featured Tim and his
work in the most recent issue–you can get it at Barnes and
Noble.
Tim’s work is amazing. I first met him when i was working on my senior show at UMD back in 1989. I was looking to make a stick suspended in space spin. someone told me he was the one in the know and it’s true. I now live in St Paul, and try to catch Tim’s performance whenever he’s in town. I like his use of repetition that becomes slightly varied as it continues “like a circle in a circle” it rolls around in my mind…
Such a cool idea… to get inside the speak and spell and muck things up.
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