Monday 16 March 2009

Bow to the FM3 Buddah machine


The Buddha Machine is a small musical loop player. The name and idea derived from a popular Chinese music player similar to the FM3 that intones repeating loops of Buddhist chanting. It continuously plays one of 9 ambient sound loops (drones) that range in length from 5 to 40 seconds.
The second edition has 9 new loops and a wheel to bend the pitch.
An interesting article from 'The Far Eastern Audio Review' here icluding secular machines from Tibet and Taiwan which includes a semi-transparent image of the bodhisattva Guanyin sitting on a lotus flower. Behind her, a swirling, kaleidoscope of rainbow light beams emerges in a mesmerizing 3-D effect.
There are also videos of these machines playing against each other!
Interview with FM3’s Christiaan Viant here.
You can play the machines over the web at Zendesk here.
Finally a review of the 'Jukebox Buddah' album featuring exclusive contributions by Adrian Sherwood + Doug Wimbish, Blixa Bargeld, sunnO))), Thomas Fehlmann, Sun City Girls, Gudrun Gut, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Jan Jelinek/Andrew Ekler/Hanno Leichtmann, Mapstation, Aki Onda, Robert Henke, Es, Alog, Minit and Wang Fan all of whom used these machines here.




Tracks from 'Jukebox Buddah'

10 comments:

  1. oh thanks for this i'll get back to you once i've err digested this . thanks

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  2. thanks i will p.s. i got 4 of these two 1st gen & two 2nd ... i love em

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  3. oh just watched the video mmm very nice ... serene ...

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  4. I am jealous. Needless to say I haven't as yet seen any in op shops!
    Regards/

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  5. nah i had to fork out ... forced exposure . oh man i'd love one of those Taiwanese Buddhist sutra boxes like in the video, just lovely

    you kn ow about mike cooper @ make it up club tonight ?

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  6. You can get them down at Polyester Books if you mean Forced Exposure mail order. Saw Mike Cooper lots of times in UK when I lived there. was a bit of a jazz terrorist @ the LMC back then, even had Phil Minton sing with our band a couple of times...not much money but who knows.
    Regards/

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  7. Wow. I mean WOW. W O W ! (sorry, I'm just dumbfounded) Buddha Machine. That's amazing. I love it so!

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  8. Welcome to the blog my friend. i have seen yr name elsewhere!!!
    Regards

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