Michel Waisvisz - Crackle (MP3s)

As a conclusion to my MP3 identification contest, I am posting the solution to round 4. It took a while, but it was finally identified as the track A Cheval from the Michel Waisvisz album Crackle, released 1978 on FMP. Just like Tolerance's album Anonym, it is one of the great and insanely rare albums on the famous Nurse With Wound list. Fortunately, Michel Waisvisz is still around and, after a long hiatus, is back to composing, performing, and bending circuits again. Anyway, here is his classic album Crackle in its entirety as MP3:

Side A: A Cheval | Dutchjazzcircus | Crackles | Steve's Pipe | First Dancesteps
Side B: De Brug Gaat Open; Berliner Neustadtlament; Stradivarius | 4 Narrow Escapes | One For The Road

Instruments used are a Crackle synthesizer, a modified "Putney" VCS 3 (on "One For The Road"), a mouth organ (on "Berliner Neustadtlament"), and a (modified) springboard built by the late great Hugh Davies (on "Stradivarius"). You can read more about the Crackle box here, and even order it at STEIM (currently on backorder due to shortage of parts).

Comments

[Jonathan Wall]

Fuck! I actually have that album on my computer. I read about it in another BotB post concerning the NWW list-- http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/09/adventures_in_t.html

[Ben.H]

Cool! I only knew about Michael Waisvisz as the guy who didn't know he owned the only known copy of Kurt Schwitters reading his Ursonate.

[Beanolini]

There are schematics for the crackle box/ Kraakdoos here:
http://www.synthi.se/kraakdoos/
I've made a couple myself, they're great fun. Dead easy to make- the only problem is getting the obsolete 709 chips, though they turn up on ebay every now & then.

[Buzz-R]

First off, he never took a hiatus. He just stopped recording albums. Second, he DOES NOT BEND CIRCUITS. He designs them from the ground up. Third, a lot of this OOP album can be bought on a cd called "In Tune" with newer pieces on the cd that have his newer inventions.

Sadly, Michel Waiswisz is not around with us anymore...

[Floris van den Berg van Saparoea]

Michel Waisvisz died wednesday june 18 2008 in his house in Amsterdam. He worked with KEIM in Amsterdam, as the CEO. The Volkskrant (www.volkskrant.nl) wrote an article about him.