ECLECTIC GENIUS: Tim Kaiser’s performances — musical, narrative, visual — garner fans and grants, including an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Musicians and collectors commission his instruments. Studio heads clamor for his signature sounds, to make their bag of sonic tricks cooler than the competition’s.

Bend It

Like Bach

Tim Kaiser’s fabulously weird world of music.

By Karen K. Hansen

When English soccer star David Beckham bends the ball, the international sports world watches in awe. When American musician Tim Kaiser bends a circuit, the audience listens just as intently, be it in an art or performance space, or a bar, bookstore, or library.

MAKE, Volume 12 (page 14) introduced readers issue forth as distorted or modulated samples to Tim Kaiser, but even people who’ve never from one of Kaiser’s Atomic SonicFX Boxes in the heard of him have probably heard his sounds. hands of other artists. These may emanate from the instruments Among those emitting Kaiser sounds are Kaiser himself creates and plays, such as Duran Duran and film score producer BT (Brian Bungee Drums made from concrete post forms Transeau), who recently featured some of or the New Metal Violin made out of the battery Kaiser’s instruments in his recording This _{compartment of a minesweeper. Or they may Binary Universe.} >>

Photography by Matt Blum

32 Make: Volume 15