I’m one in every of no less than 15 individuals who subscribe to Apple Music as an alternative of Spotify, and I am going to let you know why. Purpose one: I am a leech on my mother and father’ Apple One subscription, which is definitely like 95% of the explanation. Purpose two: Apple’s Early Music playlist, a group of pre-Baroque bangers made up of medieval and Renaissance songs, principally with a non secular bent (they had been into all that again then, you see).
Does Spotify have an analogous factor? I choose to not know. Please, that is the one factor stopping me from being swallowed by FOMO come Wrapped season.
Anyway, medieval tunes are nice, however they do not are likely to make them anymore after Robespierre, Napoleon, and the revolutions of 1848 made Europe go electrical. However fret not, we are able to now make our personal within the twenty first century: Absolutely the mad lads at Swedish synth-house Teenage Engineering have created “The world’s first medieval digital instrument.”
It is known as the EP-1320—although the blurb at one level refers to it because the INSTRUMENTALIS ELECTRONICUM, which is far cooler—and it comes crammed to bursting with “Hurdy gurdys, lutes, Gregorian chants, thundering drums, and punishing percussive foley FX.” Principally, it comes with all types of medieval instrumental phrases and demo songs so that you can combine and match to your coronary heart’s content material.
It additionally appears… era-appropriate? As a lot as an digital sampler can, anyway. Not solely is each button labelled in Latin I’m 100% unqualified to evaluate, however Teenage Engineering has even gone out of its strategy to medieval-ize the seven-segment show on the field’s display screen. You may hear it being put to make use of on this YouTube video from B&H, and it sounds superb. Like a bit of, moveable Peter Pringle.
Teenage Engineering additionally shot an advert for the factor, so if you happen to’re nonetheless not clear on what it’s, it, ah… will not assist in any respect. It’s kind of like if The Color of Pomegranates had product placement: Only a succession of individuals in eerie costume continuing by way of forests and throughout seashores, partaking in unusual, sacred actions that sometimes resolve into pictures of an EP-1320 being worshipped like a god. It explains nothing and I’ll watch it a number of hundred instances.
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Anyway, earlier than I get too effusive about this ridiculous machine, I am going to remind you (and myself) that it is $300 (or £300, as clearly we’re utilizing mystical, pre-industrial foreign money conversion). That is not loopy cash, I suppose, but it surely’s greater than I am personally keen to fork over, even for an unimaginable gag. However when you have both oodles of money or a real urgent want for a Renaissance-era beatbox, by god, choose one up and let me know the way it goes.