1938 ANS Russian Synth That Bridged Electronic Music And The Occult

This is retro weird from Russia 1938. Thanks for sending me this one Byron.

You don't play the ANS synthesizer with a keyboard. Instead you etch images onto glass sheets covered in black putty and feed them into a machine that shines light through the etchings, trigging a wide range of tones. Etchings made low on the sheets make low tones. High etchings make high tones. The sound is generated in real-time and the tempo depends on how fast you insert the sheets.

This is a really cool article on this rediscovered artifact of the Russian Avant Garde movement of 1938. Superb.

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/27/synth.html#more-167732

A guy plays the ANS.


BBC Special on the ANS.