In an increasingly digital age, when so many time-honored skills and crafts seem poised on the lip of the dustbin of history, it's refreshing to know that there are a few traditional craftspeople still keeping the faith.
Take, for instance, analog synthesizers. In the world of electronic music, it doesn't get much more old-timey than a guy etching his own circuit boards.
Meet the Dewans: cousins Brian and Leon, inventors of the Swarmatron, and the subjects of a fantastic Talk of the Town piece in the latest issue of the New Yorker. (There's a local connection, of course; Brian's a Catskill resident, and Leon lives in New Rochelle.) Here, New Yorker writer Nick Paumgarten takes a peek at the wonders of Leon's parlor:
Leon’s front parlor was occupied by an armada of these others, most of them mounted on walkers, the kind used by the elderly. “Walkers are light, strong, collapsible, easy to get ahold of, and practically free,” Leon said. The Swarmatron, in the center of the room, had a pitch ribbon and a swarm ribbon, and an array of unlabelled knobs and switches, which Brian began manipulating in a way that produced something that your own first cousin once removed might recognize as music. Hanging from the walls were four “wall gins”—synthesizers, housed in various clocklike cases, that had been programmed to make random sounds at random intervals. Pings, squelches, and gongs rang out, submarine-movie-like, as the Dewans went from Dewanatron to Dewanatron. The Dual Primate Console, a two-person synthesizer, had a pair of old rotary-telephone dials and rows of obsolete vacuum tubes acquired in Russia. The Hymnotron, an electronic chord organ, featured calligraphic illuminations (“Depth,” “Width,” “Tempo”) made by Dorothy Dewan, Leon’s mother. As for the Coin-Operated Melody Gin (as in cotton gin, short for “engine”), Leon said, “For twenty-five cents you can have a four-minute avant-garde experience.” A visitor inserted a quarter, twirled some knobs, and had the sensation, partly real, of producing, with his ignorant hands, a marvellously unholy barrage of noise. It felt awkward, doing this in front of other men.
You may have already heard the Swarmatron in action without realizing it. Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor pressed a Swarmatron into service in the soundtrack of "The Social Network," the feature film about Facebook.
Hat tip to Paul Smart at WGXC, who has yet another video of the Swarmatron in action at the station's blog. Smart points out that Brian Dewan will be featured in an exhibit about musical instrument creators at the Greene County Council for the Arts later this year.
