Instrumentarium Hopkinis: Bart Hopkin Plays Invented Instruments

Audio CD with enclosed 16-page booklet. Published by Experimental Musical Instruments, 2002. (EMI Item #415)

In this audio CD, Bart Hopkin (the founder and still the main guy here at Experimental Musical Instruments) plays his own instruments. The 22 selections range in mood from decorous to raunchy and from crazy-happy to contemplative. A huge number of instruments appear – way too many to list here, but they're all described in 16 pages of liner notes. They include the infamous Savart's wheel, the bird-like branching corrugaphone, the worrisome scraper flutes, the magical Polly, the melancholical open siren, the wobbly bentwood chalumeau, the silver-limned disorderly tumbling forth, and many, many more – all very different from one another and representing every imaginable class of noise-maker. That includes winds, strings, membranophones, idiophones and uncategorizables.

Also available: 21 Ways of Looking at Things, audio CD by Bart Hopkin, $14. Or get both: Instrumentarium Hopkinis and 21 Ways, $24

Bart Hopkin – inventor, musicologist – puts things in your ear that your mama told you not to. Instrumentarium Hopkinis is a record for the brave, challenging listener and should inspire you to strum your barbeque grill or throw a piano off a building. – Tom Waits