Oh, to be a humble scriptorium monk, idling away my hours making the sickest liturgical beats.
I am one of at least 15 people who subscribe to Apple Music instead of Spotify, and I’ll tell you why. Reason one: I’m a leech on my parents’ Apple One subscription, which is actually like 95% of the reason. Reason two: Apple’s Early Music playlist, a collection of pre-Baroque bangers made up of medieval and Renaissance songs, mostly with a religious bent (they were into all that back then, you see).
Does Spotify have a similar thing? I prefer not to know. Please, this is the only thing stopping me from being swallowed by FOMO come Wrapped season.
Anyway, medieval tunes are great, but they don’t tend to make them anymore after Robespierre, Napoleon, and the revolutions of 1848 made Europe go electric. But fret not, we can now make our own in the 21st century: The absolute mad lads at Swedish synth-house Teenage Engineering have created “The world’s first medieval electronic instrument.”
It’s called the EP-1320—though the blurb at one point refers to it as the INSTRUMENTALIS ELECTRONICUM, which is much cooler—and it comes filled to bursting with “Hurdy gurdys, lutes, Gregorian chants, thundering drums, and punishing percussive foley FX.” Basically, it comes with all sorts of medieval instrumental phrases and demo songs for you to mix and match to your heart’s content.
It also looks… era-appropriate? As much as an electronic sampler can, anyway. Not only is every button labelled in Latin I am 100% unqualified to judge, but Teenage Engineering has even gone out of its way to medieval-ize the seven-segment display on the box’s screen. You can hear it being put to use in this YouTube video from B&H, and it sounds amazing. Like a little, portable Peter Pringle.
Teenage Engineering also shot an advert for the thing, so if you’re still not clear on what it is, it, ah… won’t help at all. It’s a bit like if The Colour of Pomegranates had product placement: Just a succession of people in eerie dress proceeding through forests and across beaches, engaging in strange, sacred movements that occasionally resolve into shots of an EP-1320 being worshipped like a god. It explains nothing and I may watch it several hundred times.
Anyway, before I get too effusive about this ridiculous machine, I’ll remind you (and myself) that it’s $300 (or £300, as clearly we are using mystical, pre-industrial currency conversion). That’s not crazy money, I suppose, but it’s more than I’m personally willing to fork over, even for an incredible gag. But if you have either oodles of cash or a genuine pressing need for a Renaissance-era beatbox, by god, pick one up and let me know how it goes.
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