The original was described by some as the anti-iPod. It looks like the sort of iPod knock-off that you might get free in a cereal packet. Instead of loading it with several gigabytes of your favourite music, the Buddha Machine comes pre-packaged with nine low-fi loops, which vaguely emanate from the fuzzy in-built speaker.

And it’s marvellous. The Buddha Machine may look cheap and tacky, and the sound quality certainly is not great, but this all adds to the quaint and charming nature of the device.

It became a cult object. Brian Eno is said to have been so entranced that he bought eight of them on the spot. It was treated by some as a musical instrument in its own right. Artists created remix albums inspired by the Buddha Machine. It even spawned a bizarre game, Buddha Boxing. Any resemblance to World Championship Stare-out is purely coincidental.

The second version of the Buddha Machine brought new loops, and the addition of a pitch-bending function, adding an extra dimension to the curious box of sounds. But it still retained its charm.

Now the idea has been developed further with Gristleism. It is a new variant on the Buddha Machine concept developed by the revered experimental group Throbbing Gristle.

As you can see from the demonstration video, Throbbing Gristle’s take on the Buddha Machine is rather more brutal than FM3′s more relaxing version. And while the originals come in unassuming, antiquated, almost second-hand packaging, Gristleism has a very slick, modern and extravagant style to its packaging.

Gristleism is an altogether different product. But it chimes with the same ideas about what it means to buy music in a physical format in these days of digital downloads. Record companies are increasingly seeking to make the physical editions of albums more appealing by making the package more of the product. The stylish packaging of Gristleism asks questions about music, just as the original Buddha Machines did.

Musically, Gristelism fulfils a completely different role. The originals, with the music composed by FM3, were more ambient in nature. They could sit happily in the corner, quietly emitting unobtrusive drones.

But as you would expect with Throbbing Gristle, things are a bit more madcap here. I have to admit that when I first started playing with this, I couldn’t stop grinning. I had to interact with the music. You can really utilise that pitch altering knob to great effect.

A few years ago I wrote about the Buddha Machine, a charming little plastic box that emits ethereal music. It is an interesting object, mostly because the nine loops that it can play are so other-worldly and, despite their brevity, infinitely fascinating. Which is just as well, because they will repeat endlessly. Well, until you switch it off or the batteries run out.

It was dubbed the anti-iPod, because despite the fact that it bears a similarity in design and concept to the famous Apple gadget, it in fact rejects the entire ethos of the slick iPod. The Buddha Machine reminds many of medium wave radios for the poor, crackly sound quality that comes out of its large circular speaker. And instead of boasting several gigabytes of storage space to put on whatever music you want, you are stuck with the nine loops. Essentially, it is what the iPod would be like if it was cheap and made in China. Instead of, er, expensive and made in China.

My post about the Buddha Machine became a bit of a landmark for this blog, as I ended up speaking about it on Radio Scotland. On the radio with me was a local Buddhist, who was understandably rather bemused about being asked about what she (politely) saw as a cheap piece of tat.

Ostensibly it is a piece of pure tat. It looks like the sort of thing that might plop through your letterbox a few weeks after you collect your twelfth Weetabix token. But there is something oddly engaging about the Buddha Machine.

It is an interesting statement about the position the entertainment industry finds itself in. This is an age when physical music formats seem more and more redundant. But contrary to this trend, the Buddha Machine — the ultimate physical format — has become a cult fetish object for music and gadget geeks.

Plus, you cannot help but be captivated by the music, which you can imagine being transmitted from outer space, or a hitherto undiscovered dimension. Or perhaps an anonymous exotic location on the other side of the world. Mind you, that last one is kind of true. The music, like the box, is made in China. You see, the Buddha Machine is the brainchild of the Beijing-based electronic music duo FM3.

Since then, FM3 have set to work on that difficult second Buddha Machine. I never suspected they would try to repeat the feat. Could it possibly recreate the magic of the original?

It is true that, unless you are new to the Buddha Machine, there is not much so mystery about the second iteration. To an extent, once you’ve seen one Buddha Machine, you’ve seen them all.

But there is enough that is new about the Buddha Machine II to justify the purchase. Of course, there are nine new loops. The music is as fascinating as ever, even if these new selections don’t quite seem to match the other-worldly qualities of the original loops. While the first Buddha Machine was based more on electronic sounds, a lot of the new music is more guitar-based — though it is still firmly of the ambient persuasion.

My personal favourite loop of Buddha Machine II is #3, ‘Piano’. It is a decisive but quizzical riff that, in a fairer world, could be the Windows startup sound.

Overall, Buddha Machine II feels like a more mature version of the original. Although the designs of the two machines are very similar, there are some subtle changes. The first Buddha Machine came in a variety of bright, almost childlike colours. The new version comes in deeper, more adult hues: burgundy, brown or — my choice — grey. Even the “summer edition” comes in a curious teal-like colour.

Buddha Machine II also comes with a new feature — a knob that allows you to control the pitch at which the loops play. At first, this new addition feels like a failure. Controlling it while the Buddha Machine is switched on produces a rather unpleasant, disorientating effect. It sounds like a malfunctioning tape player — a noise that made me feel sick when I was a child.

But a more careful use of the new control brings more pleasure. It unlocks infinite worlds hidden inside this tiny box. Instead of just the nine loops, for each one you now have a choice of a slow and low-pitched version, or a fast and high-pitched version — and everything in between. Each loop is now massively variable. Exploring different speeds of each loop reveals new elements, elicits new emotions and brings new experiences.

This will bring a new dimension to the past time of Buddha boxing. This is where two or more people experiment with a number of Buddha Machines, allowing the drones to weave themselves among one another. On first listen to such an experiment, the loops may seem to match up poorly. But it ends up being a fascinating ambient creation, like some massive imagined Brian Eno installation.

You can try it for yourself with the Buddha Machine Wall, a web page that lets you experiment using the original nine loops. FM3 themselves invite you to play with three loops from Buddha Machine II.

The Buddha Machine has come on a long way since its original release four years ago, having spawned a number of other projects. Robert Henke remixed the Buddha Machine to create the album Layering Buddha. FM3 themselves encourage such remixing by offering MP3s of the loops to download for free, available under a Creative Commons license.

And despite originally being the anti-iPod, you can now buy an iPhone app that apes the original Buddha Machine. Of course, it doesn’t quite have the same charm as the real thing, but there is nonetheless something novel about these wonderful sounds coming out of your phone.

All-in-all, this unassuming little box packs a lot of punch. It is roughly the price of a CD album. But as an object, you will get far more pleasure out of a Buddha Machine.

• Official Buddha Machine website
• FM3 website
• A great blog post about the Buddha Machine by The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones

To be honest, it hasn’t been a vintage year for music. This year I’ve preferred to buy music from the past, because I worked out that there must be so much better music from the period zero to 2005 than music from today. Which is obviously true because even the top album on this list probably wouldn’t have made it into the top five of last year’s list. If I didn’t separate reissues and whatnot into their own separate list, they would have taken up most of the top ten.

Why has this year been so rubbish? Mostly because the media has been collectively masturbating to the boring drones of The Arctic Monkeys to the exclusion of almost everything else. These dullards are the future of music? I certainly hope not, because they could hardly sound less contemporary. It’s just like when The Strokes became huge five years ago for re-hashing the seventies. What is around the corner? There must be something… please?

Right. What you’re getting today is my list of top albums from #20–#11. The series will be rounded off with a top ten, and in between you’ll get a couple of other posts of other stuff. Enjoy!

20. FM3 & Dou Wei — Hou Guan Yin

A pleasant little album. There’s not much else to say about it. If you liked the music on the Buddha Machine, give it a shot. Even if you didn’t much like the Buddha Machine, you could well like this — although I’ve not spotted anybody else giving it much attention.

What I said about it at the time

19. Pulp — The Peel Sessions

You see, I couldn’t even resist including this one. Although it isn’t technically a re-release, there is not a single piece of music on this record that isn’t at least five years old. It compiles all of Pulp’s Peel Sessions — including the 1983 session which Jarvis hoped would never be released — and some other live bits and bobs. It’s certainly an interesting listen, even if they hit the odd bum note. A must for any Pulp fan.

What I said about it at the time

18. Plaid & Bob Jaroc — Greedy Baby

This audio-visual collaboration was hit by many delays, and it seems as though it was a right pain to make. Sounds like it will be a disaster, but it actually isn’t bad. Which is quite surprising really, considering how boring Plaid’s recent music has tended to be. Both the music and the visuals vary in quality from track to track, but overall this is not too shabby — as long as you’re not expecting too much.

What I said about it at the time

17. Malcom Kipe — Lit

I wasn’t too keen on this album at first. It seemed okay, but nothing particularly special. But I really grew fond of it. I found that it was a great album to listen to in the summer. Very nice stuff indeed. A bit like the Plaid album, as long as you’re not expecting anything revolutionary, you might well enjoy this.

What I said about it at the time

16. Clark — Body Riddle

The damp squib of the year. After all the hype, and the amazing Throttle Furniture EP that came out at the start of the year, this album was a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps this was because expectations were so high, but I just found this album a bit underwhelming. In fact, I thought the freebie EP that came with it, Throttle Clarence (a collection of music from the Clarence Park era), was much better! If you lump in Throttle Furniture and Throttle Clarence, Body Riddle would easily enter the top ten; maybe even the top five. Body Riddle on its own, though, is a disappointment.

What I said about Body Riddle and Throttle Clarence at the time
What I said about Throttle Furniture at the time

15. London Sinfonietta — Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters

This is yet another album where none of the music came from 2006. Oh well. This is a compilation of highlights from the celebrated Warp Works concerts that explore the links between contemporary electronica a la James and Jenkinson and ‘avant garde’ composers of the twentieth century such as Steve Reich and John Cage. There is plenty of interesting music here. I know I’ll certainly be investigating Karlheinz Stockhausen more in future. Perhaps the most intriguing parts of the album are the bits where classic Aphex Twin and Squarepusher tracks are re-worked for acoustic and performed by London Sinfonietta. The results are sometimes patchy, occasionally rewarding — but certainly interesting.

What I said about it at the time

14. Thom Yorke — The Eraser

It’s certainly been a good year for frontmen to be breaking away from their successful bands to pursue a solo career. Yorke is the first of three in my list, but his was the most disappointing album. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting too much. To be honest, it is quite an average album. But there are some great moments. My particular favourite is ‘Black Swan’, which like grey funk; cold but groovy. There is too much of the old fuzzy pampered rockstar politics as well. He ensured that carbon emissions were kept to a minimum, and he did this by chopping down more trees than was strictly necessary.

13. Boards of Canada — Trans Canada Highway

A lot of people have gone off Boards of Canada now. I guess the novelty has worn thin. I thought The Campfire Headphase was pretty poor, but the Trans Canada Highway EP is a little gem in my opinion. It gives you what you’re looking for as a Boards of Canada fan, without resorting to re-hashes or minor variations of their most-loved albums. What a track ‘Skyliner’ is!

What I said about it at the time

12. Hot Chip — The Warning

This album is proof that all a half-decent band needs to get exposure is a major label deal. Everybody is banging on and on about Hot Chip at the moment — and for good reason. This is quite a good, enjoyable album. But I prefer their previous album, Coming on Strong. I shouldn’t complain though. It’s great to see such good music getting so big. So full marks in that respect.

11. DAT Politics — Wow Twist

This was my introduction to DAT Politics. I didn’t like this album much at first. Its pace was unrelenting, and there was very little variation in style (with the exception of ‘Fake Friend’). But after a while it really grew on me. If you like brash and colourful electronics, you can’t really afford to miss this.

Right, that’s the first ten sorted out. Tomorrow I will bring news of three sloppy turds.

Hou Guan Yin demonstrates that FM3 can hold it together without a gimmicky box to put their music in. Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian teamed up with Chinese rock drummer Dou Wei to make this beautiful live recording.

In a way, the fact that it’s live is one of the most amazing things about this album. It is outrageously laid back and delicate. It sounds as though each little sound ought to have been obsessed over for hours on end.

The music is every bit as unobtrusive as the Buddha Machine, although it is not looping the same short section of music over and over again. Some of the album is pretty standard — albeit pleasant — ambient droning and bleeping. It all comes together, though, with the inclusion of Christiaan Virant’s loose guitar playing and Dou Wei’s restrained drumming. It sounds effortless and beautiful.

My personal favourite track is ‘十’ (most of the tracks are untitled, but Gracenote and Discogs both bring up Chinese numbers for them all — this is track 10), where the gentle drumming and blissful guitar playing are delicately matched with some carefully selected vocal snippets. Just listen to it if you can; it’s a treat.

You had better read the description on the Lona Records website which will bring you much more understanding of what’s going on in this album. I’ll just say that I think it sounds great and I’m certain that this will be a favourite CD for me to zone out to in times to come.

• FM3
• Lona Records
• Samples at Boomkat

The concept perhaps seems a bit like Henke is bandwagon hopping. I have never bought any of Henke’s music until now. But maybe that’s just because I’m fickle. But the Buddha Machine is a genuinely interesting object, so I was bound to take notice of this exploration of the music locked inside it.

While the music emanating from the Buddha Machine itself cannot be altered, Henke has used high-quality equipment to record its output and deliver some radical reinterpretations. Essentially we have an hour-long remix of the Buddha Machine. It’s not bad to get an hour of music out of just a nine short loops, but Henke has done it.

Henke has stuck with the main principle of the Buddha Machine’s music though. In the best ambient tradition, this music doesn’t really go anywhere quickly. The tracks progress as they go along for sure, unlike the Buddha Machine which repeats the same section of music every dozen seconds or so.

In the liner notes Henke writes:

The pieces as they live within my computer are set up as continuously permutating structures and theoretically could go on forever, just as the loops do within the buddha machines.

I made quite long renderings of these permutations and later decided which excerpt of each structure to put on this CD. Therefore, the tracks are not closed works, but views onto a perpetual machinery.

So the basic idea is the same as the Buddha Machine, but it’s delivered on the conventional, linear CD format.

As for the music itself, it mostly sounds like your standard dark ambient fare. Some of it is downright creepy, at points reminding me of the darkest moments of legendary IDM spook-fest Geogaddi. If you woke up in the middle of the night and started playing Layering Buddha you would probably get a bit paranoid.

A lot of the music here is completely unrecognisable from the Buddha Machine itself, although a few tracks provide repeat glimpses of familiar elements. It’s interesting to see such radically different music being made from the sounds made by that innocent little plastic box.

• Monolake / Imbalance Computer Music
• Robert Henke at Last.fm
• Layering Buddha at Boomkat
• FM3 / Buddha Machine

Update: So now I’m back home. This post is rubbish because I ended up using Internet Explorer on my friend’s laptop, when I’m used to using Firefox on the PC at home.

I didn’t think the interview went as well as the last time, when it was just done live over the phone. It all seems very different when you’ve got a massive microphone shoved in your face, and the fact that it was pre-recorded meant that I was probably thinking too much about what I should say rather than actually saying it. Still, I just listened back to it and it doesn’t seem too bad…

Anyway, this post was a bit short notice so on the off chance that anybody is still interested in hearing it, it’ll be here (about 1h 20min in) until tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon…

If you’ve not heard of the Buddha Machine before, I’ll try and explain. It’s by a duo of experimental electronic musicians based in Beijing called FM3. The Buddha Machine is a music release of theirs — with a difference. In this age of the record industry collectively shitting itself about the internet, downloads and DRM and music fans wondering if the days of vinyl and CD are numbered in the face of more clinical MP3s, FM3 have taken the radical solution. This is not released as a shiny all-modern download, and it certainly is not a CD or a record. That is because the Buddha Machine simply would not work if it wasn’t inside this distinctive plastic box.

Inside the box are nine ambient pieces looping around for infinity. Switching it on is magical. You are greeted by a pleasant hum; the sort that you really wouldn’t mind hearing forever. You could leave this on all day and you wouldn’t be fed up with it. Like the best ambient music, it is very interesting to listen to but you could just as easily ignore it.

It comes housed in a nondescript cardboard box littered with bewildering Chinese notes. The only clue to the contents come courtesy of a sticker that’s been slapped on: “fm3 buddha machine”. Open the box and pull out the Buddha Machine — it looks like a cheap and crude piece of junk. But switch it on and you cannot help but be won over by the sheer beauty of the sounds it is making.

It has certainly caught the attention of many people. Often when you search Google for something you just get rubbish. But search for Buddha Machine and you find loads of interesting articles (even Pitchfork wrote quite a good article). Almost all of them also mention the fact that Brian Eno bought half a dozen as soon as he saw it. I’m not going to buck the trend, obviously.

Once you’re past the first impressions and the Brian Eno factor, there are two quite common things that people say about the Buddha Machine. Firstly, it is like an AM radio. That’s what my mother said when she saw me with it. The in-built speaker certainly gives that impression. The poor quality of the speaker makes it seem like the sort of tacky, junky, rip-off radio you might get for collective twelve Weetabix tokens. If you use headphones the quality of the sound is actually pretty good. But when the cheap speaker is combined with the sweet sounds being emitted from the Buddha Machine, it only adds to its charm, characteristically crackling away as though it’s humming along with the music.

Secondly, it is an anti-iPod. Well it certainly looks like it could have been a crude prototype of the iPod. It’s a similar idea — a little box plays music, plug in some headphones and slip it into your pocket. And I have used the Buddha Machine on journeys to replace my MP3 player.

The circular speaker also looks like it could almost be a cheeky nod to the iPod’s navigation wheel, acknowledging the similarity of the two boxes. It also comes in a range of different colours like the iPod Mini. They are shipped at random, so it adds a little bit of the kid-at-Christmas factor as you don’t know which colour you’re going to get. All I can say is I’m glad I got the blue one and not that disgusting earwaxy orange one!

Despite the obvious similarities between the Buddha Machine and the iPod, though, I think a more apt analogy would be something like a Tamagotchi. The iPod is a completely soulless machine. The only point of it (unless you’re shallow and using it as a fashion accessory) is to enable you to listen to music. The iPod is a cold middleman. It’s not your friend. You only want the music. With the Buddha Machine on the other hand, you turn it on specifically because you want the Buddha Machine. It’s not middleman; it is its purpose.

It’s a bit like a plant. At one point I forgot I owned it, and when I looked at it I felt myself smile. That’s the sort of function it serves. You can have it sitting there gently warbling away in the corner of your room — I’ve seen a few people compare it to an art installation. It has accompanied me when I’ve been having a rest, when I have been having a bath and even when I have been watching television. I bet it would be pretty good to study to as well (although I haven’t tried that yet… oops!). And if you’re bored of the loop (which you probably won’t be) or if it simply doesn’t match your mood, just flick the switch on the side of the box and it will play a different loop out of the nine housed inside. I love this unique little box.

But there is a danger. It could just be like a lava lamp or a fibre optic lamp — fascinating for about half a week, then forgotten about and stored away in the attic for the rest of eternity. Or it could be one of these passing fads — Pogs for ambient music fans. But the idea of the Buddha Machine is showing signs of maturing with the emergence of Buddha Boxing (scroll about two thirds of the way down). This little Flash thingy seems pretty close to the idea. What would be really cool is if a future Buddha Machine could emit generative music.

Meanwhile, my mother just didn’t understand it. She saw that it was like an iPod, but with the music already inside it — “What if you don’t like the music?”, she said. I think the best way to think about this is like a regular album (it’s the same price as an album) with a difference.

If you’re swithering and need convincing, have a listen to the mix that FM3 made for Boomkat (look in the sidebar on the left). The music in the mix (particularly ‘Zheng’ / track 2) got stuck in my head and I knew I had to buy the Buddha Machine.

Some other smart articles on the Buddha Machine

• Scotland on Sunday
• Almost Cool:
  

  Even if I play my iPod at loud volumes, other sounds inevitably seep into what I’m listening to, and depending on the degree to which they intrude upon my listening, I tend to find myself somewhat annoyed (which isn’t really a good thing in either starting or finishing the workday). As an experiment, I instead listened to The Buddha Machine several days while commuting and the difference in how I perceived outside noise was quite different. Instead of being annoyed, I found my brain slightly focusing on the loops themselves, but also listening to how the sounds of the outside environment filtered in over and alongside them.

• PopMatters:
  

  At its heart… the Buddha Machine is actually a counterargument to the onset of the downloading age. For one, the entire point of the release is to have the little box. Sure, you could theoretically download each of the drones (which are actually available in mp3 form on FM3′s website), push “repeat” in your media player of choice, and have something close to the original effect, but you lose much of the aura of the work that way — evaluating these drones purely on the basis of their musical merit is entirely different than evaluating them as an aspect of an odd little artifact.

• zang.org — when your mobile rings apparently it goes haywire and sounds more like Autechre than Eno!