photo by abrinsky (via Flickr)

Friday’s performance at Supersonic introduced the band’s new singstress, Barbie Island Princess, seen above on the right side of Brian’s table. She is, by my own admission, exciting and scary and her startling presence at the gig left some of the audience open-mouthed. One punter was reported saying she would leave him with nightmares, and he wasn’t the only one affected. The feathers of band-diva Hula Barbie have been well-and-truly ruffled by the arrival of this new girl on the block. Hula Barbie wasn’t entirely compliant at the beginning of the Supersonic set and neither was my trusty FancyCam, which spat and wheezed its unpredictable, stoccato refrain in Black Star. Such is the susceptibility of the Toys to atmospheric changes that it’s rare for a performance to take place without one or more of the instruments behaving against expectation. But then it is a series of beautiful accidents which are at the root of the MTO concept; in which latent musicality is channelled and liberated through a process of circuit bending and the subsequent organisation of sounds. To be a player is to marshall the Toys through their symphonic paces, whilst being all-the-while prepared for the unexpected.

Here is a short extract of Freeno & Olaf, recorded by MrNoImSpartacus at Supersonic

There are two further MTO appearances in the diary before Christmas;

Saturday 17th November 2012 – FASTER THAN SOUND: GAME    Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, Suffolk

Modified Toy Orchestra appear on a programme that includes GAME, a new-commissioned collaboration between composer Richard Baker and Brian Duffy.

Friday 21st December, Peek & Poke Museum, Rijeka, Croatia

The MTO have been invited to perform at this Museum dedicated to the history of computing and IT technology.