Every now and then, one stumbles across an artist whose vision is so focused and incisive (read his artist statement), whose sense of aesthetics so unique that it just blows your mind and makes you happy to be around to experience it. This is what I felt last week, when while looking for good sorties, I stumbled across a listing of Walter Kitundu playing with the Kronos Quartet at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, the previous evening!! D'oh!? I kicked myself soundly for missing the show!!

Kitundu constructs unique electro-acoustic instruments called Stylophones and Phonoharps. They are one part turntable, one part string instrument. The string instrument components range from standard harps and guitars to traditional Malian instruments like the Kora.

It is engrossing to see the kind of beautiful constructions and hear the amazing hybrid sounds that these instruments produce, yet wonderfully humbling to realise that when I look at a turntable that I do not naturally see these things.

I think part of my fascination with his work comes perhaps from a similar African background, (Walter grew up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) and of course strong instrument building tendencies. Mine though are much less physical or tangible and are more algorithmic. Nevertheless, he's doing some amazing work and is definitely expanding the minds of folks and the perception of what constitutes a musical instrument. Big up!!

Check out other groovy images below and sounds on his site.