Can musical gear be haunted? Every archive on this site — from the early instrumentals of Animus (1986) through the dark folk of Statik 3 (1993), the collaborations of 16:16, and the full catalog of Wept — passed through this plastic toy of a mixer in some form. Thirty years of sonic experiments, revelations, and musical confessions filtered through eight channels and a set of wobbly knobs.
The BX-800 came out of the early home studio revolution, when gear became portable and affordable but disposable tech hadn’t quite arrived yet. Cheap as it was, the sound quality held up — soft transistor clipping that was genuinely musical, warm enough that people still use it today to fatten retro drum machine tones. Before automated mixing existed, I learned to play it by muscle memory: tweaking the short-throw sliders during final mixdowns while simultaneously adding one last live performance, a workaround born from the limitations of 4-track recording.
Packing up for Seoul, I found it buried in its dusty cardboard coffin and almost threw it out. Curiosity won. The LEDs flickered on, and layers of distant melodies replayed — whether from memory or from tiny waveforms still trapped in the capacitors, releasing one last time into the room.
Related Posts
-
Farewell (for now) Brian Johnston
A farewell for Brian Johnston — IReverend Brainskan XIII, doubt-leader, and one of the strangest geniuses around. → read more
-
X-ray of the Past and Future
A hang gliding accident at 13, three decades of pain, and what the surgery unexpectedly unlocked. → read more
-
Statik 3
Two Appalachian folk songs — personal, melancholic, and the beginning of what became d’ville. [1993] → read more
-
Dethkaster
Smashed at a rehearsal, rebuilt with runes — how a broken Telecaster became something better. → read more
