Hot Instrument: Reactable - sampler & metronome

Last year, Björk saw a YouTube clip of someone playing a strange instrument. The device triggered electronic sounds by moving blocks around on an illuminated table. Entranced, she flew to Paris to meet with the designers of the invention, called the Reactable. "After about thirty minutes, she said, 'I'm taking this one,' " recalls Sergi Jordá, who developed the Reactable with a team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Jordá couldn't let Björk steal his contraption, since there were only two in the world, but he built one for her tour. Clips of Björk's set at this year's Coachella festival made the Reactable a YouTube sensation, with musician Damian Taylor furiously arranging and rotating the blocks, generating sound waves that come out as buzzes and beeps. "There's no sound on Björk's records that it's imitating," says Taylor, who uses the Reactable to add sonic texture. "It just has a certain je ne sais quoi." Taylor mostly improvises, partly by necessity: "They designed it to be random so it's hard to do the same thing twice." In a year or two, other musicians may be able to try the Reactable themselves: Jordá's team is currently working to make it available in stores.

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