The Noise of the Machine Itself: Mechanical music and the avant garde

With the invention of recorded music, machines which played the instruments themselves - such as fairground organs, player pianos, music boxes and barrel organs - went quickly out of fashion. Through the 20th century as music had the opportunity to become avant garde, the music machines were left behind. Where gramophones, tape recorders and turntables had an important role to play in the development of experimental music, there are fewer examples from the world of the fairground organ. This mix brings together various flavours of unusual mechanical music from the last 100 or so years up to today.