Artist and design Yoshi Akai (no relation, as far as I know) treats analog electronics as an art form, a sculpture, an instrument, and an exercise in interaction design, all wrapped in the velour of vintage hardware design. For everyone who misses the deco elegance of meticulously-engraved surfaces and tastefully-appointed enclosures of early-century electronics, Yoshi’s work will be a special treat.

These aren’t just pretty boxes, though: they work as instruments. A prolific inventor with a background in textiles and design, Nagoya-born Yoshi Akai has spun out countless playful experiments in musical interaction, and all make fascinating sounds. There’s a turntable that scratches Swedish rye crackers as though they’re records, a step sequencer made from a telegraph, thumb-controlled instruments, and various synths, noisemakers, effects, and drum machines, some quite practical. Some emphasis electrical, analog sounds, while others go chip/8-bit in timbre. All look beautifully handmade, with some tending toward luxurious front panels while others flaunt intentionally disorganized arrays of knobs.

(Just don’t say the word “steampunk” — the designs seem to be to be placed pretty firmly in the electrically-powered early 20th Century, and there’s even a reference to Czech proto-science fiction landmark R.U.R..)

Yoshi Akai Artist Site + Gallery

MrYoshiAkai YouTube Channel

There are many models, so it’s worth investigating the full YouTube gallery and his site gallery. I’ll call attention to the two most theatrical. First, LEGO blocks form the playing pieces for a musical sequencer. That’s fitting: Ableton CEO and founder Gerhard Behles once revealed to me that he adored playing with LEGO blocks as a child, a design element that resurfaces in the sequencer he helped design. LEGO blocks are modular, they’re playful, they’re neatly color-coded, and because of their shape and interchangeable design, they easily represent blocks of sequenced time in music.

Here’s a video of the LEGO sequencer in action:

In celebration of Google’s acquisition of YouTube, CDM’s Adrian Anders has rounded up some of the best YouTube videos, from more Museum of Techno madness to mashups with legos, DJing with 45s, and behind the scenes of music production with Album Leaf.

First, some musical inspiration:

Anders: The Album Leaf – Making The Album “Into The Blue Again”, featuring Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv on the beats. A really cool look into the creative process for one indie, electronic music influenced band.

Kirn: This band has really been one of my favorites of the year, between Eustis, a detailed attention to sound, and generally creative music making on acoustic, analog, and digital instruments. And I wish I could mix records in Iceland.

Legos, the ultimate prototyping material. Many of us have wished we could have music controllers that could be assembled and customized with the ease of Legos; the Lego-like Mawzer modular controller system got our hopes up but still doesn’t seem to have evolved into a product you can actually buy.

Of course, why build something that’s reminiscent of Legos when you could just build it out of real Legos? The stekgreif project has done just that, thanks to a team of three German students (as near as I can figure) named P. Zentis, D. Tzschentke, and G. Homann. (Guys, if you’re out there and want to check in and tell us more, please do!)