I'm sure there are people out there who don't want a handmade wooden box that records sounds in 30-second increments, plays what's been recorded in a loop, and then lets you mess with those sounds during playback by turning a knob. I just don't ever want to meet them.
The Looper Voice Recorder is a little box that's handcrafted by Red Hook, Brooklyn-based artist Richard Upchurch and his team.
"From gluing the wood, cutting, drilling, sanding, painting the design -- it's all done by myself and my brandnewnoise team," said Upchurch via email.
You're not going to need a manual for the Looper. You press the box's red eye/button for as long as you want to record, then you make some noises. Let the button go when you're done a-hollerin' and then you press its black eye/button when you want to hear your audio (futzing with the knob changes the speed of playback). You can also tweak the Looper's nose, a toggle switch, to jump between a looping playback and a single-time playback.
"The guts are pretty straightforward," says Upchurch. "[A] simple record circuit with an 8-bit, 30-second record chip, a potentiometer for controlling the playback speed, a mic, speaker, and two AAA batteries."
Upchurch also calls the box by its given name: Loopy Lou. "The original versions without the loop function all have names based on their knobs: Nob Nob, Silver Tooth, and Chicken Nose," says Upchurch. "I now have a mustache design I call Mr. Purple."
Simple as the internals are, Upchurch continues to play with the recipe. He has several variations of the box, all handmade and hand-painted, and he also takes custom orders.
"I just finished making a set of 20 custom voice-recording frogs for Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips," he says. There are also a few other custom projects in the works that should be announced in the coming weeks.
How much would you pay for a Looper box? $270,000? $3,475,000? Sure, those are reasonable prices, but there's no need. It will only set you back $48, and it's available through the MoMA Store right now.
