Play that ondes Martenot

Indie music has fallen in love with strange musical instruments, writes  Kevin Courtney

ROCK USED to be such an easy game to play. You just got a guitar and strummed it over a four-four backbeat while the bass guitar strolled alongside. Then you sang a few lyrics about your baby, yeah.

These days, though, anyone can play guitar, so more and more bands are adding unusual instruments to their arsenal in the hope of delivering rock'n'roll thrills. Forget Telecasters, Strats and Farfisas – they're just back-up sound to the real big noises – ukulele, harp, celeste and sousaphone. And as for the drums – the vast choice of percussive instruments means you need never be trapped in trap-kit limbo.

Popsters using odd instruments are nothing new. Del Shannon's 1961 hit Runaway showcased the Musitron, a hybrid synthesiser invented by electronics genius Max Crook. Its octave range went beyond human hearing, which might explain why so many dogs gathered outside Del Shannon gigs. David Bowie mastered the Stylophone on his hit tune Space Oddity, achieving the impossible feat of making a toy advertised by Rolf Harris seem cool.

And Radiohead, with state-of-the-art equipment at their disposal, opted for an Ondes Martenot, a primitive synth invented by a French dude named Martenot. You wouldn't have caught Jean Michel Jarre with one of those old yokes.

On many current indie records, the instrument list routinely reads like the sleeve ofTubular Bells. Few self-respecting indieheads are seen on stage without at least one ancient instrument such as a lute, harp, dulcimer, flugelhorn or Moog synthesiser.

Some don't even bother with proper instruments – Tunng use a clackety old typewriter along with seashells and rattling chains. Tilly and The Wall have a tap dancer to give them that Riverdance edge, and French indie chanteuse Camille uses her own body, slapping herself around for our sonic pleasure.

Here are six strange instruments you might hear when you next go down to your local indie gig.

LITTLE BOOTS AND HER TENORI-ON

When Victoria Hesketh, aka Little Boots, topped the BBC's Sound of 2009 list, the boffins at Yamaha must've been delighted, because they couldn't have found a better advert for their new gadget, the Tenori-On. When Hesketh performed on Later... with Jools Holland, she had the Tenori-On chessboard matrix of flashing lights mounted conspicuously over her piano.

The Tenori-On doesn’t look like a conventional instrument, but once you get your head around its “visible music” interface, you can build multi-layered blocks of sound and create complex compositions by just moving your fingers over the display.

FOUR TET AND HIS DR SAMPLE

Everybody needs a 303, according to an early Fatboy Slim tune, and few lo-fi electro merchants would be without their trusty Boss SP-303 aka the Dr Sample. The 303 is about the size of an electronic book, but inside is a wealth of sounds and possibilities way beyond the scope of War and Peace. What attracts the likes of Hebden (and numerous other electro and folktronica artists) to the Dr Sample is its portability – the 303 allows you to sample, loop and sequence in eight-note polyphony and full-range CD quality on the go – you could easily knock off a hit record in the toilet and still have time to read The Sun.

IMELDA MAY AND HER ROCKABILLY BODHRÁN

A lovely Irish girl banging on the bodhrán – what’s so unusual about that, I hear you ask. The bodhrán may not be a particularly rare instrument round these parts, but it’s not every day you see it being used as part of a raucous rockabilly repertoire.

Performing the potent Johnny Got a Boom- Boomon Later with Jools Holland, the Dublin singer whipped out her bodhrán and injected serious mojo into the proceedings. Within seconds, the girl with the Bill Haley kiss-curl had the whole shebeen jumping to the bodhrán jive. Incorporating a bodran into the rockabilly sound may seem a little kooky, but she carries it off with style and attitude.

BAT FOR LASHES AND HER PERCUSSIVE STICK

Gandalf had his staff, Arthur had Excalibur, but neither was a fraction as formidable as Natasha Khan’s notorious percussive stick. This shaman-type stick is deployed at key moments in Khan’s gigs to create a dramatic thunderclap sound and strike fear into all unbelievers. Playing it is simple – you just bash it on the floor or on a wooden box – but the effect is as impressive as Jimmy Page doing his violin-bow schtick.

As befits a sha-woman whose live shows resemble a pagan fertility ritual, Khan uses numerous arcane instruments onstage, but none has the power or symbolism of her scary percussive stick.

THE PORTICO QUARTET AND THEIR HANG

They’re usually listed under “jazz”, but that only accounts for “five per cent” of their sound, insist this foursome from Clapham. Their main influences, they say, are world music, African rhythms and hip-hop, and they earned their indie credentials by busking in every portico and alcove in London. Passersby would often do a double take when they spotted the big, wok-shaped yoke being lovingly tapped and caressed by the drummer. This is the hang drum, developed in Switzerland in 2000 and central to the unique sound of the Portico Quartet.

In 2006, the hang makers halted sales through retailers, so to obtain a hangdrum, you have to write a letter to its makers in Berne, Switzerland, but you can have a bash at a virtual hang drum by visiting www.hangfan.co.uk/ play-the-virtual-hang-drum-ehang.php

GORILLAZ AND THEIR GLASS ARMONICA

Damon Albarn is no stranger to strange musical instruments. For his Mali Music project, Albarn twiddled some strange stringed thingies, but when he created his circus opera Monkey: Journey to the West,he went in search of some bigger game.

The production featured an array of strange Chinese instruments, as well as a klaxophone, an instrument made out of 12 car horns. But the most impressive instruments were brought along by Thomas Bloch, who specialises ininstruments such as the Cristal Baschet, made of 52 glass rods that you rub with wet fingers, and the glass armonica, made from a series of glass bowls that again are rubbed with wet fingers.

The first mechanical glass armonica was made by none other than Benjamin Franklin; it was also known as a “ghost violin”, and its sound was reputed to drive men mad.