Ongoing History Daily: New Order’s gross sampler experiments

In the early 80s, music technology was exploding with new synthesizers, practical and powerful drum machines, and hardware that could sample and manipulate sounds in an infinite number of ways. New Order was really became fascinated by the possibilities, especially when they bought a keyboard called an Emulator.

It could take any sound and turn it into something that could be used in a song, storing a few seconds of audio on an old-school floppy disc. So you’ve got this new tech and you want to experiment with it.

What’s the first thing you sample? In New Order’s case, it was…farts. They recorded a bunch of them and spend hours experimenting with how the sounds could be manipulated. In fact, that’s how they learned how to use their Emulator.

And in case you’re wondering, it doesn’t appear that New Order used any of those sounds on any of their records. We think.