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Darsha Hewitt
Regarding Obsolescence: Reference Clips From Restoration Of A Very Old Drum Machine

Single US 2016 on Radius label
Electronic (Experimental)

In 2015 Darsha Hewitt restored a Wurlitzer Sideman 5000. The Sideman was invented in 1959, and is often referred to as the world’s oldest commercially available drum machine. It is very big and old, it has moving parts and some very old vacuum tube technology. Hewitt spent the better part of a year tracing her way through old schematics, extracting busted capacitors and patching into it dusty circuitry with an oscilloscope. But mostly, she spent a lot of time somewhere between being perplexed, enchanted and overwhelmed by how this machine worked and in turn, how she would explain it in an accessible manner for a series of experimental educational videos for the internet. At every stage of this project, the Sideman generated sounds - sometimes they where the ‘right’ sounds that were danceable, sometimes they were merely mechanical sounds, and sometimes the machine churned out unexpected sounds that only happened once or twice during the process of getting it up and running. Making recordings was an important way of documenting the process and helped her recall how the machine sounded throughout the different steps of the restoration. The episodes presented are samples of some of the reference clip Hewitt made for herself and act as a window into some of the sounds that the machine made through this process.

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Darsha Hewitt , *1982 CA album by

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