You can pluck it, strike it, bow it, use your fingers, use a pick. The Lethelium is upcycled from bicycle parts and imagined in a cycle-punk zombie comic where bike parts save civilization. And all of this could only come from the imagination of Montreal artist Lateef Martin, an artist who lives a sci-fi reality others might only dream of. Or as Lateef puts it: “it reinvents the wheel.”
It looks like a steampunk prop, but it houses real mechanical innovation — part bike engineering, part music theory. Two stacked gears house guitar tuners, allowing you to dial in precisely tuned pitches on its struts. Those strings even line up in that circle with the same pitch groupings as on a piano’s white and black keys, meaning keyboard players won’t be lost. Like a hammered dulcimer, you get nuanced articulations, but here these come via tire rubber. And you can stick the whole thing on a cymbal stand. Let’s let Maestro Lateef explain as he enters the storied Guthman instrument competition:
It’s been a long time in development, but now it’s launching spectacularly as an instrument worth celebrating.
Bear McCreary, acclaimed composer of Battlestar Galactica, God of War, and Foundation, is getting a custom build. It comes in gorgeous alternate editions — a kinetic sculpture as well as an instrument, in the grand tradition of instrument making. It brings back a lot of that energy that can be lost in our mass-produced world. And it can go either acoustic or electro-acoustic — as the FAQ explains, “the Lethelium is an acoustic instrument by default, but it can easily be mic’d or fitted with a pickup for live or studio use”
Now, if you can’t afford this instrument, you should still check out the game Distraction Machine, a music puzzle visual novel that lets you “create music to uplift and inspire your community … during a zombie apocalypse!” And that seems to be the perfect embodiment of what music can mean in the world. Certainly it fits this timeline.
You’ll hear even those loops sample the instrument, presenting it in a comic/digital environment and giving you more of that zombie backstory.
We got to see Abdul Lateef in action at the 2020 MusicMakers hacklab I co-hosted with Tad Ermitaño at CTM Festival. (Future co-host Ariel William Orah also plays along, as does Afrorack aka Bamanya Brian whom you may know as a friend of the site!)
It’s a sonic revolution. Erm, it literally revolves. And — honestly, what you might want to have as your instrument of choice just in case that zombie apocalypse happens tomorrow. Seems, uh, kinda plausible tbh.
Lateef is the only one that would make me kind of look forward to hunkering down in the apocalypse.
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