Maywa Denki "Nonsense Machines"

I'll cop right up front to regurgitating a BoingBoing post, but it's just too cool to pass up, and I'm going to include videos right here instead of sending you to YouTube.  The BoingBoing post consisted mainly of a quote from Sweatyfrog.com:

Maywa Denki is an art unit produced by Nobumichi Tosa. It was named after the company that his father used to run bygone days. Its unique style is indicated by a term he uses: for example, each piece of Maywa Denki's work is called "a product" and a live performance or exhibition is held as "a product demonstration." The products produced so far include "NAKI Series," fish-motif nonsense machines, "Tsukuba Series," original musical instruments, and "Edelweiss," flower-motif objet d'art. Although Maywa Denki is known and appreciated as an artist, its promotion strategies are full of variety: exhibition, live stages, performances, producing music, videos, writing, merchandising toys, stationery, and electric devices.

Here, then, is a clip from a Tsukuba Series product demonstration:

Not bad, considering the rather ridiculous (but clever) methods that the instruments employ to create sounds.  For instance, each drum pad sends an electrical impulse to a "knocker," which then bangs on whatever object it's attached to.  It's more complicated than simply hitting the object with a drumstick, and doesn't sound as good, and by those tokens it's representative of the whole Tsukuba Series: the pleasure is in the process.  See the following video for demonstrations of several instruments; don't miss the Guitar-la guitar organ at 5:49!

What neither BoingBoing nor Sweatyfrog mention is that Maywa Denki are coming to the US!  They will be performing in Washington at the Kennedy Center in February 2008, according to their website.