It’s taken me quite a while to document the first polyphonic keyboard I ever owned, one that appeared in many of our early recordings – straight, bent through guitar pedals, wound up through tape loops… this little keyboard was an essential part of our kit since 1981, at a time when polyphonic keyboards were far out of the reach of mere mortals. Certainly monophonic keyboards saved us from over complicating things – but there still had to be moments where a chord should fly off the ground.
It was very small. It was not exactly cheap at a time when money was scarce, but cheap enough. There were four sounds which approximated ‘real’ instruments – but really only offered a choice of envelopes. Vibrato was optional. Run through echoes it had a nice dubby sound. It really was everywhere on everything.
But I think the most heard/known result was in the 1983 track Dead Eyes Opened. Near the end of the track are some chunky grinding noises, a bit like a chainsaw. That’s the Casiotone M10. When you ran it through an Octaver guitar pedal the chord breaks up into screeching, modulating noise as the guitar pedal tries and fails to work with each of the different notes. It was a great fuck-yeah from such a little combination.