John Richards is a “Dirty Electronics” artist, exploring the music and electronics with an approach that is “designer trash, ugly, cheap, heavy, hand-made, designed to be handled or to come in contact with the body, ready-mades, hacked, bent, fedback and kitsch.”

The Dirty Electronics Ensemble is made up of of John’s workshop participants who all get together to explore these ideas. They have played with many notable artists such as Rolf Gehlhaar from the original Stockhausen group and Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle. Workshops and performances have taken place all over the world.

One of the devices that John has created up with is the “Skull Etching”, which combines circuit board etched artwork and electronics into a a great, glitchy touch-based synth. It’s got 2 oscillators, feedback-based distortion, a filter, and it even incorporates radio reception and interference.

You control the instrument by touching the skulls. How cool is that?

John sells DIY kits for the Skull Etching for £33 GBP each, and it comes with everything you need, including the Copper etched PCB artwork, instructions, audio jacks, IC and even the battery.

Here’s what it looks and sounds like being played:

Made for beginners to DIY, it’s very easy to assemble with just a soldering iron, solder and wire cutters. You can order one right here.

• Velosynth: the hackable, open-source… bicycle synth?
• Incredible steampunk analogue modular sequencer
• LEV, the Theremin-playing robot
• Vektron modular synthesizer