[neverm0re]

You can build 'em out of essentially scrap parts fairly easily, actually. There's also dumps of the Melloton's sample reels floating around if you particularly want that sound rather than producing your own.

Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle made their own tape loop sampler out of car tape decks, some simple soldering and a keyboard controller in the late 70s. They could control the pitch, rewind, forward, etc. and otherwise trigger various tape loops which was the basis of the band's sound.

There's no reason to stop with tapes, though. MiniDisc is cheap, dead and has seamless shuffle (!!!) which means a whole stack of 'em could be chained to a mixer and played similarly. Still, you won't get the odd mechanical quirks and failings of using a cassette based system, especially if you start munging with manipulating playback speeds which may or may not be interesting to you.

[samstave]

Watch this documentary on history of synth[1] -- Chris is in it...

My favorite though, is Skinny Puppy.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXm8O5cKrhI

[jacquesm]

thanks! watching the whole thing.

[JonnieCache]

>seamless shuffle (!!!)

In a few years, when I inevitably get bored of melody and back into brain-melting glitch music, this is what I'm doing.

[neverm0re]

You might wanna check out Autechre's side project Gescom, specifically the 'MiniDisc' album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_%28Gescom_minidisc%29

They abuse seamless shuffle with an 88 track minidisc album that's designed to be played on random shuffle. It basically sounds like a Farmer's Manual album, but it's still wild.

[JonnieCache]

Autechre was the first thing I thought about when I read your post :)

I was thinking more about hooking up a deck to an arduino and sending the "skip track" command at 20hz, or something like that. Record, chop, loop, and you're away.