The first noise rig, built over lockdown for use in Plague Rider. This fits very much with the adage of ‘It’s just a contact mic on a thing’ and is arguably where that started for me. I had been using a little mixer set up for Plague Rider noise previously, but I’m not a big table guy, particularly for the kind of music that Plague Rider make, so I built something that gave me a physical sound source that I could then manipulate.

The core of the instrument is a couple of big springs bolted to a bit of scavenged metal. There’s a piezo bolted about halfway down the structure that then runs into an assortment of pedals. This has developed over time into a set up that includes a matrix mixer that means I can run two different chains of pedals and feed them back into each other; and an acoustic feedback box that allows me to run feedback scree through the plate at the bottom of the instrument. Various drilled holes, velcro, bolts and cable ties keep everything in place so I can thrash it about a bit while we’re playing.

This has been used on various solo recordings and supplies the noise on the Intensities album.