A Bird Skull Turntable Playing Bird Songs Is Horrifying

How much more normalized and present-day does a record player get when when its needle is an ice cream cone? Or a bird skull?

Michael Ridge, a multimedia artist based in Virginia, employs a collection of seemingly random items to act as his record player’s needle—all documented in his capsule of Vimeo videos.

The art of producing and sound-mixing gets a touch bizarre as Ridge employs a cactus, a bird’s head, and even a lightly salted tortilla chip to coax out strains of audio from each vinyl album. Strings of high-pitched chirping warble out with the bird head’s beak dropped on the track. The lo-fi sound of Los Norte Americanos’ “The Band I Heard in Tijuana Volume 3” finds its tune with the rigid tortilla chip. The effect is humorous, visually simple, and a little weird.

Listen to and watch every inventive record needle below:

Check out more of Michael Ridge’s audio and artwork on his Vimeo page, here.

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