This video features Brooklyn-based musician J. Viewz playing Massive Attack’s hauntingly lovely “Teardrop”. . . using fruits and vegetables. And mushrooms.

In the first part of the video, J. Viewz explains how he uses MaKey MaKey to turn the fruits and vegetables into touch pads, so that tapping them signals the keyboard to make different sounds. It’s great fun watching him produce satisfying thumps out of eggplants and ethereal chimes out of strawberries, though it’s an odd juxtaposition with what I think of as a somewhat melancholy melody. Perhaps that’s just the residue of my mopey teen years, but watching a carrot spin gleefully on a turntable gave me a feeling akin to watching Alison Knowles make an enormous salad at Tate Modern: that doesn’t go there! Whee! That minor rule-breaker’s merriment is evident on J. Viewz’s face when the spinning carrot successully produces a high-hat-like sound. Fruits and veggies aren’t inherent humorous, but they do introduce humor when they mingle with the traditionally less fleshly arts–a playfulness that the makers of MaKey MaKey showcase when, among other things, they hook piano tones up to bananas.

Enjoy!

(I do recommend clicking the link to J. Viewz’s page if you like Massive Attack–you’ll probably like his own sound for similar reasons.)