Pitchfork

Remember that ultra-neat homemade "guitar" you crafted as a child? Thought you were hot stuff, stretching those rubber bands across the top of Mom's Keds box, huh? Well, consider yourself wholly one-upped: Former Talking Head David Byrne has replaced your rubber bands with an old wooden pipe organ, metal beams, plumbing, heating pipes and electrical conduits. As for the shoebox, well, how does a former paint factory in Stockholm sound? Fucking awesome.

Not content to rest on his laurels following the recent DualDisc re-release of the Heads' studio catalogue, Byrne has converted F\xE4rgfabriken ("The Paint Factory", if you're nasty) into Playing the Building, which, on his official website, Byrne calls a "sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of a building is converted into a giant musical instrument... triggered by a simple keyboard located at a central position." Said keyboard controls machines which cause the elements of the building to vibrate, resonate and oscillate. Sounds...loud. And way cooler than Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Visitors will only have the opportunity to give this baby a whirl until November 13, so get on that plane now before that building's all played out. Oh, and for those of you planning on bringing a friend to aid you in a rousing rendition of "Heart and Soul", be forewarned by the large-suited one himself: "It might not play melodies in the conventional sense...but it might." Here's hoping.

In other Byrne news, it was recently announced that Armageddon is nigh...I mean, that David Byrne has teamed up with Fatboy Slim to write a musical about former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos. According to the BBC's website, Here Lies Love, which focuses on Marcos' "passion for music and night clubs" will premiere at Australia's Adelaide festival and will be shown on the BBC in March 2006.

We're sorry, we have to go now. Our heads just collapsed.

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