When we recently posted on this newfangled musical contraption we could not find any further information about it. Lo and behold, after a drought sometimes when it rains it pours. Today, National Public Radio (USA) has this:

The “Marble Machine” is a musical instrument by way of a Rube Goldberg contraption, the love child of a barrel organ, a kick drum, a vibraphone and a bass — all powered by hand-cranked gears and 2,000 steel marbles.

The machine was built by Swedish musician Martin Molin, who fronts the Swedish band Wintergartan…

Read or listen to that whole thing over at NPR. And the Wired UK item on the same topic, just the day before we first posted (internet search is unbelievably good, but not perfect; we really should have found it yesterday with the search we did, but better late than never):

…Now more than a year since the project began, the completed instrument is sure to have its moment of viral fame online.

Molin tells WIRED the project was directly inspired by the existing marble machine subculture (“I stumbled over the marble machine culture — it’s a whole subculture — and was always interested in gears, and the future of gears…”) but with the aim of building more than a single-use demo box.

“Marble machines always make music, but I was thinking maybe I can make a programmable marble machine, that doesn’t make chaos but is actually controllable in the sounds it makes,” Molin said…