The Soundtrack of Nightmares
Hear the otherworldly sounds of the “Apprehension Engine”
The Apprehension Engine is a homebuilt sound generator created in 2016 by Mark Korven, a Canadian film composer who was looking for something different to score horror films. He kept hearing the same digital samples and wanted to deviate from that well-worn path. He called up a friend, Tony Duggan-Smith, a luthier who agreed to build the contraption. With the hope of unveiling it at the Toronto International Film Festival in just two weeks, the fascinatingly weird Apprehension Engine was born.
Made out of wood and various odds and ends, such as metal rulers, musical instrument strings and a reverb tank from a Fender guitar amp, the sound generator can be played with a violin bow, an E-bow, or a hurdy-gurdy hand-cranked wheel. One could call it an “instrument,” although it doesn’t produce sounds that are “musical” in the traditional sense. With a normal instrument, says Korven, “you’re expecting it to have a sound that is pleasing.” But with the Apprehension Engine, “the goal is to just produce sounds that, in…
