Saxophonist plays into giant industrial pipe to play a duet with his own echo

16 October 2020, 14:42 | Updated: 19 October 2020, 17:08

When a saxophonist played a duet with his own echo...

Just when you thought the spirited sound of the saxophone couldn’t get any more lively, this man proved us all wrong.

Is it a modernised, electric sax, you wonder? Or, did he perform in a state-of-the-art music hall?

Nope – he just played into a really long outdoor pipeline (watch below). And it sounds absolutely incredible.

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Armin Küpper, the German musician and sculptor in the video, has coined the experimental genre as ‘Pipelinefunk’.

He came across the industrial pipe while out on a walk, and decided to see what would happen if he sang into it. It produced a beautiful echo, so he got out his saxophone.

"Pipelinefunk"- Konzert, Röhrensound Armin Küpper

The resulting riff is a smoky, soulful tune with a natural reverb that *literally* stretches for miles.

“This sound on the tube, if I’m lonely it always gives me a feeling, like ‘Hey, you’re not alone there’,” he says (translated from German).

“Sometimes I just can’t stop playing. The nice thing is, when it gets cool in the evening, I sit down in the tube heated up during the day and enjoy the sunset playing the saxophone.”

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Combined with the rhythmic clapping of a friend sat cross-legged nearby, the entire performance feels like it’s coming from far more than just two men, a sax and a big metal tube.

Bravo to a wonderful musician and his unexpected duet partner.