New Watch! • 05 May 2022
MB&F x REUGE MusicMachine 1 Reloaded
Eight years after the release of the MusicMachine 1 that marked the start of the collaboration between MB&F and REUGE, the brands come together again with a new reloaded version with an evolved design. Available in red, blue, and black (limited to 33 pieces in each colour).
More Streamlined, More Open
The first MusicMachine, released in 2013, opened the floodgates for MB&F to collaborate with creators on projects outside the scope of the wristwatch. It initiated a new category of “co-creations” that invited MB&F to a world beyond that of miniaturised horology. Created with REUGE, the product of this collaboration uprooted conventional understanding of music boxes at the time, from the design to the choice of music.
This new iteration, the MusicMachine 1 Reloaded, doesn’t stray far from its sci-fi roots. With its dual propellers and twin silver cylinders mounted on a sleek landing gear, the MusicMachine 1 Reloaded still looks like a spaceship hailing from a galaxy far, far away.
“The original design was done by young Chinese designer Xin Wang. But we had Maximilian Maertens, who is designing a lot of new crazy cool stuff with us, work on this one with the idea of being a little bit more streamlined, a little bit more open.” Max Büsser, founder of MB&F.
New Body, New Vibrations
Compared with the original, the MusicMachine 1 Reloaded feels more aerodynamic. The new machine sports an entire new body made of anodised aluminium. As a result, the individual pieces of MusicMachine 1 Reloaded looks as if it were one fused piece. Its mechanics, however, remain in full view. Two vertical combs resembling air vent grills on either side of the vessel’s main body, each containing a bespoke selection of 72 notes chosen by the expert REUGE musician according to the three melodies that the cylinders will play. The beautifully hand-finished cylinders gleam like a pair of imposing reactors atop the main hull and contain the scores of the melodies hand-picked by Max Busser.
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On either side of the propeller-like winding levers, the distinctive vertical circular panels are actually the cylinder speed regulators. These circular air regulators provide resistance to compensate the variance in speed of the main spring from fully wound to completely unwound, allowing for a constant revolution of the cylinders. The sleek new fuselage in anodised aluminium amplifies the sound transmitted from the brass vibration plate housed centrally within the case. The vibrations are also carried from this plate along the curved, lateral struts and the outrigger-style landing pods in bead-blasted anodised aluminium. These, in turn, carry the vibrations down to the MusicMachine 1’s landing platform.
Hand-Picked Melodies
A total of six melodies, each of approximately 35 seconds duration, have been loaded to this new MusicMachine. On the left, it is an ode to the sci-fi inspiration for the design, with extracts from John Williams’ Star Wars main title from 1977 and the “Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back (1980), as well as the theme from Star Trek by Jerry Goldsmith. On the right, the cylinders play three songs that shaped Max Busser’s youth and were important to him during the first 20 years of his life: John Lennon’s “Imagine”, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”.
MusicMachine 1 Reloaded is a limited edition of 33 pieces each in red, blue, and black.