Sound On Sound tests the Martenot copy built for Jonny Greenwood

The French Connection, the ondes Martenot controller Analogue Systems of Cornwall built for Jonny Greenwood, is reviewed by Gordon Reid in the February 2002 issue of Sound On Sound. Greenwood commissioned it in 2000. He already owned an ondes Martenot, built in 1983 by the son of its inventor, Maurice Martenot, but was afraid of damaging it on tour, and there was no second to be had. His model was made in a run of 50, and 44 of those went to a music school in Japan.

He asked Bob Williams, who owns Analogue Systems, for a copy that would play the band's RS Integrator modular synthesizers. Williams showed him a prototype in April 2001, and after two small changes the first two units reached Radiohead in May. Their first public outing was the band's “Pyramid Song” on Top of the Pops that month.

The French Connection makes no sound of its own. It copies the Martenot's controls, in a polished wooden case: a four-octave keyboard, a ring on a nylon wire that the player slides along a fingerboard marked for the notes, and a sprung wooden button that shapes each note's volume. Reid calls it a joy to play and finds nothing else that can do what it does. His complaints are the price, £1,050, the lack of MIDI and a pulley that gets in the way of the ring at the bottom C.