MOTM

Many years ago I used to hang out with an older guy that owned a music store
(he was trying to get a "Hawaiian" band started as I remember). He told me
that in the earliest days of recording studios, they were typically built
above things like huge cellars or abandoned subway tunnels and things. Mics
& speakers tied to the console were dangled down into these big, complex
chambers and there was your reverb!

With the advent of clean, controllable electronic ambience, the trend
through the latter part of the century (soon to be 'last' century...yikes!)
was of course to record dry and then add the reverb in the mix. Then some
producers (I remember Daniel Lanois taking a lot of bows for this) came up
with the radical idea that perhaps ambience could be recorded along with the
music in the performance space (I guess they had never heard of orchestral
music before...).

I always find the idea of introducing complex behaviors into electronic
music enticing, and letting a little "nature" seep into the circuit sure
fits the bill. In the spring reverb days, we took it for granted that you
would have a big tank full of springs on the floor a few feet away from the
console... why not return to that idea? Having a generic 'resonator' module
which is basically the driver/receiver from a reverb unit, but where the
'springs' can be anything you want? I imagine that some clever physical
design could be devised to make easily swappable "cartridges" for the tank.
Loads of fun experimentation could be had.

To go further, perhaps the receive end could have some kind of DSP to do
time/pitch-shifting, etc., to extend the effects of the resonators (make
them sound "bigger").