As I managed to see Tom Wais in concert less than a week ago I have
been looking up interviews with him and found this little snippet:
Pitchfork: Do you have a favorite instrument?
Tom Waits: I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer, it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices-- everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra. Including the human voice [Waits sings a scale in "synthesizer voice"]. Eleven-second samples! I like primitive things. I've used that a lot over the years on different recordings.
-- Mike Dickson, Edinburgh Free Music Project: http://www.last.fm/music/Mike+Dickson Or http://www.mikedickson.org.uk/