Music startup Thoughtful Things has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Engram, its first hardware instrument. The device is a sampler and groovebox that uses AI to warp incoming audio and generate entirely new sounds. Rather than functioning as a push-button songwriting machine aimed at top-40 radio, Engram focuses on experimental, uncanny textures and pushes AI audio models beyond their conventional limits.
Engram operates entirely offline, running a custom “tiny AI” model locally. According to the Kickstarter listing, the model is designed in-house and custom-trained. The company states:
“We’ve trained our audio models on open datasets that only contain audio licensed for commercial use (CC-BY or similar). We have not trained and will never train our models on non-commercial, pirated, or otherwise stolen data.”
Thoughtful Things also plans to open-source Engram’s firmware, allowing users to modify it or load their own custom models. In the campaign video, founder Evan King uses his voice to request “piano,” and Engram produces something glitchy and vaguely piano-like. He likens Engram to a “field recorder for latent space,” designed for exploring AI hallucinations and experimental sound design. The device even draws inspiration from circuit bending, letting users tweak and break its tiny AI models.
Thoughtful Things is releasing a limited run of Engrams through Kickstarter, starting at $675. The company has not disclosed a retail price, though it’s expected to fall between $850 and $900, as the $675 pledge is listed as a 30 percent discount.
