Apparently this is an easy casio to write about as almost all internet references sum the CSM up in two words: ‘its shit’.

Go wash your mouth out with leaky battery acid you net naysayers! For this is quite a unique casio that although it is UTTER CRAP has a few nifty features.

How nifty? Well, one of these babies is fitted onto Behemoth. If you were an eco-geek cyber-punk of the 1990’s you would be familiar with Behemoth - it is this bicycle thing that this seppo guy built with a ridiculous amount of computing hardware in it and fitted out for perpetual cyber living on the road by pedal power.

Do check out Behemoth - it was an early inspiration to my experiments that eventually led to me becoming CasioNova, little did I know he was packing a Casio in there the whole time!

Surely the maker of Behemoth is a sensible and sane chap - why would he incorporate the CSM into his systems?

The CSM-1 is a Casio Mt-540 with no keys attached. Earlier on I discussed the
DM-100 which is also MT-540 based, so I won’t repeat myself on how it sounds.

Tek-music speak for such a device is ‘rack mounted sound module’. It has sounds in it that via midi you can play with another keyboard or software. So if one has many Casios and needs to find room to put a mattress on the floor and sleep the CSM-1 is a godsend.

Rack mountable? I can rack it in my rack because my rack is crap. (repeat ten times)
You see I have a non-pro rack where you can slide the items up and down - so the CSM is wedged between a patchbay and a mixer. It does have grooves on the side which I suppose are for rack ears, which I suppose would be worth thousands of dollars on ebay to insane-rich-casio-collector-types. (bastards! priced me out of music making).

One slight teensy weensy flaw though - it’s slightly higher than one standard rack unit high. This will annoy those greatly with a real rack, although if you had a real rack you would think the CSM ‘is shit’ and it wouldn’t be a problem. Oh and it’s slightly wider than the standard half rack unit width. Good thing rack units have no standard depth because Casio are spared from stuffing it up in three dimensions.

The neat thing about the CSM is that like every good casio - it can be battery powered! Is there any other (sort of) rack mountable sound module that takes double - a’s? I think not!

For all those wannabe glitch-core hipsters it can be circuit bent - there are some nice drum mods to be done. Though the best way to get a good sound out of it is to effect the bejesus out of it.

I stand by my CSM (once i stood on it, so it has a nice curve in the top case - upon which is conveniently printed the program change codes for the sounds - no - it aint GM thank heavens). The organ sound is particularly swell and features a few times on my EP, actually if memory serves the CSM is all over my EP.

The Synthmania website has covered the CSM-1 in depth, including MP3’s of the sounds. All of the technical nitty gritty is outlined there with one fact that is worth repeating: Shakatak did the demo tune!

(i nicked the CSM-1 picture from the excellent Sealed Synthesis site - he also has a picture of the CSM-10, a piano module)