Nicolas Collins and Peter Cusack have pioneered the use of computers and alternative music controllers in improvised music since the mid-1980s and have subsequently developed a style of "computer folk-music" that is at once deceptively sophisticated in its technological resources yet reassuringly familiar in its emphasis on instrumental spontaneity and interaction. Using computers, hot-wired consumer electronics, bouzouki, guitar, and a modified trombone, the players interweave sonic material that is historically specific (old short wave transmissions from Eastern Bloc countries), familiarly harmonious (16th Century Venetian canzoni or distinctly 'English Music'), and rigorously abstract (the sonic purity of feedback), and bring them into unexpectedly meaningful alliance.