I’m a sucker for gear documentaries. Doesn’t matter really how good they are. From the old Rock School series with Herbie Hancock to the CBC’s radio series The Wire, I’m just a sucker for them.

So with that in mind, here’s an 8-part series from the U.K. called “The Shape of Things that Hum.” I know nothing about it beyond that, except some fine fellow called Elektroid from KVR posted all of them to Google Video.

The series is good fun, even though, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself often wanting to punch several of the tossers they interview in the face, hard, particularly the two most irritatingly useless “music journalists” surely to ever walk the face of this planet (shouldn’t one actually have a fairly broad understanding of the history and practice of music before one calls oneself a music journalist? Based on these two living braindeads, clearly not).

No idea what the proper order is, but here are the links to each episode. As with all things copyright and Internet, watch them now before the lawyer dogs have at it and spoil everyone’s fun:

AKAI Sampler
Fairlight CMI
Roland TB-303
Roland TR-808
The Vocoder
Minimoog
Simmons Drums
Yamaha DX7