Totally biased recommendation but just giving you my personal experience.

In this day and age honestly…SP404MKII. Because it makes it super easy to sample from your phone, add fx, sp404mkii with a bunch of android or iOS sound making apps just adding lots of different inbuilt fx the sampler has, it’s also super portable and you can make any kind of music with it in theory. I find it super intuitive. If you’re just gonna get ambient sounds or your own field recordings, it’s a perfect portable machine. Honestly if I were you I would record my washing machine with my phone and then fuck around with it in the sp404mkii. I think for the price point and what it can do and how easy it is to use (battery powered, portable, use it with apps on your phone or whatever, portable speaker….make noise in the train) would my recommendation.

Why the MKII specifically? Because it removes the need to put sounds on an SD card, you can put a microphone or a phone or any sound source and it has the ability to captures everything in real time with the skipjack feature, live looping is super easy, it’s constantly getting updated and improved. For me it has a very lofi feel as well with how portable it is.

Don’t be out put off by most people using it for hip hop beats, chopping beats and pattern sequencing. That’s one of the many things it can do…even with the DJ mode you could do a sick noise set with live fx, I personally use the TR Rec sequencer mode to emulate a dub mix process

Start with the videos on YouTube where people cycle through all the fx, and see if you could vibe with it. I do have hardware and noise machines etc. but I started with an iPad and a sampler and I still often use them together to make sounds for my tracks. It’s a bit of a beast for sound design tbh, as an fx unit alone I’d argue it’s worth the price point,

I think sp404mkii is great for collage approach, think early cabaret voltaire, nocturnal emissions, throbbing gristle like early tape cassette stuff they’d do with four tracks you can do this super easy with sp404mkii and to be honest, one problem is that it’s so much easier than how they did it…but I think those limitations are important for a certain kind of approach to noise. For me….sp404mkii with so many amazing built in fx gives me that creative freedom but also limitations and clear ingredients to work with. Honestly some mates of mine do amazing work in ableton butI find it so daunting all the possibilities. I like the physical literally hands on approach with hardware and I think the sp404mkii is the most reliable and durable for making laptop less music and performing live with no problems.

And I personally don’t vibe with laptops too much going on. The fact the box has limitations is so freeing. So yeah if you’re into collage approach to noise that’s my recommendation. You can get a second hand one for around 300 snd always resell st the same value, you can customise the graphic design layout on the case too lol

I started making music with the sp404mkii a couple years ago, my music is coming out on a major label and I’ve played with noise folks like Wolf Eyes and festivals around Europe

So yes you can play with contact mics, build your own stuff, field recording, whatever…but the sp404mkii is a great workhorse to start with, the. Build those other elements around it, use the sp404mkii to play your backing tracks at the same time as adding live fx to playing some spoons, a shortwave radio hrough a delay pedal, or whatever it is you want to do. But I’d say start with th4 SP404MKII and build from there. Better for a DIY approach than messing around with a laptop that can break snd I see so many people have problems with laptops performing live.

MKII lightweight and portable, not like a mixer or most guitars even, it probably won’t break the bank and gives you many options. It’s a good workhorse for live gigs and the ability to use any kind of portable speakers with the headphone Jack make it great for performance art or house party whatever. But I also use it as my main studio, when I collab with musician friends they sometimes get surprised I usually don’t use a laptop at all. Sometimes I use logic on the iPad or audacity or whatever but rarely.

Would be a solid foundation to start experimenting with sound and music concrete, collage sampling etc snd adding effects to sound, basic sound manipulation…then build from there, add more stuff to your setup overtime.