Bleep

What an unusual record M.RUX’s Vermonische Melodien is. The instrumentals here have been made entirely with synthesisers built by Vermona, a company that operated in the former East Germany and fell with the Berlin wall, and the vocals are largely produced by a combination of an IBM 704 - the world’s oldest piece speech-synthesis hardware - and a variety of vocoders. When combined at M.RUX’s behest this strange array of equipment produces a kind of kitschified kosmische sound that is curiously charming. ‘Bakelit’ sounds like Delia Derbyshire trying to make music for an episode of The Clangers where they take a trip to some place warm.