“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.” – Bleep
Vermonische Melodien is a collection of compositions by DJ-producer M.RUX, made with old VERMONA machines from Eastern Germany. The nine Electronica tracks can’t conceal their influences from Exotica records of the 1960s as well as their fondness for vintage music technology. We hear voices singing lullabies (“Magische Time”), mumbling chopped up syllables (“Seelnatrax”) or reciting a Shakespeare quote (“Bakelit”) – are they real? Yes! But they are mostly generated by the world’s first speech synthesis hardware, the IBM 704 from 1954, and processed into off-key melodic beauty with vocoders.
“I’ve always been especially curious about musical visions from the 1970s”, says M.RUX about his inspiration for Vermonische Melodien. “Those nifty Vermona machines can today be seen as future machines from the 1970s, they seem almost mystical to me like relics from an epoch long ago… and I wanted to find out how music from that time could have sounded.” On the album M.RUX uses, above all, equipment by Vermona, a brand from Eastern Germany manufacturing electronic musical instruments until 1990. The company was founded as VEB Klingenthaler Harmonikawerke in the 1950s, who also produced home-organs under the Weltmeister tag before the name Vermona was finally established in 1972. The drum machine VERMONA ER-9 (1976) was not only the first instrument which M.RUX ever possessed (or does it possess him?), it also forms the rhythmical backbone of M.RUX’s studio on this record. The melodies on the other hand have mainly been played on a Vermona Formation-1, a suitcase synthesizer from 1980. Although these two machines are joined by countless other instruments and effect units from all over the planet, their particular soft sound is present in every single moment of this soothing album. “I also take a deep bow to „Lacky“ Reinhard Lakomy who passed away 6 years ago”, M.RUX adds. “His releases were the first electronic instrumental records on the Amiga label which has been a huge influence for my work in general and this record in particular.”
M.RUX has appeared as a solo producer with his EP “In the Hold” (2016) on his own YNFND imprint. Before that he was especially famous for his edits which gently transform songs by Nina Simone, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Zé and many more into slow, dancefloor-ready gems.
Pingipung is proud to present this first full-length album by M.RUX. He is not only a talented multi-instrumentalist and original producer but also a skillful remixer – as he has shown twice already to the Pingipung audience in the last two years with his touches on Umeko Ando’s Ainu folklore songs.
released March 6, 2020
© & ℗ 2020 Pingipung
