At the time of the release of this EP, I was working for the CEM studio in Amsterdam. This place, a somewhat vague descendant of the famous Philips NatLab from the 1950’s with a somewhat shady history, had resided in several Dutch cities but set up shop here in 1995 to assist in building a Sonic Playground for children in a new concert building here in the city.
Pleasant side benefit: these people had modulars. And just not any: there was a full size 3 cabinet Arp 2500, a 2600, a big Serge modular, and 3 EMS synths: a VCS3, a Synthi A and an AKS. The only problem was, that the original “serious composers” the studio aimed to assist and work for for the last 30 years, would rather edit and rework field recordings in a computer running Protools in those days, a movement called Soundscapes.

While Soundscapes can be very interesting, I personally couldn’t bear to see the modulars standing sad and neglected in a corner while everybody sat there excitedly clicking their mouse. So me and fellow enthusiast Jouke Schouwstra from the studio drew up a plan: we would start a record label, invite the young and gifted dance music producers of the day who would appreciate the modulars for what they were, into the studio, and release the outcome on vinyl.

In Clone we found a willing and cooperative distributor, and for the CEM, an organization that solely ran on subsidies and grants, the concept of actually earning some money from a product was a new concept.
We had 10 releases on the label, called Vynalogica, in total, some sold very well and others not al all but it was always the concept that mattered.
Of course I wanted to do a release myself: I literally had the keys to the place and it was an actual 5 minute walk from my house. So after a short time and some late night and weekend sessions, I was very familiar with the modulars.

For the EP I dragged in my own 808 and Drumtraks drum machines, because something worldly as “beats” was not in the studio’s arsenal. The result are 2 melodic electro/Italo-wave tracks in which I won the battle to turn these ancient modular synths into something melodic, and 2 more experimental tracks where that battle was hopelessly lost and the machines quite literally took over. These machines put up a fight!

To this day I have a fascination for modulars, but at the same time I learned there that there was a reason pre-patched synths were invented: they are a lot easier to program!

in the end this EP was the last one on the label: the government pulled the plug on the annual subsidy grant the studio got, and the whole thing moved to Rotterdam where it resided for a few years at WORM, and now most of the synths are in the city of Den Bosch, being restored.
I would have loved to add some more modular jams I did in those days, but those tapes must be in another box in my storage, because I haven’t found them yet!