For “Unconditional Contours”, Legowelt was granted rare hands-on access to the 5000 synths, organs, drum machines and effects units of the Swiss Museum for Electronic Music Instruments (SMEM)- but before you get excited, I’m afraid such access is only available to their artists-in-residence. The result that came out is a series of ten fairly short experimental tracks that showcase different synths, often citing them by name in the track titles, but which also for the most part hangs together as an album in its own right.

There’s an inevitable Tangerine Dream-iness about tracks like “Unconditional Contours Memory Moog” and “Swiss Fairytales”, although with the longest track only just over four minutes, there’s a certain staticness- each piece feels like a sonic vignette of a particular arrangement of knobs and dials, and none of them are allowed to truly evolve and progress at any length. The track “Evolution EVS-1 ProMars and Prophet 5” is an absolutely lovely melody, but it’s barely longer than its own title.

It’s certainly influenced by dance music as well as dream music though. Drum machines are brought into play in tracks like “Chateaux Dans Le Ciel Farfisfa Synthorchestra”, which goes quite Underworld-esque towards the end, and where the lo-fi and weedy aspects of old synth sounds seems to be enjoyed rather than avoided. The unexpected spoken word element in “Prophet Vector Synth Dazzling in the Sun”, with its talk of crystal cascades, vectors and forgotten paths, feels like a throwback to early ‘90s trance, but played out with early ‘80s synths, while the glammier beat of “SMEM23 Digital Clap Trap Promars Prophet” brings to mind T.Raumschmiere.

It’s mostly rather on the serious side, but playfulness does pop out very slightly in elements such as the rubbery bass tones of “Roxannes Magic Watch”.

It sits somewhere between a ‘proper’ analogue electronica album and a series of equipment demo tracks, but manages to provide enough of the former to be coherent. A bit more experimentation and ambition might have pushed the envelopes a little further, but it’s certainly got merit as a listening album for fans of the old synth sounds. Plenty of analogue synth enthusiasts will be feeling jealous over this one.