Building a hardware player himself wasn’t feasible in 2010, but Vek built a Sleevenote app which does a similar job. Users with iOS devices can use the app to see their own music library, or through Apple Music, as a “wall” of albums, which you can then paw through and select. Swipe to the side, and you’ll see the back cover, where you can play a song from the track listing, just as with this incoming hardware version.

The idea stayed there, until companies like Native Instruments and Teenage Engineering started making interesting musical hardware products. Vek went back to