In the new issue of Dazed & Confused, Hot Chip told us about their favourite synths of all time. Now, on Dazed Digital, we're publishing their tributes unedited. Check back over the next week for two more.

In the early days of Hot Chip, we were a pretty slim-line outfit. We carried our keyboards around in backpacks with towels wrapped around them, we put our bits of percussion in a plastic "stack-and-store"-style box, and we could fit the five of us, plus our tour manager, plus all of our gear, in a small family saloon. That's just how we rolled, and as such we developed an affection for small, portable keyboards which, when plugged into the vastly powerful PAs to which we suddenly had access, could produce a powerful sound - punching, as it were, above their weight.

King among these was the tiny, tiny Casio VL-Tone, a keyboard designed as an executive toy for the Japanese businessman of the early eighties. It was a calculator that could also play rhythms, such as Samba, Rhumba, Rock-1, and, of course, Rock-2. It could also very vaguely recreate the sounds of the Flute and Violin, produce a peculiar, signature Casio sound called "Fantasy" and, famously, had a genuine "synth" function called "ADSR" which allowed the happy user to enter his or her own values for attack, decay, sustain and release.

However, it was not universally admired. As an example of the hatred that Casio keyboards, and particularly the VL-Tone, engendered, I offer up short film made by the famous rock guitarist, bow hunter and homophobe Ted Nugent.