Since 1982, the ZBS Foundation (ZBS= “Zero Bullshit”) has been producing a sci-fi/detective hybrid radio drama called Ruby, the ongoing adventures of Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe. The show is a fun listen, and since its history is documented elsewhere, we shan’t dwell on it here, as the series itself doesn’t concern us so much as does a pair of its supporting characters: The Android Sisters.

Exactly like it says on the box, the Android Sisters are robotic “siblings”—conceit and name both lifted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—whose role in the show is to deliver pointedly satiric songs, rendered in a unison speak-sing intonation by actresses Ruth Maleczech (sometimes credited as “Breuer”—married name?) and Valaria Wasilewski. Though it’s a pretty one-dimensional schtick, their acutely ‘80s synth songs were sufficiently listenable to merit an album in 1984. Released on the typically more rootsy Vanguard label (it was the home of Joan Baez and Buddy Guy, among others), Songs of Electronic Despair contained eleven goofy examples of what people in the ‘80s thought the future sounded like, and many of the songs directly address the themes of mechanization and alienation with which a lot of the synth musicians of the era seemed obsessed. Really, much of this stuff is in the same zone as the work Laurie Anderson was up to back then—and Anderson was once an artist in residence at the ZBS Foundation.
 
More after the jump…