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Like a lot of bright, shiny things, ABC and their defining debut album, The Lexicon Of Love, were created out of something a good deal less glamorous. The grim-up-north narrative that is wheeled out as a backdrop to so much provincial punk and post-punk can be overstated, but there’s no doubt that when Stephen Singleton and Mark White’s avant-garde electronic outfit Vice Versa morphed into ABC with help from former fanzine writer turned frontman Martin Fry, they wanted to offer an escapist vision of pop for trying, recessionary times. They also rejected old school approaches to music-making.

The Gift To Be Simple’, an old Shaker tune quoted and developed throughout Appalachian Spring, could be the motto for a major part of Copland’s work. Copland could write hard-edged pieces with the best of them, and did so especially at the beginning and end of his career with works such as the Vitebsk piano trio of 1928 and the magnificent orchestral Inscape (1967). By contrast, his famous scores of the 1930s and ’40s develop an aesthetic of simplicity and accessibility exemplified by Appalachian Spring, which he composed for the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham.

Search online and you’ll discover a groundswell of cheap DACs and streamers playing to every (hardware) whim, making it easy to overlook Eversolo’s efforts. But the company, which is the dedicated audio department of Shenzhen-based Zidoo, known for its EISA Award-winning Neo S media player, follows a different, more quality-focused strategy, as the affordable Z8 DAC and DMP-A6 have so far proved.

Just below the mid-price point of European Audio Team’s (EAT) nine-model range, the C-Dur belt-drive deck looks likely to identify a new price/ performance benchmark. We have been flooded with decks at the £10,000-£12,000 mark to designate entry to the scary high-end, and companies such as MoFi, Thorens and Pro-Ject have numerous models from £500-£3000, but something was needed in between from, say, £3000 and £5000. At £3500 with arm, EAT’s C-Dur – German for C major – fits the bill.