Reload - A Collection Of Short Stories

After so many long listens and late-night ruminations, this album still holds sounds to be uncovered and speaks of trips not yet taken. The full dynamic range is covered, from earthquakes and cityscapes to verdant dancefloor jams and humming drones, and the utmost musical care is audible at every turn. With every track so different and great, the whole thing adds up to an intelligent, gorgeous outer space rave-up, so strange and wonderful that it may as well have been dropped into our laps direct from a faraway planet. The booklet of stories is not that necessary... tracks like "Ehn" and "Le Soleil Et La Mer" put vivid, bursting pictures into the mind of the hopeful listener.

And to think that people heap praise on techno albums which hammer away at two or three ideas for sixty minutes... After getting our fill of those guys, we can go back and grab onto this compendium of outer-space delights, rewinding time and time again.

I am a little pissed off that I was so careless at the time to lose the booklet that was associated with this release, however the most important thing here is the music.

And my god, it is fantatstic! Unlike so many other electronic albums that have been produced, this is one of variation. It has beautiful ambient soundscapes, claustrophobic electronic workouts, and four to the floor moments. This album has everything.

Spacey and otherworldly, light up, sit back and let the music take you away.

A work of genius!!!

This album still blows my mind 12 years after I bought it, upon hearing the wonderful "Le Soleil Et La Mer" on Colin Dale's Kiss FM radio show in 1993.

Everything about it, from the concepts to the artwork and ultimately the music, is so well thought out, crafted and presented. It contains everything that music has the power to hold...from raging noise to the utterly sublime, from transparent simplicity to swirling complexity, from floating ambience to forceful structure, from monotonous droning to brilliant melodies - all these elements in abundance, sometimes in the same tracks!!

It's also one of the few releases that contain lots of samples from sci-fi films without making the music sound cheesy. The whispered voice from "2010" announcing that "something wonderful" is about to happen - as heavenly beauty merges into a ferocious onslaught across "The Enlightenment" and "Event Horizon" - is perfectly placed. Likewise for the sample from "Abyss" ("there's something down there....something not us....not human") before one of the most unlikely tracks ever to contain whale-song stomps out across side C in the appropriately titled "Mosh". "THX-1138", surely the most sampled film of all time in electronic music, also makes an appearance, as "1642 Try 621" rolls into one of the darkest tracks to have emanated from the Global Communication camp.

As the title suggests, it's truly a narrative piece...each track telling a different tale and taking you on a different journey. The inclusion of a booklet with illustrations and actual stories to accompany some of the tracks was an aesthetic masterstroke, but I've rarely looked at it as for me the music is so perfect that it goes all the way to communicating it's meaning through sound alone.

Possibly my favourite album of all time.

..and I felt a strong need to comment this album here. In some way it is very astonishing that it already came out in 1993, a time which was considered as the age of "Intelligent Techno" or "Intelligent" especially by british music press. This one sounds far advanced than, for instance, the excellent works by Black Dog coming out at the same time. The entire concept is brilliant. Every experimental decent groove is build around subtle, deep, "unconscious", ambient soundscapes in a sophisticated way. Mostly all tracks here are not really parted from each other and thus causes the trip into bottom of your mind. So it can happen the long ambientscapes remain alone for a while and you feel relaxed and balanced when all of a sudden is appearing something unexpected. And some tracks are even danceable. Meanwhile I love this gem so much if someone would raid my copy I'd feel like someone has teared my heart out of my body. In the moment I only know one masterpiece, viz John Beltran's "Ten Days Of Blue", which is comparable to this special kind of music...

One of the best albums in my collection. A real journey. A good buddy and I became quite familiar with this album, sharing it with Lucy on several occasions. We found that if one reads the collection of stories at a moderate pace, they sync with the music leading to a very impactful listen and read. More indepth, murky and orchestral than the jedi stuff (for the most part). A fine piece of food.

Samples from the film '2001' (among others) probably seem a bit passe nowadays, but make no mistake, this is a real classic release. I remember reading William Gibson's "Neuromancer" at the same time as I bought this and the two are forever linked in my head. Sci-fi soundscapes, quality melodies and then occassional moments of bonkers industrial-ness all add up to one truly proper "album".

A great recording of early '90s IDM, dark and brooding with a distinct sci-fi feel, alternating with beautiful, soaring Reload-trademark lushness. Unfortunately, the mastering is incredibly muddy, and much of the subtlety is lost in the murk.