Seekness - Devious Destiny

Ha! As a great fan of this particular album, I am pleased to review it 11 years after the first time I heard it... Back in ’94-‘96 I had a sponsor-deal with Re-Load (Ambient) and the owner Laurent wanted to know my opinion about “DEVIOUS DESTINY”. Oggers who ever met Laurent can confirm that this man didn't have a clue about (ambient) music. He had no idea what this music was all about, neither if it would sell or not , which was the main question of course (understandable if one wants to run a label). As I sat in the office where he played this album, the music/atmosphere smashed my head from the very first seconds. Dark scapes, slow rhytms, skizoid vocals, combined with mutated TB303 basslines (not in the typical 4x4 acid context like 99,99% of all the other productions from that era). Really, this sounded like some hellish inferno (without being too experimental) and it was clear that the creator of this album had been listening to ( & inspired by) ’80 industrial and EBM music. Pieces of this album also reminded me instantly to Beltram's AONOX (which came out one 1 year earlier). After track 4 I knew this seekness album would most probably never become antiquated and imo this is actually the case as I’m listening to it at this very moment and it still sounds like it was released yesterday!

Ps. A great thing to mention too about the re-load ambient concept was that it was created and managed by the guy behind the album above (Seal Phuric). All artists signed by the label (Acid Kirk, John Sellekaers, Olivier Moreau) used to be friends from him and thanks to Yves they all got the chance to release “difficult” albums that would probably never have seen the light if re-load ambient didn't exist. Honestly, this BXL-gang, all of them, delivered some excellent work on this short-lived (cult) Belgian label.