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Buyer Rating: 100.0% positive (300 ratings)

retro-sales's groups (1)

• OLD SKOOL LOVERS '80 - '93

Wicked Messenger - The River Disappeared Sidewards - 02-Nov-07 08:13 AM
Wow! What we have here really is a piece of intense music. The sound is absolutely massive, from start to end, this album has no weak moment whatsoever. Expect the finest ritual (demonic to some) ambient youve heard in years, created by using the human voice (still the best instrument out there), guitar (feedback, drones & scapes) and tortured electronica. Wicked Messenger finally gives an added value again to the "dark" ambient genre as many releases from the last few years were lacking originality and dedication, ofently cloning/copying eachother. This album is an absolute topper - Id even dare to say "a standard" - in my collection. The most creepily release on Belgian Plague Recordings sofar. Black and sticky as tar but very contemplative, exactly how I like it. Well done!

E-Scapes - Volume One - 18-Feb-07 09:52 AM
Highly underrated & pretty unknown album by Ad De Feijter and Eric Smidt AKA Sequencial. A piece of highend pre-1995 ambient techno trance in typical lowlands (Belgium/Netherlands) tradition. If u dig D.I.D. or Trans-4M u should buy this one as its still affordable at this time. A very mature album, not one single average track and so uncommercial compared to the rest of the Back Bone Records catalogue. Tip!

Daterape - Original Soundtrack From 'Lower Lifeforms' - 16-Feb-07 08:44 PM
"First Take", the ambient track on side A, is a hell of a beauty. What u get is a doomed & depressing tune built around some dissonant guitar-like sound. The slow percussion which pops in after a few minutes gives the track an extra wistful dimension comparable to tracks on Leo Anibaldis Void album. I used to play it ofenly in chillout sessions, fits in perfectly, both on 33rpm as well as 45 rpm. Still wondering whos behind the Daterape monicker though.

Speedy J - Ginger - 22-Dec-06 02:20 AM
Pretty logic why this album was released on three seminal labels, including Warp Records and Hawtins +8. Ginger is one of the most complete releases from its age. Like many releases from the Artificial Intelligence series on Warp (eg. Bytes, Electro-Soma, Dimension Intrusion, ao) it is a mixture of various styles, bringing ambient, (deep) Detroit techno, house and (pre-)IDM resulting in a timeless masterpiece. Note that none of the tracks on this CD sound like Paaps 1991 "Pull Over" track (although a historical techno bomb rather simplistic compared to the compositions above). Ginger is 100% workmanship suitable for home-listening as well as night-clubbing.

Seekness - Devious Destiny - 17-Dec-06 08:03 AM
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 didnt 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 Beltrams 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 didnt exist. Honestly, this BXL-gang, all of them, delivered some excellent work on this short-lived (cult) Belgian label.

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