Eric Feremans - The Antwerp Killer (1983, Reissue 2015)

This is a synth soundtrack to an 80s B-movie that you’ve never seen and probably never will. Does that story sound a bit familiar? It’s the 2010s (or teens, or teensies, or ten-sions - what the hell were people thinking??), this kind of thing could not be more vogue. While some will undoubtedly be any old Vangelis knockoff, there are certain ones whose lo-fi-ness or esoteric charm place them as something unique.

Aside from the fact that I’m probably buying into a gigantic marketing ploy right now, it’s worth noting that this guy designed & built his own modular, founded a synth school, recorded some of this after a bottle of vodka, and apparently got ill as a kid from his father playing him too much Stockhausen. What’s wrong, doc? Oh gahd, I think he has a pretty bad case of the Stockhausens. SCALPEL! I’m cutting out the dissonance gland. Perhaps another symptom of the 2010s is ridiculous press bravado to create a surrounding mystery, but luckily the music here actually has a lot of character. The melodies that are borderline cheese are here, as are genuinely deep/interesting sequences, so this thing isn’t totally consumed by ridicule.

And the tone. The glorious synthesised tone, muted by primitive recording, harks back to a decade earlier when the VCS3 was doing the rounds, not the hyper-hi-fi glossy coke tone that had plunged its flag deeply into almost all synthesised music by 1983. The synth is taking melody duties all the way through, though it occasionally takes time out to make miscellaneous textural sounds, the twinkly tones of ‘Theme 2’ on side B hit the spot. This is some fine, oak aged synthesis.