THE ULTIMATE DREAMERS rpm/7” single, and that is what we did by founding our own label,Komakino Records. Photo © Luc Luyten / Who Cares The Ultimate Dreamers are making new music at full speed. Last week,their newsingle‘Digging’was released,and it is the precursor to the album ‘Paradoxical Sleep’, which is due for release in January2025.That will be the group’s second album since the 2021 reunion, when a compilation was released of their work from their early years from 1986 to 1991. On Saturday 12 October 2024, they will play at a Dark Entries Night in Ghent’s Kinky Star, and that drove us to contact Ultimate Dreamer Frédéric Cotton again. Hi Frédéric. The Ultimate Dreamers seem to be very busy. Since the band’s reunion in 2021, you have released a single, an album, an EP and a second single announcing the second album, which will be released in January 2025. How do you manage to be so productive? In 2021, The Ultimate Dreamers woke up from a very long sleep.Initially,the idea was just to promote‘Live HappilyWhile Waiting For Death’, the compilation of old demos released by Wool-E Discs.Soon the desire to expand it came,and I realized that we were a new group: the three original members had a new role – except for me who kept the vocals, but without guitar – and a new experienced keyboard player had joined. The context was very different. This, I think, explains our productivity: there was a thirst and a desire that was specific to young groups, even if we are all over fifty years old. Let’s talk about your new work since the band’s reunion in 2021. So let’s start with the single ‘Polarized’, which was released in September 2022. What was your ambition at that time? After the archaeological excavations of our repertoire from the past, its rediscovery and restoration, 'Polarized' was the first completely new piece we have written. In that sense it is more modern in sound and energy. Our ambition at that time was to show who The Ultimate Dreamers were, in 2022: a group that had decided not to dwell in nostalgia, but to start a new adventure instead. I had a strong desire to release a 45 www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 24 - A few months later, in January 2023, ‘Polarized’ was released in digital EP format with several additional remixes.This is one of the first releases of the Spleen+ label, a newsection of the electro labelAlfaMatrix that focuses on cold wave and post-punk. Howdid you manage to do this? At the end of 2022,‘Echoing Reverie’ was ready. I approached a few labels, several of which showed interest. Finally, we signed with Wave Tension Records for a vinyl release. I was also in contact with Alfa Matrix, but we fell a bit outside their electro catalogue.After some long discussions,Séba Dolimont took the opportunity to realize an idea he had had for a long time: the creation of a post-punk/cold wave/minimal wave sublabel. He proposed that we release ‘Polarized’ as a digital EP as a foretaste of the release of ‘Echoing Reverie’ in CD format, the label’s first production. He also asked me to collaborate on the creation of the magnificent compilation ‘Resurgence’ that will be released in December this year. We are now committed for a long-term collaboration with Spleen+, a label that is dear to us. In March 2023, the album‘Echoing Reverie’ is released. The record contains six songs, supplemented by two additional remixes in digital format. We notice complex and varied compositions, which evolve considerably over the course of a song. In that sense, the album is very different from what you recorded in the 80s. How do you look at the difference between‘Echoing Reverie’and the older songs? In fact, the ‘Live Happily…’ compilation mainly contained our very first songs,which we were able to record at home with the available means during the first phase of the group, when we relied mainly on synthesizers. We wrote other songs afterwards, with guitars and drums, but we were not able to record them in decent conditions. Four of the six songs on ‘Echoing Reverie’–‘ADay in the Life’,‘Big Violent’,‘Midnight’and ‘Piano Ghost’ – were part of it. We reworked and re-recorded them in 2022, but they remain representative of the old Ultimate Dreamers. As I said before: ‘Polarized’ is completely new and belongs to the Ultimate Dreamers of today. The following EP‘Violent Ghost’ contained several remixes and very creative covers of three songs from ‘Echoing Reverie’. What was the band’s involvement in the composition of this EP? ‘Violent Ghost’ originally contained alternate mixes of ‘Big Violent’ and ‘Piano Ghost’ that I did with Len Lemeire in his studio. I wanted versions that were more muscular than on ‘Echoing Reverie’. These are also the versions that we play at concerts today. For ‘Midnight’ I wanted to use the classical
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