Ron Boots – Acoustic Shadows

Ron Boots – Acoustic Shadows
MP3 @ 256 Kbps | 1:11:00 min | 2006 | 150 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Ron Boots does it again. After his stunning Area Movement two years ago, here is another fine piece of art. Acoustic Shadows is a wonderful musical journey that shows the skill and the creative abilities of Ron Boots. Melodic half way between ambient and rhythmic moves, Boots succeeded in making us see and feel his music. Which is quite something in a musical world where words and lyrics are absent? He brings us, where he wants us to be. This is great music, with strong sequencers lead, good percussions work and wonderful synth moves.
A musical story that will please all EM fans especially those who like progressive EM.

Ron Boots – Area Movements

Ron Boots – Area Movements
MP3 @ 256 Kbps VBR | 1:04:46 min | 2003 | 124 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Every album by Ron Boots is eagerly awaited for. What will this Dutch master bring us next? Well, “Area Movement”, which was conceived during the last 15 years (with many long intervals), describes some special places in the world. This ranges from Ron’s own country The Netherlands (The “Wadden Sea”) to Canada and the Serengeti National Park.

The style on “Area Movement” is quite melodically, sometimes even symphonic. In this case, “Area Movement” sometimes bares some of the same fine atmospheres of his early albums. The first track “The Grand Banks” already shows it. Starting with a soft piano part, this piece really “rocks”. It features Harold van der Heijden on drums. Also, the sequences are excellent again. Another great track is “Rapids” in which the sequences somewhat remind of Ron’s masterpiece “Tainted Bare Skin”.

Ron loves many musical styles. The cover of the legendary song “Dust In The Wind” by the impressive progrock band Kansas shows his interests. In this song Ron sings and does that well. Maybe it’s an idea for a whole album?

Ron Boots doesn’t stop to surprise us with his music and his ideas. “Area Movement” is another example of his visionary.

Ron Boots – Current

Ron Boots – Current
MP3 @ 192 Kbps VBR | 1:11:06 min | 1997 | 98.4 MB | 10% Recovery Record

“Current,” by Ron Boots is a dense ambient soundscape of epic proportions. Ron synthesizes the entire album. On “Ambiguity,” a tribal rhythmic pulse drives the synth riffs and washes. The tribal rhythms are created on the drum machine. There are no ethnic instruments credited. That is a great juxtaposition – or joke – from Ron. He drives his electronica with a simple Native American rhythm. Touche, Ron. The rest of the album is peppered with natural and electronic ambience. This is a highlight of Ron’s long and illustrious career.

Ron Boots – Cutting Branches

Ron Boots – Cutting Branches
MP3 @ 320 Kbps | 55:43 min | 1995 | 131 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Ron Boots has been making great electronica for years. “Cutting Branches” continues his tradition of excellence. Created totally on electronic instruments, Ron is able to generate authentic-sounding drums, guitar and bass. He mixes them expertly to create exotic soundscapes and vivid imagery. The images are very pastoral and organic. Much in the vein of Robert Rich, Ron creates organic juxtapositions through scientific exploration.
This music is otherworldly, ethereal and serene.

Ron Boots – Detachment Of Worldly Affairs

Ron Boots – Detachment Of Worldly Affairs
MP3 @ 320 Kbps | 1:12:28 min | 1994 | 180 MB | 10% Recovery Record

During the early 90s, as the new age phenomenon waned in popularity, more than a few progressive music aficionados were questioning what artists would emerge from this period of commercial decline and continue developing great new instrumental, just as a smaller group had before the new age movement. Thankfully, several have emerged–particularly in Europe–to carry on and further expand the great work began in the 70s by new masters such as Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. One of the most remarkable of these musicians is Dutchman Ron Boots. By the time Boots reached Detachment of Worldly Affairs, his fourth major studio album, he was in full stride creatively.

A variety of both driving and spacey compositions with a strong sound tablet make this one of Boots finest albums to date. Detachment is proof that Boots style had developed to a point that clearly elevated him beyond many “electronic” artists content to re-invent the 70s or simply put out a number of mediocre productions. Boots’ compositions often develop subtly but purposefully with a tapestry of sequences, rhythms, melody, and great programming. Detachment also contains another hallmark of great albums­excellent variety of composition.
The album opens with a powerful mix of rhythm and sound, the first part of the title track, but soon moves to a slower tempo reflective piece, “Cool Down.” The album also contains one of Boots’ best ambient pieces “Far Boundaries” which is somewhat enigmatic even after years of listening.

Boots must have thought so as well because he followed up the composition with a sequel the next year on his subsequent studio album.

Ron Boots – Different Stories & Twisted Tales

Ron Boots – Different Stories & Twisted Tales
MP3 @ 320 Kbps | 1:15:07 min | 1993 | 185 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Different Stories and Twisted Tales is a documentary, of sorts, by Ron Boots. He has spun a yarn of about how tales become legends and how individual lives are, in and of themselves, tales and legends. Ron creates the story-telling mood by mixing Berlin school sequences with dense atmospheres. Track 3, The Call, features a smoking electric guitar by Klaus Hoffman Hoock. The guitar is a dynamic compliment to the atmosphere. Ron’s overall diversity allows for dark AND pastoral atmospheres. The darkness is heavy and overt. The pastorales are dense without relying on new age or symphonic textures. They rely on Ron’s innovative use of sequences to create lightness. That unique texture is awesome and essential!

Ron Boots – Dreamscape

Ron Boots – Dreamscape
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:17:37 min | 1990 | 116 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Still an overwhelming debut CD by this highly succesfull Dutch musician. Elected as “Best Album of the Year” by the German Schwingungen Club. It was also the start of his success in the Netherlands and abroad. His unique style of heartfelt (Berliner School based) electronic music stands out through excellent compositions, atmosphere and sound/production quality.

Ron Boots – Ghost Of A Mist

Ron Boots – Ghost Of A Mist
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:04:37 min | 1991 | 96.5 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Play this album if you’re feeling stressed and within a few minutes the mood of the music will take you away to dreamy, tranquil atmospheres. This, in my view highly underrated album, deserves a place in the top 10 of soothing, atmospheric, dreamy albums.
And yet there’s nothing new-agey to it. Not counting the last ‘power’ track with Klaus Hoffmann-Hoock, all tracks have quite some sequences and rhythms but the it all fits within the moods that Ron sets.
It’s ‘picture music’… Close your eyes and float away in the mist on the moors…

Ron Boots – Liquid Structures In Solid Form

Ron Boots – Liquid Structures In Solid Form
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:08:34 min | 2002 | 106 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Ron Boots is the most important electronic musician from The Netherlands. Since his early musical explorations in the eighties, “Big Ron” developed a distinguished style that has its roots in the classical electronic music from the seventies, and early eighties but can clearly be regarded as “Ron Boots-music”. “Liquid Structures In Solid Form” is another example of his many talents as a musician and a composer of high-quality electronic music.

It all starts with the title track, which perhaps is the best piece of music Ron, has ever recorded. It is a collaboration between Ron and one of his many musical friends, drummer Harold van der Heijden. Loaded with many layers of impressive sequences, brilliant sounds and solos, the interaction between the two leads the listener back to the days when Klaus Schulze and Harald Großkopf worked together. Of course, there is more on the album: from the atmospheric strings in”KGM”, the gentle melodies in “Forgotten Memories” to the laid-back dancetrack “Soft Skin” in which he even sings!

“Liquid Structures In Solid Form” is another giant step forward in Ron’s career that becomes more and more impressive every time a new album is released. Where will it all end?

Ron Boots – Screaming Whispers

Ron Boots – Screaming Whispers
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:11:05 min | 1996 | 108 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Ron Boots, over the last decade as established himself as one of the leading European synthesists, and this is without a doubt one of his finest albums to date. With this new release Boots’ revives the stylish opulence, nostalgic grandeur, and poetic refinement of sequencer based electronic music of the seventies and early eighties. Rhythm activated, and spatially charged, its a seductively original work of art. Richly textured with imaginative sounds and samples and dynamics from crunchingly intense to ethereal images of early Tangerine Dream, Boots tears down the style barriers with this eclectic masterpiece.The title cut as well as the other six compositions fuse elements of rock, techno, electronic, experimental, and ethno-ambient in an engaging blend.

Everything about this album is fascinating, and it would be pointless to fully review all seven tracks in depth. If you’re into experiencing ground breaking new synth music, look no further. Highly recommended.

Ron Boots – Mea Culpa

Ron Boots – Mea Culpa
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:15:19 min | 2008 | 109 MB | 10% Recovery Record

What a beautiful surprise this last Ron Boots album is. Mea Culpa is a finely accomplished opus. An album rich in sonority and atmosphere which transports us, sometimes in a romantic universe, sometimes in an astonishing musical paradox with random movements sequences, hypersensitive solos, seizing synthesized laments and variegated sound effects which paddle in an environment well beyond the usual cosmic EM.

Ron Boots – See Beyond Times And Look Beyond Words

Ron Boots – See Beyond Times And Look Beyond Words
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:10:30 min | 2008 | 107 MB | 10% Recovery Record

Ron Boots has a lot of albums to his credit dating back around 20 years, so he’s a well known figure in the EM genre. His latest offering See Beyond Times Look Beyond Words is inspired by his love for books of all kinds. This is really a collaborative album, with guest musicians such as Paul Ellis, Gert Emmens, and Frank Van Bogaert to name the most familiar.

A great start to the album is made in “Hour of the Wolf”. A repeating pattern creates a feeling of suspense while angelic chorales, glittering and gaseous synths, and pads swirl and wash around. Then it’s on with a melodic sequence line and lots of symphonic melodies and ray gun effects shooting across the soundscape. Most of the album has the same vitality so that it’s a bit like listening to symphonic Vangelis on speed. Adding an extra dimension and a raw edge is Henri Peeter’s guitar on “A Walk in the Rain” which plays blisteringly over rhythms and drum programming that struggle to keep up. If anything gets you reaching to ramp the volume up this track will be it.
Providing a short interlude from all the excitement is “Harbours”. Soothing waves lap against a shore alongside pensive drones, then a looped alarm kind of sound and disguised animalistic effects break in.

Only having heard a couple of Ron’s other albums I can’t say how this fits in with his existing work. I can say that See Beyond Times Look Beyond Words is an exciting work that is one of the best of its kind to come out of the Groove label recently. It’s a great mix of fast paced EM with a symphonic subtext and even verges on dance and jazz in places.

Ron Boots – Tainted Bare Skin

Ron Boots – Tainted Bare Skin
MP3 @ 192 Kbps | 1:11:05 min | 1998 | 107 MB | 10% Recovery Record

With “Tainted Bare Skin,” Ron Boots has really outdone himself this time. The sequences are just a little crisper, the melodies a little better, the sounds and effects just a little cooler. If he raises the bar much higher, no one, including himself, will be able to reach it.

Beginning with “Gravity Pull,” swirling pools of sound are quickly enveloped in the first 30 seconds by a great sequencer rhythm, and a deep bass sound like a really fat bass string being plucked. The effect is definitely akin to the pull of gravity. Layer upon layer of electronics and percussion build, spilling over the top about halfway through its 11-minute run, giving way to a great, sharp lead synth line that carries the main melody into the mix. The tune then transposes to a higher key just at the right time to build the intensity a bit further before starting a slow descent back to earth.
Great cds nearly always have great opening numbers, and “Tainted Bare Skin” is no exception.
What I like best about Boots’ style of sequencer-based electronic music is that he isn’t afraid to pull back the reins a bit, mixing up energetic tracks like “Gravity Pull” with mellower ones like the title track, or “Déjà Vu,” both very relaxed counterpoints to a lot of high sequencer energy. Even more of a departure, “Achouchemojha” sounds like Ron Boots collaborated with Steve Roach. His trademark sweeping synth sounds are infused with very Roach-like tribal beats, and the occasional calling out of the mysterious sounding title.
The disc is rounded out with other excellent tracks, like the high-energy “Freezin’ Heat,” and the majestic “Dewdrop Plungle,” which reminds me of some of Boots’ best work on “Ghost of a Mist,” a release from almost ten years ago.

This is my favorite CD so far for 1999, having not heard it when it came out in 1998.
If you like a good mix of high energy and laid back electronic synthesizer music, you can’t go wrong with “Tainted Bare Skin.”