The Ultimate Dreamers interview: Paradox, Playfulness and the Strange Innocence of ‘Kids Alone’
The Ultimate Dreamers (Photo by Nicholas Crombez)
With “Kids Alone”, The Ultimate Dreamers blur the line between carefree adolescence and uneasy introspection. What began as a light-hearted, ironic song has taken on unexpected darker interpretations once released into the wild. In this interview, the band reflects on paradox, emotional extremes, unreliable narratives and absurd humour – revealing how playfulness, nostalgia and unease can quietly coexist in their “Paradoxical Sleep” universe.
The new The Ultimate Dreamers EP was produced, mixed and mastered by Len Lemeire (Implant, 32Crash, Anne Clark) at Implant-Plant studios, maintaining the production line already established on “Echoing Reverie”, “Violent Ghost” and “Paradoxical Sleep”. Several lyrics again come from long-time collaborator Kelly O’Hara. Note that the official video for “Kids Alone (single version)”, which you can see below, combines the track with re-edited footage from the 1935 Betty Boop cartoon “Baby Be Good”.
The Ultimate Dreamers interview
SL. The new The Ultimate Dreamers single “Kids Alone” sounds playful on the surface, but uneasy underneath. Is this EP a celebration of youth or an autopsy of innocence?
FC. As we sometimes read, it is amusing to see how a song can be interpreted once it is released into the wild. ‘Kids Alone’, like others in our repertoire, is 100% light-hearted and ironic. Surprisingly, it has been perceived as dark by many. Originally, I just wanted to evoke the silly things, harmless or not, that a teenager like I was or my children might are now, do when their parents aren’t looking.
SL. You re-recorded the title track in a more reckless, NDW/electropunk form. What did the original version lack: danger, irony, or the courage to let go?
FC. It was partly these reactions that prompted me to consider a harder version. There is also the fact that, after a few months of maturing, certain tracks reveal other possibilities. Creating a new version of them allows me to put the spotlight back on the track and the album it comes from.
SL. The EP jumps abruptly from party chaos to introspection and despair. Is that contrast intentional – or simply the most honest way to reflect how adolescence actually feels?
FC. It wasn’t really intentional, and that’s the beauty of things: when what we think is random suddenly takes on a deeper meaning. It’s true that adolescence is a time of life when we can swing from one emotion to another in the most extreme way.
SL. “Spiritchaser” and “Deafness” sit at opposite emotional poles. Do you see The Ultimate Dreamers as chroniclers of inner states or as unreliable narrators shaping memory into myth?
FC. That’s nicely put. My goal is not to convey a message. The format of a song doesn’t lend itself to that anyway. But I like to tell little stories or report the words of a given character (for example, a conspiracy theorist or someone affected by a serious illness), which don’t necessarily reflect my own thoughts but rather things that have made an impression on me.
SL. The new The Ultimate Dreamers video borrows imagery from a 1935 Betty Boop cartoon. Why corrupt something so innocent instead of creating darkness from scratch?
FC. Are Betty Boop cartoons really innocent? (laugh) All we did was extract a few scenes from a single cartoon, edit them together and add music.
SL. With remixes spanning darkwave, mechanical coldness and folk melancholy, do these alternate versions clarify your universe or deliberately fracture it?
FC. We carefully select the artists we ask to revisit our tracks, but it’s difficult to predict the outcome of their work. We’re often surprised, and sometimes the result is a break, a rupture, or even an enrichment. This is the case with the three remixes on the “Kids Alone” EP, particularly the remix by Aux Animaux (of “Kids Alone”), which worked very well. The one by Mängelexemplar (of “Spiritchaser”) was included in several rankings of the best tracks of 2025, and the one by Kinex Kinex (of “Wegvliegen”) is truly astonishing.
SL. If “Kids Alone” is a window into the “Paradoxical Sleep” world, what would you rather listeners misunderstand: the joy, or the dread?
FC. It doesn’t really matter, because we like to cultivate paradox, surrealism and absurd humour.
About The Ultimate Dreamers
The Ultimate Dreamers are a Belgian post-punk and cold wave band originating from Lessines in Hainaut province and now based in Brussels. The group first came together as teenagers in the mid-1980s, writing and recording a series of home and rehearsal-room demos between roughly 1986 and 1990 and playing shows in the local scene without releasing a studio album at the time. Those early recordings resurfaced decades later and were compiled as “The Ultimate Dreamers – Live Happily While Waiting For Death“, issued on digital, CD and vinyl formats.
From 2022 onward, The Ultimate Dreamers shifted their centre of operations to Brussels and joined the Spleen+ roster, the post-punk / cold wave division of Alfa Matrix. They released the “Polarized EP” and the two-track single “Polarized / I Loved You?!”, which prepared the ground for their first new studio album “Echoing Reverie” in March 2023. In parallel, the band contributed a cover of The Cure’s “Lovesong” to the Alfa Matrix / Spleen+ compilation “A Strange Play (Vol. 2) – Tribute to The Cure” , with their version of The Cure’s “Lovesong”.
Following “Echoing Reverie”, the group issued the “Violent Ghost” EP with alternative versions and remixes by artists such as Front 242, Shad Shadows and Hørd. In late 2023 they appeared on the seven-disc post-punk anthology “Resurgence”, presented under the headline “‘Resurgence’, a massive 7CD post-punk boxset released in January 2025. The singles “Digging” and “Spiritchaser” mapped the route toward their second modern full-length “Paradoxical Sleep” (February 7, 2025), with the latter introduced by “Spiritchaser” (2-track Single).
This interview is part of an ongoing interview series that we do in collaboration with Spleen+ / Alfa Matrix for the massive 7CD post-punk / coldwave / minimal electro boxset “Resurgence”. You can order this fine set as a 7CD set or as a download via Bandcamp. This release will NOT be available on Spotify or any other service, except for Bandcamp.
In 2025, the band released the French-language single “Envoler” and its companion “Envoler-Wegvliegen EP”, before returning to the “Paradoxical Sleep” material with “Kids Alone EP” at the end of the year.
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