The Ultimate Dreamers – Live Happily While Waiting For Death (Album –Wool-E Discs)
Genre/Influences: Cold-Wave, Post-Punk.
Format: Digital, CD, Vinyl.
Background/Info: Belgian formation The Ultimate Dreamers were active between 1986 and 1990. After having released their work on cassettes they finally disappeared from the music radar to resurrect during the pandemic. The band is back alive with a new line-up. Old songs have been reworked and got a new mastering. This album features eleven tracks although the CD format has ten bonus tracks.
Content: I never heard from this Belgian formation before. That’s maybe because they’re from the Southern part of the country, which was not as into underground music than the Northern part. The songs are getting us back to the true spirit of the 80s; dark music composed with synths, guitar, bass and drums. The vocals have a sterile quality and are hard to understand,; this way adding a ghost-like touch to the work.
+ + + : I’m not going to compare this band with another one, but I would be not surprised to see Trisomie 21 fans enjoying this work. The songs are into pure Cold-Wave, but there’s something more accessible like melody lines on top. I also noticed some organ sounds, but globally speaking I prefer the few songs with more explicit guitar playing like “A Long Time Ago”. The production of the vocals has something mysterious; not easily understandable and therefore somewhat foggy-like.
– – – : I think there were much better bands in the 80s and that’s probably why The Ultimate Dreamers never reached a higher status, but I have to admit their typical 80s sound has something magic today!
Conclusion: This is one more forgotten 80s band, which has been recovered from dust for the greatest joy of Post-Punk lovers.
Best songs: “A Long Time Ago”, “Laughing Furniture”, “Female Zone”.
Rate: 7.
Artist: www.the-ultimate-dreamers.com / www.facebook.com/theultimatedreamers
Label: www.wool-e-discs.be / www.facebook.com/woolediscs
About The Ultimate Dreamers
The Ultimate Dreamers are a Belgian post-punk and cold wave band that started in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut. The group came together as teenagers in the mid-1980s, wrote and recorded a series of home and rehearsal-room demos between 1986 and 1990, and played local shows without issuing a studio album at the time.
Those recordings were collected as “Live Happily While Waiting For Death” and released on 26 September 2021 through Wool-E Discs. The Bandcamp page credits the material as written, composed and recorded in Lessines between 1986 and 1990, and restored, mastered and cut by Frederic Alstadt at Mont Analogue in 2021. The digital edition holds eleven tracks: “I Love You?!”, “Japanese Death”, “Never Die”, “Female Zone”, “Education”, “Funeral Walz”, “I Hate You?!”, “A Long Time Ago”, “Laughing Furniture”, “No Matter” and “S’envoler”.
From 2022 the band moved its base to Brussels and joined Spleen+, the post-punk and cold wave division of Alfa Matrix. The “Polarized EP” and the two-track single “Polarized / I Loved You?!” preceded the studio album Echoing Reverie in March 2023. The “Violent Ghost” EP followed with alternative versions and remixes by Front 242, Shad Shadows and Hord, and the band contributed a cover of The Cure’s “Lovesong” to the Alfa Matrix and Spleen+ compilation “A Strange Play (Vol. 2) – Tribute to The Cure”.
The singles “Digging” and “Spiritchaser” led to the second modern full-length Paradoxical Sleep, released on 7 February 2025, followed by the two-track single “Envoler” in September 2025. The band looked back on the demo years and on the album reviewed here in a 2026 interview with Side-Line.
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