eric feremans: the antwerp killer

One of the rarest vinyl horror soundtracks of all time, 1983's The Antwerp Killer consists of remarkable homemade electronic experiments created by a wunderkind synth designer for a smart-talking teenage movie maverick. Combining self-propelled punk attitude and uninhibited confidence, the hyper-proactive work of these DIY prodigies pinpoints an important era when youthful ambition and creative technology met. By the age of 16 Eric Feremans had started building modulators and eventually his first proto synthesizer; he later played a concert with Belgian electronica pioneer Karel Goeyvaerts. Feremans founded a school for building and playing synthesizers, the EEF, where volunteers ended up producing about 20 or 30 build-your-own packages. After appearing as a guest on a national television show, the demand for his courses exploded, and Feremans began lecturing internationally, even attracting the king of the Amsterdam mafia, who was driven down from Amsterdam with two body guards in his Rolls-Royce every week. One day Feremans got a visit from a Luc Veldeman, a 16-year-old with a manner of speech way beyond his age and larger-than-life projects. Veldeman was making Antwerp's first crime movie, The Antwerp Killer. He had seen Feremans play live and he wanted some of his music to be used as the score, and to press as an album to promote the film. Feremans gave him one of the rare recordings he had made with the synthesizer, a session he had just recorded upon installing his new studio; a session, according to Feremans, that was the result of the pure joy he experienced at having such a wonderful machine in his studio and the bottle of vodka he downed during the session. Veldeman cut up that session and it turned it into the soundtrack of The Antwerp Killer. The press and the audience shared a general reaction to the film: bad acting, bad editing, bad script -- cool soundtrack, though. Veldeman, who had rented the film equipment under a false identity and dumped it in a canal after shooting, was nowhere to be found, and his investors lost their money. A magnum opus by a true criminal and the synthesizer teacher of the Amsterdam mafia king, The Antwerp Killer remains a prime document of the broody Belgian '80s and a heck of a soundtrack. This first-ever reissue was beautifully remastered with the full cooperation of Eric Feremans himself. Includes liner notes by Belgian archivist Gerd de Wilde.