REVIEWS ABOUT INNOVATIVE DESERT

Review and comment from Henrik Hjarnø from Jox Music

Melodic paint by Jox on new Rey album      
2008-04-18      

 If you fancy lush soundscapes and soaring dreamy melodies, then you are in for a treat!
Gifted ambient adventurer Rey has just released his second artist album entitled "Innovative Desert".
The album features a rare blast from the past in shape of a moody downbeat tune "Pleasure", co-written and produced with Jox.
Now available on digital download on iTunes or - if you prefer CD - from cdbaby.com, syngate.net and other respected online retailers.     

Review from Roberto Vales from the spanish radioprogram Ultima Fronteira.

Rey - Innovative Desert

After the succesfull album "Hidden Vibration" Rey changed his style and began to make house music. Now he is back with his new work "Innovative Desert" where we find a composer in a great and pure artistic mood where the style of  "Hidden Vibrations" is present, but with new ideas and visions.
"Innovative Desert" is a work where the composer goes on demonstrating his inspiration source are clasic names like Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder, FSOL , but with his experiencies in other fields like the house music to increment the rythm of his compositions, those are still containing a lot of melodic pasages and we still find ambient sequences, but this time we got more rythms.
As his cover on the cd is insinuating , in this work joins the mystical, the classic and the the most innovative, a fusion which has given life to a very grown project, full of electronic sounds with a rythm who sometimes is getting close to the house rythm, to create a very chilled ambience..
Innovate or die, Rey goes on innovating work behind work and this has become comfirmed in "Innovative Desert". A CD to remember the past, living in the present and dreaming with the future.

REVIEWS Rey - Hidden Vibrations (1999)

Michael Heuman from Haunted Ink - 3/7 2000

Spanish-Danish artist  Rey  has created a beautiful, textured work filled with sweeping strings, big-ass synth lines, lots of FX and sound samples, and funky, crispy CGD. The music is sometimes haunting, sometimes soothing, but always fascinating. Check it out, especially if you are a fan of Bola and other atmospheric IDM artists.

Review from KLEM - 19/5 2000

Rey from Denmark presents us on his debut CD a wonderful mix of experimental rhythms. He combines drums, beats, techno and samples (on two tracks delivered by Conrad Schnitzler) with experimental EM, classical EM, or ambient. So each track has his own kind of hidden vibration. (Lothar Lubitz).

Review from European Progresive Rock Reviews - 3/5 2000

The musician Rey comes from Denmark and what a corker of a debut album "Hidden Vibrations" is. It is a hybrid of ambient/techno and synth music and at times is atmospheric and mood creating and verges on Tangerine Dream's territory. The surprising thing is that, at times, it's actually better, the difference being in the accessibility of the music. Yes, Rey has taken, among others, Tangerine Dream as a template but has also added the melodic side of synth/ambient music to his own compositions and this is what makes this album so special. I should also add that I can hear hints of present day Mike Oldfield, especially Oldfield's ambient/techno stuff of late.
On the rich and deep sounding "Exploring Mountains" there is what sounds like a Mike Oldfield guitar effect. Then on "Violet Winds" you get wonderful keyboard/synth sounds eventually surfacing. I can imagine Oldfield composing something as special as these two tracks. Yes, you have the techno drum beat but thankfully it never becomes over powering. It compliments the music rather than domineering it and lets the music create the mood especially on the track "Black Ocean" where heavy use of percussion could easily have spoiled the effect. The music only becomes over indulgent on the meandering, atmospheric "Confused Direction" and "Behind The Walls" but then it returns to former glories on the following track "Silver".  This is the most satisfying album, in its category, that I have heard in a long while, it grows with every hearing. I can certainly recommend this outstanding and at times melodic CD. Yes, another major album of 2000.

Review from Sven Cipido from Electron - 7/4 2000

Hidden Vibrations : Rey

This CD is the first CD which haven't compilations of others, but is Rey's own music.  And I must say : it was impressing me.  It's a good ambient-techno CD, which is sometimes cold.  But with the percusion sound inbetween, feels it like it must be. Rey makes on an original and sometimes experimental way, sound out of nature and culture in a mix of traditional EM and modern techno.  No monotonous beats, but good rhythms, drums and percusion sounds. A number like 'Black Ocean' is very good.  It's a more traditional EM number.  On the other hand other tracks are a little bizar.  But this mix gives it own character to the CD.
Rey has no difficulties when switching from rhytmic work to abstract work (like magnetic fields of Jean Michel Jarre) and then to go to some more happy and light tracks (Like the track 'Silver').    The Silver track sounds like it's played by a 6 year old boy on his first keyboard.  It's the most strange number on the CD, but in fact en very good one.   It has it's own simple melodieline, but a lot of old sounds.
The Last but one track 'Confused Direction' is a very abstract composition with some extreme bizar sounds. This is a good CD, but maybe not for the traditional EM-people, but more for the people who aren't afraid of a little bizar sounds.

Points 7/10

Review from 'Andy Garibaldi (CD Services, Dundee)' - 20/1 2000

I've been deliberating about whether to class this as a synth or ambient album, but I think its whole feel, sound and style put it more in the synth camp, if only by virtue of the fact that there's not relation at all to the dance scene, yet the album has all the feel of three decades of synth music offerings. The tracks are between two and eight minutes long, generally uptempo and with plenty going on, but the musical forces at work here are strange and mysterious. Y ou'll hear synth melodies, sequencers, spacey bits, string synth backdrops, drum rhythms, in fact everything many of you like a bout a good, solid synth music album. Yet the extraordinary thing is how it all manages to sound fresh and vibrant without evoking any comparisons to other synth artists and groups of the past. It's familiar and cosy but in no way 'retro'. It's the sort of album you think you won't like on first play, but play it again and the pieces start to fit. As much early Mali Rain as anything, but with plenty of musical ideas along the way, this has a fine selection of tracks. Some remain fixed while others slowly build from quiet beginnings into neat little mini-epics with some sterling synth layers providing the heart of the music. It's mostly fairly solid and some of the rhythms are as much rooted in the '80's as the '90's, with the right amount of strength to keep from becoming one-dimensional. Overall, a fine album showing that there is a place where synth and ambient cross that hasn't been full explored before, and this is just the start. Nothing groundbreaking but immensely enjoyable.

Cue Record's review - november 1999 in magazine : Ergänzungen zu Newsbits ( 39+40+41 Zehnter Jahrgang)  

The CD of the month of november comes for the first time from Denmark. Not quite a new artist, but it is his first CD: Rey - Hidden Vibrations...This time with electronic music in a more traditional sense, but never the less following the spirit of the time, Rey from Denmark offers us an outstanding debut. His musik takes us to a mystical enviroment and different landscapes. TD, Brian Eno, Future Sound of London Biosphere have been inspiration for Rey, who has many similarities with the music of the years 1968-1979, as it already could be heard in Tangerine Dream Tribut CDs Vol I and II. (Translated from German ).