Cassette Review: Ratkiller "Comfortably Declined" (Baba Vanga)

[€7 // Edition of 77 // https://babavanga.bandcamp.com/album/ratkiller-comfortably-declined]

Whenever I hear something like Ratkiller's "Comfortably Declined" I am immediately taken back to when I had cassettes in the 1980's and 1990's because they were the most recent technology available.    This music has that quality that I can't quite put my finger on but wouldn't be surprised to find this cassette mixed in with other cassettes from my youth, a number of which are still in my parents' attic for lack of my being able to find them.

Through beeping, swirling tones we build into swish beats and eventually these songs becoming fully formed dance electronica.    For some reason I can hear hints of Men At Work singing "We come from a land down under", but it might just be me.    Similarly I can hear bits of Men Without Hats who of course do the safety dance.

With beautiful ambient tones, dropped at precisely the correct time and other effects mixed in as well (on Side B I'm pretty sure I hear some machine gun fire along with an audio clip telling us either to "go" or perhaps "Yo Joe!" if it's from G.I. Joe somehow) my best conclusion for this cassette is that it is from the soundtrack from something ranging anywhere from "Run Lola Run" to "Alias" and that includes "Aiias" as both a television series and a video game on Playstation 2.

In a stern effort to try and not diminish this most excellent cassette in anyway, as it goes with soundtracks I tend to find that it is rather difficult to have both a movie on DVD/VHS/Blu-Ray(?) and enjoy the soundtrack as well.   What I'm saying is that with most movies I like I wouldn't buy the soundtracks and most soundtracks I like I don't own the movie on DVD or anything.

There are some rare exceptions to this rule obviously but even off the top of my head I can't think of a movie where I own the soundtrack and movie itself.  ("Trainspotting" is a bit of a blemish on that mark because I have the soundtrack and as much as I enjoy the movie have never actually gotten around to owning a copy of it)    It is in this way that I feel like a lot of the better soundtracks, at least in my time, have been for movies that have been... shall we say forgotten?   (I don't even think I've ever seen the movie "Lost Highway")

For me, Ratkiller has created that one essential soundtrack from some movie dating back to the late 1980's or early 1990's and though you may have only ever seen that particular movie once the soundtrack has managed to stay with you since.