- Atomic Roses part 1
Of All The Girls …
What’s Next?
Playschool
Sex
Closet Kings
Spiritus
- Atomic Roses part 2
Hauptbahnhof
The Wrong Impedence
Passing Thought
Atomic Roses #1
Ideal Home
Atomic Roses #2
- Apparition part 1
God Speed
Pay To Be Alone
Spontaneous Human Combustion
The Blessing
I’m In The Drill
Powder Crowd
- Apparition part 2
Strychnene Chaser
Alive!
Believe!
The Plague
Premonition 3
- No Bell No Prize (Version Ridiculous)
Credits
- Edward Ka-Spel – voice, keyboards
- The Silverman – keyboards
- Rolls Anotherone- bass, keyboards
- Keith Thompson- ddrums, percussion
- Barry Gray- guitar
- Patrick Paganini- violin, keyboards
- Sally Graves- extra effects
- Pat Birmingham- sound engineer
- various others…
Notes
“Close Your Eyes…” is from the cassette compilation Rising from the Red Sand 3, 1983 Third Mind TMT04
“I Dream of Jeannie” is from the cassette compilation Turkish Delight, 1983 Ding Dong Disk DDC009 – a different version appears on The Maria Dimension bonus CD3 & Chemical Playschool Volumes 8 & 9
“No Bell No Prize (Version Ridiculous)” is from a the compilation I Love Liberty.
CD:
Recorded in 1981/82 on primitive equipment. Thank you to Bernard for the sound enhancement.
Each of the first four tracks contains one side of each of the original cassettes. However, 4a (“Powder Crowd”) is incorrectly indexed as the first song of “Apparition Part 2”, rather than the last song of “Apparition Part 1”.
Review
It’s almost embarrassing how much material the Legendary Pink Dots recorded in their early years. They released two more cassettes, back to back, in 1982. Both cassettes were relatively short showcases of songs that were not necessarily new—the quality of the recordings and the general sound on both tapes is about the same as that of Premonition or at times even Chemical Playschool 1+2—but none of the tracks had appeared on previous cassettes except for one, so the end result is over an hour of all-new material. Both tapes also demonstrated a bit of evolution in the way the tracks flowed together, and in fact when the contents of these tapes were inevitably (but belatedly!) transferred to CD in 2003, no effort was made to index the individual songs; the entire duration of each side of each tape was assigned to one track position on the CD. [Naturally, the first thing I did upon acquiring the disc is load the tracks into a sound editor and split them up into separate, individually digestible files, which was not particularly difficult in this case since the crossfades simply aren’t very substantial.] Obviously the Dots were proud of the flow in the way these tracks were mixed for cassette, and thus this aspect is preserved for the digital format as well.
Anyhow, the individual tapes were Atomic Roses and Apparition; the CD, which compiles these together, is called Traumstadt 1.
[Discography note: This title was first used by the Dots in 1988/89. Approaching their tenth anniversary and enjoying newfound popularity, the band released a retrospective series of five cassettes, each with the name Traumstadt (which translates to “City of Dreams”). The first, as explored here, contained the full contents of the two earlier cassettes, Atomic Roses and Apparition, one on each side. The artwork for the Traumstadt 1 cassette was essentially the same artwork that appears on the CD, reworked to fit the new medium. None of the other four haphazardly compiled Traumstadtreleases have been issued on CD, but much of their content has seen the light of day in various bits and pieces over the course of a decade. Please see the bottom of this page for more discussion of Traumstadt 2 through Traumstadt 5.]
Despite some minor annoyances, Traumstadt 1 is a fantastic release and well worth having. While other early Dots cassettes feel stuffed with rehearsals for tracks that would eventually find better homes in more developed versions, this one plays like an alternate history of the band, presenting many obscure-but-classic songs and experiments in a palatable format with other material of the exact same ilk, most of which would start and stop with these exact recordings. Nothing feels particularly out of place nor do any pieces detract from the overall sound or mood, which is livelier and slightly edgier than that of Under Triple Moons.
That being said, the mastering does leave a lot to be desired. “Sound enhancement” is credited to a Bernard, who did not do the overall excellent job that primary Dots engineer and technician Raymond Steeg did so successfully for Ancient Daze. The sound here is super clean and listenable but the spectrum is limited, demonstrating treble and midrange with almost no bottom end whatsoever. In fact, this is almost the exact opposite from Under Triple Moons, where some fidelity was deliberately traded for fuller bass and an attempt at a more organic sound. The end result is that these recordings sound harsher and more electronic than they probably were meant to be. (read more) – Postmodernaccident.blogspot
Release date and tracklist
