“I believe wholly in destiny”

The immortal words of the less immortal Edward Ka-Spel, leader and one of the few survivors of the Legendary Pink Dots; the incredibly difficult to describe but easier to understand now trio from Holland. Though English in thoughts, the Pink Dots have a tendency to speak in tongues, which many people have been either unable to able to comprehend.

Ka-Spel delivers the mass: “The whole idea behind the Pink Dots is the idea of the terminal kaleidoscope. It’s rather like a drowning man seeing his life flash before his eyes. If you look back a hundred years and a hundred years before that, you become aware that things are accelerating at an incredible degree. The whole speed of life is gathering momentum all the time. If you look at that as a process you must reach the conclusion that you’ll eventually reach saturation and overload, thus cataclysm as well. This is the idea of the Terminal Kaleidoscope. We just take the premise that ‘Be glad that you live now. You’re witnessing the most significant time in the history of the planet. Enjoy it. Sing while you may.'”

Not quite a eulogy but close enough. Through the past year, since the release of Any Day Now, their last project as a six piece band in 1988 [Alan’s note: huh? ADN is from 1987!], the LPDs have seen quite a number of near-cataclysms: the sudden departure of half the band, being kicked out of their Amsterdam squat after the city reclaimed the land and then having to live out of a caravan for six months in the country while recording their new album (entitled The Golden Age, due out on PIAS this month) in a farmhouse with poor heating. Yet, underneath it all, Ka-Spel is refreshed, “The whole spirit is positive and driving again.”

He refers to the new abridged lineup for the LPDs, now consisting of himself, other founder Phil Harmonix, and a new saxophonist. Though most of the original members left before the recording of the new album, only violinist and songwriter Patrick Q. remained to record, eventually writing one song, “The Month After.” On vinyl and stage, the LPDs sound tighter. More confined, but in a positive sense. All thoughts are completely agreed upon and there seems to be less conflict in the band. Ka-Spel admits, now living in Nijmegen, Holland, “We have space to breathe because it has always been a rather communistic/democratic band–lovely in principle, horrible in practice. The smallest things would end up having to through a band vote. You just can’t do that and move forward.”

Ka-Spel is the main source for electricity in the LPDs. It’s his enlightened visions of this world and the world that lies beyond the grasp of human touch that enables them to keep hidden. Sometimes almost too hidden. After 11 albums, numerous compilations and cassette releases, the LPDs are still only selling somewhere 10,000 copies of each release. Since their inception in 1980, they’ve continually been set up with unfortunate circumstances and events, culminating with their near breakup last year (their second chance at that in five years — their first being during the recording of their Asylum LP). “I’m realistic enough to know that the LPDs will never be selling millions of records. I think that general growth is fine. It’s a very satisfying way for a band to develop for we can do whatever we like. There are absolutely no pressures whatsoever.”

It could be blamed on his being an only child or the fact that from ages three to ten he underwent psychiatric treatment because they found him to have an IQ around 160 and thus, added some fine doses of phenobarbital to slow him down. “I think it succeeded,” he said once in a letter to me. He dropped out of the local university and played with odd jobs before ending up at a stonehenge festival in mid-summer of 1980. “It was like at three in the morning that these people watching this event throughout the whole night. Nowadays, they’re thrown out of there because it’s a tourist attraction. Back then, they (the Groups) were barely tolerated. That sort of toleration lasted maybe another year.”

With the inspiration sitll in his head, he and accompanying concert-goers Harmonix and friend April Lliff returned to their old victorian squat in London’s East End to practice endlessly for a band that they were to initially call One Day. Ka-Spel remembers: “We actually shared this house with a local rock and roll band who were the local heroes, one of whom happened to be April’s boyfriend. More often these people would pop their heads around the doors and start laughing — “Isn’t it cute? These people are trying to make music!” and walk away laughing still. We never noticed them popping their heads around the door, we just carried on practicing.” Eventually, through various casette networking connections, the LPDs were commissioned to release several tapes on Mirrordot, Chemical Playschool (1980), Klein Kreig (late-81). By 1983, through the help of Rough Trade’s Doug Pearce, the LPDs released Brighter Now, their first album, which only began them on their road to eventual familiarity.

Now in 1989, the LPDs still cling to some of that familiarity, despite the numerous opportunities to change. 11 different musicians have come and gone since their inception, each bringing their own level of continuity to the band. Informally, the LPDs “sound”, so to speak, still retains its mobility. One moment, it reaches the uppermost limits of psychedelia (chaotic, bizarre, moving, flowing), and the next moment it slips far beneath the covers to crawl in utter madness (asylum on a hot summer’s night – young men wrenching in corners of cells tied in jackets and talking to unseen fathers throughout the night about life). It contains but one scent of pure psychadelia: the delightment in evolution, something Ka-Spel doesn’t mind at all, despite the labeling. “I think the term psychadelic is very valid. I mean, it depends on your interpretation of the term. For me, it was the most interesting music that ever existed and that grew from everywhere and it was something that was meant to be expanded not revived. It definitely stopped somewhere at the start of the 70’s. Suddenly, when bands were playing so-called “psychadelic” music again, all they were doing was sort of reviving the earlier form of it in a much poorer way. It’s all about expansion and finding new areas, new lands. That’s what we intend to do. As much as some of the Syd Barrett comparisons that have been made to me, I don’t like the comparisons but I do like what that man did. I think he was great. I would never ever want to put that man down, but really the only comparisons that can be made is that we both have profound English accents and an English style of singing.”

He continues to elaborate: “In my personal life, I like to be optimistic, because being optimistic means staying happy. I don’t want to go around like, ‘Yeah, the end is near’ and things like that.”

Yet the darker side of the LPDs, sometimes confused with pure occult worshipping, is more likely to be found on the surface, or at least, on the edge of it. “I would like people to leave bodies. Not be completely on earth at all. I think it’s sort of what great music can do. Astroprojection and all that. I would like to make the soundtrack to make astroprojection possible.”

Ka-Spel and astroprojection: “I experienced it. Often enough, that is. It’s not something you say ‘Oh, when was it?’ It just happened. It’s not something I’ve ever planned. You’re supposed to do it at will. I cannot do that. Like know that it’s happening and know when it’s finished.

“The first time I did it, it was very shocking because when you realize that you’re doing it, the realization makes you sort of flash straight back into your body and you wake up screaming. The last time I sort of realized I did what you would call a belly-flop in the air and just glided back into my body. There was nothing spectacular. I didn’t go to Mexico or Mars or something like that. I was just like in my room. It’s just such an incredibly interesting experience. You can be anywhere. Our bass player (Jason, who has since left the band) did say that it happened to him on stage, which is really quite interesting for it’s quite easy for it to happen, for you whip to yourself into a trance”

Despite all this, the Pink Dots, as long as things continue in the good lane of things, are planning to finally make it to the States to tour sometime in April. Again, as long as things go as planned.

What happens if some night you have an out-of-body experience and for some reason you can’t get back into your body?

Ka-Spel pauses for a moment and then laughs, “Then there will be no more Pink Dots shows.”

For LPDs lead singer/songwriter Edward Ka-Spel, there’s a personal irony in the growing popularity in his band.

“It’s weird because I spent so much of my youth as a social outcast,” says Ka-Spel. Because of an IQ of 160 and precocious abilities, Ka-Spel was studied by psychiatrists in the first ten years as “Some kind of phenomenon.”

“I began speaking when I was six months old and it was as if I was able to read when I was eighteen months. But I wasn’t actually reading. I was memorizing things I saw on TV. I have a photographic memory.”

As Ka-Spel talks, he smokes. He holds the cigarette rather delicately between his fingers displaying his black nail polish. Lines remaining from his trademark black grease paint performance make-up scrawl across his neck and face. Outside New York City’s club, the Limelight, a former church that now serves as a popular concert club, the mercury stretches past 90 degrees on this summer day. Inside it’s not much cooler. Even so, Ka-Spel is wearing jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt wrapped in a full-length, black jacket that, except for the hood drooping off the back, resembles a terry cloth bathrobe.

As an only child whose father walked out when he was eighteen months old, he was raised by his mother. She thought his unusual progress was normal. It wasn’t until he started having nightmares at age two that she became concerned. “That’s when the psychiatrists came in,” says Ka-Spel. They hospitalized him, gave him doses of phenobarbital to calm him down and showed him “little pictures” to analyze.

“This made me a complete outcast all through my school years”, he says. “I had some mental breakdowns when I was about 16. It was horrible. I don’t think I had a psychiatric problem. I was just curious. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t like the other kids. I wanted to be accepted. Unfortunately it shaped my entire life. The Pink Dots have been in large part an exorcism of those years.”

This exorcism via the Pink Dots began in 1980 in London’s East End when Ka-Spel and former group members Phil Harmonix and April Lliff created the band. Since then, the band has gone through more than a dozen different members, some of whom stayed for less than three weeks. The group nearly disintegrated completely in 1985 just before the album Asylum was made due to the tensions created when their money was stolen by a manager who left them stranded in Amsterdam following a tour– a real problem for a group who until four or five years ago, barely made enough money to live on. “It’s been a pitiful existence,” says Ka-Spel. I could have made more on social security.”

The group, which now consists of Phil Knight (The Silver Man) on keyboards, Neils van Hoornblower on saxes and woodwinds, and Martjin de Kleer on guitars, recently released The Maria Dimension, the band’s 10th album, which is another incarnation of the eerie, atmospheric vibes the band creates with “anything that will make a sound.” With it they are enjoying this welcome but puzzling success.

“America is getting scary because there are so many people who seem like they almost want to have a part of us. I’ve never experienced this before,” says Ka-Spel. “There have been much bigger crowds than ever and they all want to meet us. It sometimes makes me want to run away. I get quite frightened by it. They’re good people, but when it’s a mass coming towards you at once it gets very confusing.”

There’s a sad irony overshadowing their recent American tour. Legendary Pink Dots guitarist Bob Pistoor, who had desperately wanted to come to the States, died earlier this year from cancer. “His greatest wish was to come to America and they wouldn’t let him in,” Ka-Spel says, referring to the band’s visa application rejection (due to a lack of “artistic merit”) a year ago.

“We got in two years ago, but Bob had joined the band too late to fill out a visa application in time. Last year we were turned down for our visas. This year we must be of artistic merit because they let us in. I can just see them all in the immigration department bopping away under their headphones going, “Ah, those Pink Dots, they’ve redeemed themselves,” Ka-Spel snickers at the idea. “But it’s sad because this was the year Bob would have gotten in.” To help fill his void, the band is travelling with Bob’s widow Sabina, as tour manager. “It just feels right,” says Ka-Spel. Sabina’s given us a lot of strength.”

All this talk of Bob leads to a discussion of death and reincarnation, not surprising coming from Ka-Spel who seems to gravitate to things metaphysical. He’s been known to use tarot cards to come up with song and album titles and often talks about astral projection.

“I’m utterly convinced of survival after death. If you don’t think there’s a quarter of the world’s population that believes in reincarnation, you can’t just write off these people’s beliefs,” he says as he tries to formulate his own thoughts about Bob. “I’m not talking spooky. It’s a warming presence. It’s an unexplanable thing.

“I believe in a purpose to everything, that in some strange way there is a kind of guiding hand. The planet and the human race aren’t here for no reason. What would be the point unless God is truly a totally surreal artist. I don’t think he is. Yet there’s so little that is explained. We haven’t even successfully explained the flight of the bumble bee. It just shows how ignorant we actually are.

“‘A Space Between’ [from The Maria Dimension] is a song that says anything is possible. I believe the world is as likely to come to its conclusion through some great ecological catastrophie within the next few years as it is to turn into a cornflake within the next few seconds. That’s how unstable the fabric of existence actually is. We’re just sort of existing and trying to comprehend something that is way beyond our comprehension.

“I don’t want to be misinterpreted as being religious. Religion is one of these things I detest. I think it’s a way of formulating spirituality and putting it in a box, giving it convenient little man-made rules so that basically all it does is divide people.”

The final irony then is the LPDs’ performance that night in a church. Ka-Spel emerges in his robe and hovers over his keyboards like a high priest over an altar. His backdrop is an enormous three-story stained glass window of Jesus Christ. With lighted candles dotting the stage, it is as if Ka-Spel is conducting his own service.

While ironic, the setting seems appropriate. The LPDs’ music can be almost spritual in the way that qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis, is spiritual. Qawwali is intended to elevate the sprit and bring both performer and listener into a heightened experience, a trance, through repetition of a sentence or phrase. The LPDs’ music, while it is most often categorized as psychadelic, conveys that same sort of emotional frenzy that builds on itself and is more heightening than any drug.

Of course, most listeners and critics of the LPDs have attributed this quality to drugs. Ka-Spel for one is tired of his music being described as “acid-influenced.”

I’ve heard so many times about how much acid I’ve done. It’s bullshit. I’ve done it twice in my life and not for years. I don’t know why people make up these stories about me. I’m supposed to have committed suicide three times now. Once we tried to book a show in Austria and the guy in the club thought it was a hoax because I had committed suicide and the band split up.”

Ka-Spel likes the qawwali comparison because it’s close to how he feels about his music. “There certainly is an exorcism going on especially when we perform live. I have sometimes come off the stage in sort of a trance. That’s when it’s really successful.”

At a recent show in Dallas, Texas, Legendary Pink Dots front man Edward Ka-Spel (a.k.a. the Prophet Qa’Sepel) was chased around by an unstable votary who hollered, “I know you’ve got the key to the tower!” This makes one wonder: Has anyone burrowed their way into his home, like David Letterman’s late stalker, claiming to be Mrs. Ka-Spel? Sitting downstairs at New York’s Wetlands, eyes behind tinted eyeglasses, a smile across his mug, he says, “We have a few loons like that, indeed–but they haven’t gone that far!

Legendary Pink Dots

Showbox, Wednesday, November 25

The Dots themselves are finally arriving, so to speak, from even recent days as an import-only, $3,000-a-year band to become a domestically distributed, reasonable-income-earning, successful tour phenomenon. Laughing, Ka-Spel acknowledges that the Dots have been “a band that went so long without having any success–that’s dogged persistence for you.”

Formed in 1980 in London, the Dots (of which the only remaining founding members are Ka-Spel and Phil “the Silverman” Knight) released a slew of mostly difficult-to-procure albums, spawned side projects aplenty (the Tear Garden most famously), relocated to Holland by 1985, and continue today with a decent American label (Soleilmoon) and an assortment of revolving members.

Sometimes abruptly detouring into completely different musical territory, Ka-Spel’s peculiar ditties aren’t traditional musical fodder. For one, his voice is more distinctive than Sporty Spice’s any day. A gentle, softly slurred affair (think a flattering version of Elmer Fudd), it glides from therapist-worthy serenade into strained, tortured croon.

As for the Legendary Pink Dots’ recorded catalog–circa 40 albums–songs vary from grating electronic jaunts laced with psychedelic, irreverent lyrics (“Jello man cuts corners/creeps unseen between the sheets/he’s laying eggs . . . you should see him play the organ”) to accessible pop tunes. “They’re not drug-induced rants,” Ka-Spel says of the noisier efforts, “because I really don’t touch the old chemicals anymore. They’re absolutely serious to me. I mean, some of them are rants off the top of my head, something I really like to do night by night–songs which are just open and go where they go.”

With their latest record, Nemesis Online (Soleilmoon), a well-produced menu, the Dots maintain enough typical Dots style to satisfy old-schoolers and create enough non-irritating numbers to ensnare newbies. Opener “Dissonance,” for instance, is a dubby trip, “Abracadabra” boasts nightmarish chanting over break beats, while “Zoo” ranks as a danceable zinger. And “Fate’s Faithful Punchline,” with its mellow horn solo, is damn beauteous.

“It’s a genre of our own,” insists Ka-Spel of the Dots’ hard-to-categorize work. “We’re trying to create our own all-encompassing little Pink Dots universe, which rather like the complexity of a human being is a very complex thing in itself. . . . I want people to laugh, cry, feel the little tingle of fear with it. Release with it, it should all be there. You say genre-hopping, but I think the Pink Dots is its own genre: ‘unclassifiable.'”

“The new album is very much fixated on this time we live in,” he explains, “and the significance of the computer on this planet. It seems a kind of analogy. Man’s relationship with the computer is little bit analogous to man’s relationship with the sun in that the computer is our big friend and the more it develops, the more we rely upon it, and it seems to almost run our lives. Then there’s this millennium bug. . . . What it could mean is technically a collapse on such an enormous scale it’s hard to conceive it. Like the nemesis behind the sun.”

As for his own relationship with online existence, Ka-Spel confesses: “To be honest, I have a real love/hate relationship with the computer. I tend to use it more for e-mail–my computer is very primitive. But I do notice that it can spark a kind of addictive tendency within me which I don’t like… The actual title of the album came from an e-mail from a guy who called himself ‘nemesis@aol.com,’ or something. I thought, whoa, I’ve got Nemesis online here!”

Considering that Seattle was the first US city Ka-Spel played (solo, in 1986), it’s close to his heart, and the Dots’ “Pre-Millennial Spectacular” tour should be a bit legendary itself. Dots bassist Ryan Moore’s solo offshoot, the Twilight Circus Dub System, kicks things off. Moore, whose infatuation with Jamaican dub is as subtle as, say, napalm, contorts his face into zany configurations while hopping from instrument to instrument.

During select shows, Ka-Spel follows with an hour of solo material, after which the entire band takes the stage for more than two hours of trippy delights. As Ka-Spel points out: “That’s almost three and a half hours, and that’s quite a ride.”