All posts by edwardo

Pink Dots Eat Cold SpaghettiO’s in the Dark (tinymixtapes.com)

The Legendary Pink Dots Plan Nationwide Tour and New Album in October; The Unremarkable Pink Dots Eat Cold SpaghettiO’s in the Dark and Wonder Where They Went Wrong

It really bothers me that Britney Spears is pop music’s current craziest individual. Even though she’s little more than white trash with a Bentley, Brit-Brit has had the world transfixed for years with positively zany antics like not wearing underpants, driving poorly, and shaving her head, making it downright sad that the rap sheet of America’s premier loony reads like the reasons why some pimply junior varsity wrestler got grounded for the weekend. But worst of all, with the dawn of her latest VMA-driven comeback, Britney suddenly isn’t crazy anymore! Apparently she was going through a rough patch and now she’s back on track. Jesus Christ, I hate it when I get ripped off by some asshole who was already ripping me off in the first place!

That’s why I love The Legendary Pink Dots. I know that no matter how many years pass, no matter how many albums they release, no matter how many universes they visit and conquer, Edward Ka-Spel and company will never cease to be batcrap insane. Ka-Spel (a.k.a. Prophet Qa-Spel a.k.a. Che Banana a.k.a. D’Archangel) will never fail to spin me a wonderful tale about how some gnome keeps stealing his hat, why tooth enamel prevents most humans from becoming self-actualized, or how the real number of the beast is 834 (that one is actually true). It’s nice not having to worry about The Legendary Dots suddenly becoming sane since I know it’ll never happen, and in a world corrupted by normalcy, it’s nice to have something like that to depend on :).

The Britain-born but Dutch-bred Dots’ crusade of crazy will march upon the world with their new album Plutonium Blonde, particularly the bizarreness bereaved USA on their upcoming American tour. The record is slated for October 7, and the tour will follow a little more than a week later. Don’t worry, the whole mess will be an assuredly wacky affair, just what this country deserves.

Posted by Mike McHugh on 09-19-2008

 

Rolling With The Dots – Fan Review (Miche)

I am standing in the front row waiting for Skinny Puppy to come out. It is my 1st time seeing them; it is 1987. I know I will have to see their choice of opening band 1st, which my new Skinny Puppy friends, in Toronto, tell me are friends of Skinny Puppy. So I’m curious to see who’s been hand-picked by my new-found musical interest!

No one seems to be paying much attention as the lights go out and fog fills the stage. There are 2 keyboards, and the fog of course, but not much else..yet!

The atmosphere is set. Still, people around me continue to chat, as a lone figure walks out, slooowly, steadily, & barefoot (!). There are lines; no; cracks drawn on his face. Now I recall the name on the flyer. It’s Edward Ka-Spel. Never ‘eard of ‘im. But good things are in store for me! And so it begins. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

The keyboard starts a steady roll of notes, over & over. This is “Flesh Parade”. The music becomes the air and swirls deeper into a different state of mind. OMG, I am fucking HOOKED! I think my jaw starts to drop.

I like it here, wherever this place is called. I can understand every twisted, clever description coming out of Edward’s mouth, and I’ve never really heard anything like this before.

I now have a mission for the next day: to find every record available by him. Oh yes, I’m on a serious mission alright! How fun!

It wasn’t quick (no internet, no known mail order addresses), it wasn’t easy, but oh, so rewarding! I believe my 1st find was “Chyekk China Doll”, “Aazhyd China Doll”, and “Curse”! A co-worker, at the record shop I was working at, was already enlightened, and so described The Legendary Pink Dots to me, which raised my adrenaline level even more! That’s how I came across “Curse”. In fact I remember looking for anything baring their name, walking out of the shop & down the street, defeated but then the image of the album cover flashed across my mind, and I realized that it said Legendary Pink Dots and I had missed it! I ran back and was relieved to still find it there. That was a good day. It was like finding gold.

Twenty One years later, the China Dolls, Lisa, MaryLou, and the cast of re-occuring characters in the mad, humourous, and sometimes bitter world of Edward and his Dots are like old friends and the spinning Universe is ever-evolving!

 

Plutonium Blonde (KFJC)

Psychedelic/Experimental: Every song on here is worthwhile, and the range of moods is wide. Edward Ka-Spel’s British-accented vocals alternate from eeriness as though echoing through a tube (1 and especially 6 where he narrates in a Rod Serling-like way), to playfulness on 4 (a song about texting) and 7 (where a banjo adds to the innocence). Track 3 has an acoustic folk feel, while Track 9 has a tropical element to it and is purely instrumental with its jungle percussion, while Track 10 is haunting and depressing with its lyrical content about a virtual world of lonesomeness. Track 10 is perhaps the most epic of the tracks in its simulation of water sounds and outboard motors whirring with minimal keys and synths and chanting lyrics. It’s like a dramatic plunge into the deep. Enjoy.

 

 

 

Plutonium Blonde (ReGen Magazine)

Posted: Friday, September 12, 2008
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

The latest album from the psychedelic industrial masters is a tense but understated exploration of disconnection and ennui in the modern age.

In their 26-year career, the Legendary Pink Dots have tackled everything from sinister electro-pop to psychedelic jam to industrial rock to pure sound collage experimentalism. Their newest studio album incorporates a little of all of the above, but following in the footsteps of 2006’s Your Children Placate You from Premature Graves, it goes at things from a fairly understated perspective, more thoughtful meditation than freak-out session. Several songs even border on folk, with The Silverman’s synthesizers providing textures so unassuming you barely realize they’re there. On “A World with No Mirrors,” vocalist Edward Ka-Spel sings wistfully over Martijn de Kleer’s delicate guitars and Niels van Hoorn’s soft flutes, and “Mailman” is a deceptively sweet number delivered over plucked banjos and van Hoorn’s playful clarinet honks. Despite the seeming softness – even pleasantness – of many of the songs on Plutonium Blonde, Ka-Spel’s subtle lyricism imbues them with the guarded, wry cynicism of modernity that has become something of a signature. “My First Zonee” in particular bounces ebulliently along in praise of mobile communication equipment, but the real message of the song is what’s left out, a sense of loneliness and disconnection that makes the song’s perky pacing and sing-song vocals seem all the more forced. “An Arm and a Leg,” though still imbued with a certain irony, is more overtly dark, Ka-Spel delivering a sinister sort of sales pitch over wavering theremin, nervous piano chords, and treated tape loops. On album closer “Cubic Caesar,” the band really comes out in force, each member’s specialty taking a starring role, with de Kleer’s electric guitar jamming over clanking electronics and van Hoorn’s moody woodwind atmosphere, all held together in a sort of half-dream state that’s less enlightening than soporific, making a perfect backdrop for Ka-Spel’s visionary soliloquy of proles tranquilized by mass-market virtual reality entertainment. “Oh me, oh my,” he sings, “I watch paint dry.” It’s a fitting coda to an album that’s in many ways the opposite of mass-marketed entertainment. With Plutonium Blonde, Ka-Spel and company are, as always, both eerily prescient and endlessly fascinating.

 

Plutonium Blonde (kevchino.com)

I know a guy who keeps a spare shelf in his vast (and believe me, it’s vast, like as in needing three a’s—vaaast) music library for the Legendary Pink Dots. The gatefold vinyl album versions are prominently displayed. The compact discs stack. The small pocket hard drive where they’ve all been downloaded for international travel sits with a big sticker. There are bootlegs there. There are live versions.

The band is his rock identity—obsessive, complete, and absolutely true.

I myself don’t have a rock identity, but as I listen to Plutonium Blonde, the newest output from the band—who has many releases—I imagine what it’s like there. This as a rock identity seems strange. The first track is a chanting, Eastern-themed haunt titled “Torchsong,” which exists quite outside the standard song, filed under rock. Even goth rock—it’s just so off-kilter. It’s simply one of the most sinister songs I’ve ever heard, and at that, I’ve listened to it three times or more just processing its gaudy specter. All over the board goes Plutonium Blonde, from sax undertones (“A World With No Mirrors” and “My First Zonee”) to dingy Portishead (“Faded Photograph”) to radio narrative-cum-industrial (“An Arm And A Leg”). All over it goes, and as a listener relatively new to the Legendary Pink Dots, everywhere they go, I will follow. There isn’t a bad song in the ten.

If I could count any one thing as a quibble with Plutonium Blonde, it is that I didn’t make this band my band earlier. Knowing the people I know, however, it might not be too late.

Erick Mertz