Holland’s weirder-than-thou cult band keeps spreading that legendary pink stuff

By Jeff Stratton
Published on June 03, 2004

The official story of the Legendary Pink Dots’ name mentions a keyboard player who needed nail polish to mark which notes to play. Yet leader Edward Ka-Spel has picked up the kaleidoscope dropped by Syd Barrett and brought it blazing into the 21st Century with a distinctly Floydian hue. Not the “tear down the wall!” Pink Floyd, but Barrett’s magical world of tiny gnomes, astronomy domines, borrowed bicycles, and playful Emilys.

“We’re certainly psychedelic, but carrying on the torch from the Sixties wasn’t ever our intention,” Ka-Spel says in a voice that turns every r into a tongue-rolled w. “We’ve always wanted to be rather timeless, actually. It’s not about nostalgia at all. We want to make the most psychedelic music that’s ever been recorded.”

Formed in London in 1980 but using the Netherlands as their base of operations since, the Legendary Pink Dots have spent 24 years making the most psychedelic music in quantitative terms: They have released more than 60 (!) albums in that period, including compilations, not including another fifteen Ka-Spel has recorded on his own and the half-dozen he made with his side project, Tear Garden. Psychedelic maybe, prolific indisputably. Not even the enigmatic Ka-Spel has enough fingers and toes to keep track of all those children.

With such a conveyor belt output, it’s hard for the Pink Dots to see past the last few albums. The band lives in the present, and many older songs “have run their course” and are now retired, Ka-Spel explains. The newest album, released on May 18, is Whispering Wall, a trippy little warning light atop the reactor core of the apocalypse.

Since the band’s start, singer/keyboardist Ka-Spel (a.k.a. D’Archangel, a.k.a. the Prophet Qa’Sepel) and keyboardist Phil Knight (a.k.a. the Silver Man) have constituted its abstract/electronic foundation, and in 1988 saxophonist/extrovert Niels van Hoorn offset their inherent weirdness with love-loaded melodies and outlandish stage presence. Festooned in leopard print suits and matching hats and strolling into the crowd with wireless instruments, van Hoorn provides comic relief to Ka-Spel’s intractable oddness.

The band’s initial cassette-only output was spotty, and early albums such as Curse (1983) are marred by unfortunate New Wave slap-bass buffoonery. Watersheds such as Any Day Now (1987) and The Golden Age (1988) brought the Dots’ involuted mythologies and surreal carnival atmospheres into focus. Still the band was so obscure that it was denied a visa to tour the U.S. in 1990. “Ah, yes,” Ka-Spel remembers. “It was a case of someone who hadn’t heard of us deciding we had no artistic merit.”

America finally opened its doors the next year, and the Legendary Pink Dots have since made annual pilgrimages to increasingly large crowds. The records kept coming, too, and career highlights like 1997’s Hallway of the Gods and 1998’s Nemesis Online presented the group’s electronically bent psychedelia in its multitracked glory. Better yet, the band perfected the kind of twistedly gorgeous pop song Barrett would have held onto his marbles for. Acoustic madrigals like “Fate’s Faithful Punchline” and “Lucifer Landed” lay just beneath the threshold of universal accessibility.

Like those other Pink Dots albums, Whispering Wall includes a psych-popadelic nugget (“For Sale”), a dissonant rocker (“Soft Toy”), and a moody, ten-minute-plus opus (“Sunken Pleasure/Rising Pleasure/No Walls, No Strings”). “There are always little lines that run from one record to the next,” Ka-Spel says cryptically.

The records Ka-Spel releases on his own (the most recent, Pieces of 8, should in no way be mistaken for the Styx album of the same name) are even more out there than the Pink Dots. The third outlet for his boundless creativity, the Tear Garden, is a more industrial affair — not surprising, given that it’s a collaboration with members of Canada’s brutal Skinny Puppy. After a 35-date tour with Legendary Pink Dots, he will record a new Tear Garden album in Los Angeles and then tour again with that project. All this comes after a pair of Pink Dots albums released in 2002 (All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men), which were followed by a world tour in 2003 and then immediately by the recording of Whispering Wall. And the reclusive frontman, who turns 50 this year, has no plans to shut off the tap. “There’s plenty of years left in the Pink Dots,” he promises.

For almost a quarter-century the Legendary Pink Dots have operated under the motto, “sing while you may,” which could hold a clue to their voluminous output. Ka-Spel explains it like this: “Time is accelerating. Imagine the world as a drowning man seeing his entire life flash before his eyes. I’m encouraging people to enjoy it while it’s there.”

Where: The Culture Room, 3045 N Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale

Details: Tuesday, June 8, at 9:00 p.m.

Tickets cost $10. Call 954-564-1074.

“A lot of people like to keep the Dots as their secret …”

Which has become quite a feat, considering the band is now in their 24th year and have enough material to keep a radio station on-air for a week without playing the same song twice. That is, if any radio station would dare to play the Pink Dots. Yet it was KRCL that gave me my introduction to the magical world of Edward Ka-Spel via a late-night spinning of the Tear Garden’s “Romulus & Venus.” It was an awkward pop tune that I couldn’t quite make out the meaning of, but couldn’t shake from my mind. Last Man to Fly has subsequently become one of my favorite albums.

Which makes for beautiful nostalgia, but the Dot’s don’t find the past nearly as interesting as the future that waits before them, and 2004 finds the band back on familiar ground, tripping across America on a 35-date tour promoting not one, but two new releases. A notion that has left more than a few fans confused while standing at the merchandise table.

“They ask what [Poppy Variations] is and I tell them it’s the new album. Then they ask what The Whispering Wall is and I tell them that’s the new album too,” says Edward.

Recording for both albums started around Christmas and, although recorded at the same time, there was never any question of which album the songs were to appear on. The process took the band to various locations as they moved their studio around to find the proper venues to record each song. An example of the independent and experimental approach that, though often full of chaos, is the heart of the Pink Dots.

The Whispering Wall, their third release on ROIR following the acclaimed Under Triple Moons and All The King’s Men, is mostly made up of ideas that Phil Knight (a.k.a. Silverman, Phil Harmonix, etc.) brought to the recordings and Poppy Variations, released on their house label Terminal Kaleidoscope, is more focused on ideas Edward had. Although the genesis of Poppy Variations was based on a piece reminiscent of “Poppy Day” from the Dot’s 1984 release, The Tower, that Phil brought Edward.

The result is beautiful chaos with a mix of jazz, electronics, space rock, Kafka’s paranoia and the indefinable; a natural result of the diversity of the band’s influences from the various players over the years.

“Music you love finds its way into what you create … I try to keep up [with current music]. I want to hear new things that excite me,” he says, but he confesses that many of his old favorites from the 70s still occupy the turntable, more so than recent trends.

The early 90s saw the Dots at their peak commercially in America, over 10 years into their existence. A decade later, everything has changed. They’ve suffered from downloading and many of the shops that used to carry their records don’t, or have closed down. It is hard for a band to survive without going out on the road. A change evident in the amount of touring the band does now when compared to the sporadic touring in the early days.

“You can’t combat it; it is the way it is,” says Edward.

Determined not to take part in the “vulgar court cases” the music industry has engaged in, Edward presents his alternative: “The only real way to combat [downloading] is to make something so beautiful that the people will want to own a solid copy of it.”

The Dots are used to changes, having already become adept chameleons, for in many senses, the 80s belonged to Western Europe, the 1990s were for America and the start of the twenty-first century seems destined for new ground as Eastern Europe has become a bed for experimental art. Having already welcomed Coil enthusiastically, and revitalized the career of Marc Almond (Soft Cell), Eastern Europe has likewise embraced The Legendary Pink Dots.

“We were shocked at the response we received in Russia,” says Edward. “We didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know if they even knew the songs, but a lot of people showed up. In the East, there is a different mentality; they are open to new music, whereas in the West, they say, ‘We’ve heard this, show us something new.'”

Edward speaks warmly of the live experience as a welcomed communion between the band and their fans and promises surprises behind every door.

“Every show is different. There is a great amount of improvisation. [Playing live] gives the songs a chance to sprout wings. All the experimentation is part of the tapestry.”

Edward acknowledges that over the years, there have been many lineup changes, but stresses that there haven’t been as many goings as there have been comings, goings and coming back. Of the current lineup, Phil Knight on keyboards formed LPD with Edward in 1980, multi-instrumentalist Niels Van Hoorn (a.k.a. Niels Van Hoornblower) has collaborated with the band since 1990’s The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, Raymond Steeg (aka X-Ray Alley) was in the band from 1992 through 1995 and rejoined in 2001. Only guitarist Erik Drost could be considered a newcomer.

“The Pink Dots are like a family, we’re all still in touch,” says Edward.

Unprompted, Edward speaks kindly of former member and fan favorite Ryan Moore, who’s in current band The Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, and hints towards possible collaborations in the future.

For the Dots are an unwritten book, not tied up in worries about when their fame and glory will come (“If I wanted to make a lot of money, I would do something else,” says Edward), or where the inspiration for the next song will come from, who will be playing the instruments (although Edward agrees that without Phil, it could never be an LPD album), or how many people they will touch with their music … as long as they touch someone.

I had imagined that this could be a difficult interview, anticipating, foolishly perhaps, that Edward’s answers might reflect his lyrics; tied in tiny little packages waiting to be opened and interpreted, with the answers somewhat hidden and vague. It makes for lovely poetry, but challenging interviews. It is here, as the interview starts to close and the band members try and tempt Edward back onto the bus, that I realize how approachable he has been.

I’m inclined to thank him for “Love Notes and Carnations,” a song that didn’t catch me until an old girlfriend called to say she heard it and had thought of me.

“Sounds like you had a similar experience as I did,” says Edward.

Just a random track on an album I picked up because of a song I couldn’t get out of my head years later has become personally significant, and I realize that had the song never been written, I could have slipped completely from an old friend’s mind and a moment that I hold dear would never have existed.

Art, in whatever form, can be silly like that. Life, however, would never be as full without it.

With a 25th anniversary looming, I wonder what awaits the Dots behind the 8 ball. Edward, true to form, doesn’t know the details, but he knows this:

“The Legendary Pink Dots will always exist. I will be making Pink Dots albums until I die,” says Edward.

Perhaps then another few decades remain for reveling in the process of creation while searching for that indefinable greatness called perfection.

Says Edward, “It is impossible to get there, which is the joy of it as well.”

Join in on the experiment as The Legendary Pink Dots play Salt Lake City on July 1 at In the Venue. You’d be foolish not to be there.

LEGENDARY PINK DOTS

The Sentimentalist, Volume IV Issue XV: Summer 2004

I met Pink Dots’ co-founder and vocalist Edward Ka-Spell at the Brew House Art Space in Pittsburgh on the fifth night of their thirty-city American tour. Clad in Indian drawstring pants, sandals and a pullover cotton shirt, Edward seemed not at all harried by the delays the band suffered in transit from Milwaukee, nor did he seem particularly interested in the spread of food and booze laid out on the table in the dressing room. Gracious, soft-spoken, in some ways shy and retiring but also warm and intense, he is very aligned to the persona we know from the albums: wry, wistful, vibrantly vulnerable, forever on the verge of tipping into otherworldly poetry. And the band’s show that night almost transcended words, so charged and layered, so emotionally evocative, so textured and rich. Hearing and seeing them play, you tend to expand until you feel you’re floating, even as your guts are caressed, then rearranged.

SENTIMENTALIST: The discographies one sees seem a bit sketchy. Can you tell us how many albums you’ve done? With the Dots? And solo? Or with side projects?

EDWARD: I can’t, really. I’ve never counted them.

SENTIMENTALIST: Is it something like 45 Legendary Dots albums now?

EDWARD: Who knows. I really don’t know. It’s in the double figures, but I can’t tell you how many.

SENTIMENTALIST: How do you find time to make so much music? Do you ever sleep?

EDWARD: Yeah, sure. But I mean, it’s what I do. It’s not like I’m really doing anything else. There’s going to be a lot of music made, if it’s what you live and breathe. If it’s how you occupy your time and you love it as well, you know, it’s not just a job or something. I mean, you do do it for the love of it. If I wanted to make money, I wouldn’t do this. Frankly, I’d do something else. But it keeps me alive, and for that I’m grateful. And I just can’t stop, there’s a thirst–I have to do this, I think I would just wither away and collapse if I didn’t do this.

SENTIMENTALIST: There’s a story floating around, very enigmatic, about a night at Stonehenge and the inception of the band.

EDWARD: It’s true. To be exact, I went to the Stonehenge Free Festival with Phil [Knight] and April [White], the other two original members of the Pink Dots. We were each staying in separate tents. And in the middle of the night, maybe three or four in the morning, we all got up simultaneously, which is very strange, and we could see there was music at the other end of the field. We walked indeed through the mist, and there was a band playing there. I have no idea what the band was. But this band was totally into what they were doing. It was magical. With a full light show going and everything. And we were the audience. Just the three of us. It was just one of these strange bonding moments. We never spoke to the band afterwards. they played and played as if they hardly noticed us. But we sure noticed them. And when they finished playing, we all went back and talked about it a little bit on the way back to the tents, and basically crashed out in our tents again. Within the week, the Legendary Pink Dots was formed. When i think back, it was one of those truly magical things. I’m not saying there would not have been a Legendary Pink Dots without it, but it certainly gave it the push that we needed.

SENTIMENTALIST: You made a comment somewhere about playing in London four years ago, that they embraced you at last; you said you thought you might cry. That it felt like ‘coming home.’

EDWARD: That was a bit like coming home. It was very, very special. I must admit, I am reminded of my origins very strongly if I play in London. The humor is the same. The level of communication with the audience is really very high indeed. I’m English. I’m a Londoner. I love the city, and I love going back. But I don’t really live there.

SENTIMENTALIST: One thinks of writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. They left America for Europe to see America better.

EDWARD: I can see why. With that sense of isolation, you can focus so totally into what you’re creating. Because you do not have the distractions, you do not have the small talk, that obligation to relate to everybody around you. So I do indeed have a very small circle of friends in the Netherlands, and those friends are either in the band or directly related in some way to the band. And it’s a very small world, but I’m kind of happy in that small world.

SENTIMENTALIST: Your new album The Whispering Wall is just out. Is there a “concept” attached to or involved in this one? Are there overarching themes or motifs, like we’ve seen in other albums you’ve done?

EDWARD: I cannot say The Whispering Wall is conceptual. It’s just an album of this time, recorded at this time. So it’s not conceptual beyond that fact. Although there is a second album as well, which is just as new, recorded parallel–that one’s a little more conceptual. It’s something that in some ways was worked on over the last two years and came to a conclusion right at this time. But what is sure is that both relate very much to the now, the world that we live in, a very strange, confused load of madness that we find ourselves under at this very moment.

SENTIMENTALIST: So we sing while we may, to paraphrase the Dots’ motto?

EDWARD: It’s all a part of it. Be glad you live now. Be glad you witnessed this. However sad the planet may seem, there’s never been a more dynamic, exciting time to live in. And I’m glad that I live now. Sing while you may. You don’t know how long you have, but at least clasp and cherish every moment.

Interview by Bertrand Hamonou
Photos by Frederic Loridant
May 2004

Just before flying to the USA for an American tour with his band, the generous and charismatic Legendary Pink Dots’ frontman Edward Ka-Spel agreed to answer our questions about the two brand new albums, “The Whispering Wall” and “The Poppy Variations”. It’s also a chance to talk about his obsession about his own music, and to evoke with him the trail-game-like discography of a very unusual band.

Since the year 2001, you’ve been more prolific than ever. Can you tell us where you find all that motivation, twenty years after your debut?
The longer we are around, the shorter the time left to say exactly what we have to say. And, there is still so much to deliver. I still feel so passionate about it all, and this feeling never diminishes. I love making music, and by now I cannot do anything else. I’d be a pitiful failure in the ‘real’ world, believe me. 2004 has been particularly intense, especially when you consider that another almost completed album sits in the vaults unreleased as well.

How would you describe these brand new albums, compared to the previous “All the king’s men” and “All the king’s horses”, both released in 2002?
“The Whispering Wall ” is much looser conceptually, it’s an album very much belonging to it’s time. I don’t think that it is quite as sad as either “All the King’s Horses” or “All the King’s Men”, but perhaps the feeling of being utterly powerless still runs through it. To be honest, that is how I feel right now. The Legendary Pink Dots will never change the world as much as I’d like to. It has taken me until now to realise this… “Poppy Variations” is much more conceptual, built around a simple recollection of where I was when I heard the sad news about Princess Diana’s death. There are incidents which are so big that you always can pinpoint where you were, how you felt when you heard the news for the first time.

These two new albums are released along with a new Edward Ka-Spel solo album. According to you, what’s the main musical difference between a Legendary Pink Dots album and an Edward Ka-Spel solo album?
With a solo album I make all the rules, and all the conflicts and arguments take place inside my own confused mind. Sometimes I need complete control, but I don’t think that it’s fair to inflict this disturbing side of my character upon others.

Among all the records you’ve made with the Legendary Pink Dots, The Tear Garden and your solo Edward Ka-Spel albums, it’s pretty hard to imagine that you sometimes manage to take some days off. Do you work on your music all the time?
I tend to have intense bursts of activity. For sure I worked daily for the first four months of this year. I had no day off, and I sometimes worked 16 hours straight like an obsessed man. I can’t help it.

Do you have any idea of how many albums you’ve done so far?
I have no idea at all. It seems to me like a waste of energy to start counting.

Your solo albums have always had some pretty enigmatic titles. By the way, what’s the official title of this one? “Pieces of?” or “Pieces of 8”?
It is “Pieces of Infinity”, and it’s the third part of a trilogy which began with “Caste o’Graye Skreeens”, and then was “O’er a Shalabast’r Tyde Strolt Ay”. I’m very fond of this little trio, I do feel like I actually broke into some new territory with these.

There’s not so much noise nor drums on the new Legendary Pink Dots albums, but you seem to concentrate more on the melodies and the singing, like on the almost a capella bit on “Rising Pleasure”. Is it what you’re interested in these days?
The psychedelic voyage on the “Chemical playschool 11, 12,13” Box set went about as far as it is possible to go in that direction. I worked on it every day for a year, and it left me quite exhausted. I love it, but confess I haven’t been able to go through the three and a half hour voyage since it came out. It’s still far too close. Recording succinct songs seemed like the logical next step, though the floor is melting a little once more on “Poppy Variations”.

It seems like you had achieved a cycle with the “Nemesis Online” album, and now you’ve gone pretty much towards the musical opposite of that?
Sadly, I think we rushed “Nemesis Online”. It could have been so much better.

You write a lot, and you improvise during concerts. You’ve never been tempted to write a novel at some point?
I will try and discipline myself for this one day, but not yet.

About the “Chemical Playschool” series, which now has come to Vol.13, when did you start it all, and why did you do so in parallel of the official releases?
It was way back in 1980. It’s not widely documented, but there was actually a cassette entitled the “Chemical Playschool” one week after our first cassette release, “Only Dreaming”. We made a few of them, and then we withdrew it, as I wanted to develop it into what became “Chemical Playschool 1-2”. I love this little parallel project, and there will be more volumes to come.

Are there still dozens of tracks that were written during the 80s and 90s, and which never saw the light of day?
There aren’t so many left now, but there is quite a bit of material still in the can from “Shadow Weaver” and “Malachai”. We also somehow lost the extra tapes from “A Perfect Mystery”: hours of improvisation I could weep.

There’s also that “Trademark Of Quantity” thing? How did that idea come out? 
I always loved those old “Trademark of Quality” vinyl bootlegs from the 70s, like those rare old Pink Floyd albums, handmade, hand held microphones under the coat recorded. Our releases are a tribute to that wonderful illegal label.

Which albums would you recommend to someone who never heard of the Legendary Pink Dots nor Edward Ka-Spel, in order to make him/her listen to the best you can do? 
Strangely, I would say “Chemical Playschool 11,12, 13”, “9 Lives to Wonder” and maybe “The Poppy Variations”. To me, they’ve all got a certain timeless quality.

You’ve used French titles for your songs several times (Nouveaux Modes exotiques, Encore une fois) and it’s the case once again with L’oiseau rare on “The Whispering Wall”. Why is that? 
Well, because it’s a beautiful language, and I wish I could master it.

The band line up has been changing almost all the time. Can you tell us more about who’s in the band these days, and what’s their contribution to the new records? 
That’s not really true, even though Ryan Moore left the band in 2001, which still saddens me.. But he remains a great friend, and same goes for Martyn who left last year to make his own music, because he loves folk music. But Phil, Niels and myself have been together in this line-up since 1988. Raymond first came into the Legendary Pink Dots back in 1992. And speaking of ex-LPDs, we actually had a six piece in Italy last year as Patrick Q rejoined us for three shows on violin!

You’ve been going to the US a lot lately. Europe isn’t enough anymore or is there a lot of die hard fans over there too? 
We do have a good following over there, and I do enjoy being there as we meet a lot of good people when we go.

Are you going to tour Europe once you’re back from the US? 
Certainly. We hope for an even longer tour.

You release your albums on different record labels (ROIR, Beta Lactam Ring, Teka), how is it to deal with all of them? How do you decide which record is going to be released on which label? 
That’s an hard one to answer. Normally it’s personal, when I like a person running a label, then I enjoy the prospect of working with him or her. But there is no master plan in this respect.

source: http://www.premonition.org/premor.php3?lien=actu/actu.php3X1Xactuid=227002&ta=10