Montreal Mirror, May 20, 1993.

MAPS, LEGENDS & DOTS Thirtheen years on, Edward Ka-Spel and The Legendary Pink Dots are still difficult to locate in the continuum of pop

by Chris Yurkiw

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Two campus radio announcers joked at a party about one of their younger, fledgling colleagues – a pale and awckward waif who was shrouded in mystery, big hair and black clothes.

“The kind of person who’s waiting for the next Legendary Pink Dots album,” quipped one, while the other thought that the reference was obscure, kind of cool, and maybe just a little flaky.

The Legendary Pink Dots are a quintessential cult band. In the early ’80s, the group’s name popped up on compilations and a slew of cassette-only releases. Led by Edward Ka-Spel, a legend of the ululating underground, the group has produced a steady stream of albums that totals fifteen… or sixteen. “I’ve lost count,” says Ka-Spel in a tour-worn voice he’s trying desperately to save for the evening performance. “There’ve been at least 10 cassettes, as well as eight solo albums,” he says. Over the past 13 years, the band has created soundscapes that jump from ambient to atonal, has written soundtracks that incorporate ballads and “jazz actuel,” and has consistently treated electronic experimentation with elegance. Ka-Spel adds his wispy lisp sing-speak, spinning tales of fantasy, spirituality and CNN. “I’d say the Pink Dots are psychedelic in the original meaning of what psychedelia was all about,” says Ka-Spel, commenting on the oft-used adjective to describe the band.

The Pinks Dots were formed by vocalist Ka-Spel and fellow keybordist Phil Silverman [sic] in East London back in 1980. Four years later, the pair decided to do some Channel hopping over to the more tolerant Amsterdam, where the group is still based.

“It was also 1984, the year we released the album “The Tower” which was all about England,” Ka-Spel recalls. “It screams about the way the country was going back then (under Margaret Tatcher). England was my country, and countries are basically loved, but I was tearing my hair out at the way it was. That album was actually celebrated in Europe, but completely ignored in England. So the signs were there – leave.”

“The band has had about 19 members over the years and that’s always breathed new life into it. No one’s ever left in anger, and at the moment, I think it’s a particularly healthy band.” says Ka-Spel. Filling out the line-up these days with Ka-Spel and Silverman are Ryan Moore on bass and accoustic guitar, Martjin de Kleer on more guitars and percussion, and Niels Van Hoornblower on horns.

The Pink Dots may take their inspiration from psychedelia, but the group certainly doesn’t mimic the ’60s style. Comparisons with ’70s progressive rock are much more apt, including the influence of Can, Faust, Neu! and middle-period Pink Floyd. To boot, Ka-Spel has a penchant for the concept album, and the group’s latest effort “Malachai” is the second part of a mystical journey of a character called The Shadow Weaver. Says Ka-Spel of this unfashionable approach: “We go on our own sweet path that relates to very little else that’s going on. I’m quite happy to carry on winding that way.”

The enigmatic exile has hit on something here. Perhaps it’s the elusive if anti-climatic answer to another mystical quest. Is the way the Pink Dots carry themselves the essence of being an alternative group, or an independent band ?

“Alternative to what?” scoffs Ka-Spel mildly. “I think way too much is put on those two words – alternative and independent. I would say The Legendary Pink Dots are simply a unique band. I don’t know what we’re independent of, or what we’re alternative to. We’re just the Pink Dots.”

The Legendary Pink Dots play Backstreet Saturday, May 22 [1993], $15.

The Legendary Pink Dots were without a venue Wednesday after Cafe Campus lost its appeal of a court injunction ordering the bar to close. The Quebec’s Court of Appeal ordered the popular Universite de Montreal hangout to shut its doors because of repeated complaints from local residents about the noise.

[Alan’s note: Eventually they found a venue – Backstreet on Mayor, formerly known as Mars, a very nice goth-industrial club, but now a metal bar!]

 

Phone interview with Legendary Pink Dots, Wednesday May 12, 1993.
Locations: Madison Wisconsin (Ka-Spel) Montreal, Quebec (Elnuaimy and Ezust)

E: Edward Ka-Spel
M: Mo Elnuaimy
A: Alan Ezust

M: So I heard you just got back from Vancouver. Were you recording a new Tear Garden during your visit?

E: No, I didn’t have time, you know we were only there for 2 days.

M: I thought that was all the time you were there for last time.

E: Yeah, we were there for at least 6 weeks. It was a full month of recordings – we brought 2 CDs together. Tear Garden certainly goes on.

M: Both Tear Garden and Shadow Weaver were recorded at once and released over two CDs over the course of a year.

E: That’s right, and there was about 5 hours of material recorded during that run. Basically, the studio was there, we were all extremely excited, getting back together after some years – to actually play together, I mean we see each other a lot, Kevin and the guys, but, yeah, it’s like, we all just totally celebrated in style, and just went for it. A hell of a lot of material was recorded. Shadow weaver though, was conceived as a double CD.

M: Why were the CDs released almost a year apart?

E: Basically one half of it was finished earlier than the second half and Play It Again Sam really wanted to put it out quite quickly, so there was no other way around it at the time. We wanted to take our time on finishing it, so Malachai was a couple of months longer to work on, even though it started at the same time as Shadow Weaver, it finished way after.

M: There is a considerable difference in styles between the two of them.

E: Yeah, we put them together according to the feel. Like Shadow Weaver, what we selected for that, it all seemed to accent a certain mood. Everybody agreed that it worked as an album in itself. Malachai was the same. Kind of like, the Pink Dots never tend to record in a straight line. Like, while we would work on some really set ideas which were fully constructed, we would also the next day, like, maybe completely improvise for the whole day and see what would come up. A lot of those fully realized tracks appeared on Shadow Weaver. That’s why you got the contrast – one type of work got on one CD, one type of work ended up on the other.

M: So you’d say Shadow Weaver was more “thought out” and Malachai was more “experimental”?

E: In a way, yeah, I would say so. Though both are of course experimental. Something we really wanted to do, stretch the boundaries a little bit on this project.

M: Shadow Weaver’s actually a bit of a comeback for you guys, after The Maria Dimension. I don’t know if you guys perceive it the same way as I do, but it seemed to be a major flop.

E: Yeah, you thought so?

M: Yeah, I’ve heard a few people comment that they don’t really like the Maria Dimension.

E: That’s so strange; it’s our most popular album (laughs) – seriously, it outsold everything else we’ve done before, and after, unfortunately for us.

M: Maybe it’s just those people who considered you their own personal discovery getting grouchy about your success.

E: In a way, it’s very heartening for me to hear that, because an awful lot was said about the Maria Dimension, and we thought about the Shadow Weaver “It was a flop compared to the Maria Dimension” that’s generally what people have said to us, not the fans, but the record companies for sure.

M: So what do you think?

E: Well, (pause) I think the Pink Dots weaves in its own peculiar way.

M: That’s rather an obscure comment…

E: It is true – it’s all according to the mood at the time. And y’know There are only two albums in our history that I would say, “I do not like those albums.”

M: Which ones are those?

E: Island of Jewels. I think it’s a mess. I think – you can take a track in isolation, and it’s fine, but to listen to it as an album, (sighs) it’s tough! The other one is The Lovers – I really can’t stand the live side. The live side sounds too clean – I like it a little rougher around the edges than that. It’s also too rushed – we had to do it in 3 days.

M: So what are you looking for in the perfect album? What’s the difference between The Lovers, Island Of Jewels, and say Shadow Weaver. What is that subtle difference between them, that makes Shadow Weaver, or The Maria Dimension, a “Good Album” in your eyes? And Island Of Jewels or The Lovers bad albums?

E: It touches the soul, and is a rich and colourful journey – that’s why I personally like The Maria Dimension – I must admit, ’cause I think it’s a rich and colourful journey.

M: But it’s a little bit loose, that’s the trouble with it, and there’s not much structure to it… Unless you’re actually concentrating on it, where you made the time for it, it doesn’t really grab you. You actually have to sit down and want to listen to it, as opposed to a lot of the other material I’ve heard, that seduces you into listening to it.

E: Yeah, see I think a good album is never something you can listen to while dusting the house, or wandering around, or… hoovering the plants.

M: Maybe my own personal bias comes in here – I am a music critic so have to listen to a lot of music while dusting the house and watering the plants…

E: That’s a lot of the criticism of the Shadow Weaver I’ve heard; was actually what you were saying, that basically it wasn’t instant enough, but The Maria Dimension was considered extremely instant!

M: Was it?

E: Mostly, yes, that’s the reaction we’ve had… It’s peculiar – what people say about the Shadow Weaver is what you said about The Maria Dimension – it’s like a weird twist on it… I’m personally very fond of The Maria Dimension and Shadow Weaver, but I think Shadow Weaver is a particular mood; I think it’s a lonely album.

A: I was just speaking to a few people who work for WZBC in Boston – they’re the ones that give you the most airplay in Boston.

E: Oh they’re great people.

A: They do tend to agree with you more on The Maria Dimension – I was speaking to one of the DJs and he was saying that the problem with Shadow Weaver was that there weren’t any particular “hit songs” as he put it, while The Maria Dimension did have some.

E: It had Pennies For Heaven, Grain Kings, Belladonna. Shadow Weaver is a mood, from beginning to end, it’s a very precise mood.

A: I believe it’s what most of your older fans are looking for in your releases – a mood, rather than the hit songs, and so that may be why you have some die hard fans who really like the older albums, or also Shadow Weaver who are a bit disappointed by The Maria Dimension.

E: It’s interesting because the whole Shadow Weaver project, most comparisons that have been made, a lot of people said it was a return to The Asylum, and I can actually see that, I guess. I think it’s a little more realized than Asylum, but yeah, it’s definitely got the feel of Asylum a little bit.

A: There were some things in Shadow Weaver Part 2 which started to remind me of perhaps Controlled Bleeding or SPK; it got quite noisy at times.

E: Oh Sure, I think SPK, the early days, they were a really wonderful band. Actually we were listening to a lot of jazz during the time of Shadow Weaver, like Sun-Ra and Miles’ “On the corner”.

A: Yes, it was an interesting blend of a lot of different styles.

E: It was another adventure for us. We were going to try to do things we have not done before, y’know we always want to try new things and to put the pieces together in a like, unusual way and see what comes out.

M: Moving off the comparison of albums thing… I was wondering where you get your inspiration for this material – you mentioned earlier, you say some of it is structured and some of it is improvisation but, is there any particular process you use for inspiration or does it just come out from the air?

E: It’s always a variety of processes. I mean Shadow Weaver was very much 5 people putting in their ideas, and I think the band is richer. More people actually, putting in their own personal contributions, or coming out with an original thought, which they hand over to the band, but it’s not out of the question for someone to have a fully realized concept as well, that is to put into operation by the band wither… There shouldn’t be any chains on creation.

M: Do you have any stories of inspirational moments, like walking down the street and seeing something or hearing something that inspires a song?

E: Dreams are very important. Whole tracks have appeared in dreams before, and attempts have been made to recreate the dreams, Crushed Velvet a little bit, and Maria, and Lisa’s party, for sure, the whole track was dreamed before it was recorded.

M: So basically, you go to sleep and wake up with these concepts which you scribble down into songs. Are there any particular dreams you can tell of, or are they all basically in the song?

E: A recording walkman helps… Like Lisa’s party for instance sort of basically the little hook line was playing over and over in this dream. I was lucky enough to have a recording walkman by the bed, sort of like I’d wake up for like a minute, sing the hook line into it, and crash back to sleep again, play it back the next morning and say, “Aaah- that’s neat.” I’d hear “Lisa’s party, lisa’s party” like that, because that was the line that was going on in the dreams, this the hook line… And it brought the dream back.

M: back to the Tear Garden stuff – what is it like recording them?

E: It’s absolutely wonderful.

M: What’s a typical recording session like with these people? How is it different from your own recording sessions?

E: With Pink Dots recording sessions, we’re just using a little 8 track recording studio in a barn. It’s like very primitive equipment, we got a couple of effects, things and we make the best of what we got – it’s not much, but we try. Tear Garden is like a 40-track studio in Vancouver. You got these really ideal situations where you don’t have to think of the technical side of it – our own engineers as well, generally. In Mushroom Studios there is an engineer who really loves what he’s doing. There’s Cevin who is an absolute dynamo, brings the best out of everybody. It really works, the combination of personalities on the Tear Garden – it turns the whole month into a party, and it’s something that’s worth repeating again and again.

M: Now tell what happened with this last set of Tear Garden releases, because, I mean, Tired Eyes Slowly Burning had a lot of edge, and was very a hard-focused album, with a lot of songs that stand alone very strongly, and they also seem to flow together very well. It was that combination that seemed to work well and I noticed with Last Man To Fly, I was expecting a Tired Eyes Slowly Burning kind of feel and it was completely different.

E: Completely threw everything on its head, didn’t it?

M: There were a couple of interesting songs, but in general it was more of a mood album the sort of thing you would play as one continuous run, rather than anything you could – there were only a couple of tracks you could lift off and they could stand on their own.

E: It’s is a mood album. You hear Last Man To Fly in the very order that it was recorded. I questioned that at the time, like, “Ya can’t make the order of the album simply the chronological order of recording”, but actually now I couldn’t hear it any other way. There are a lot of loose pieces, like the Running Man, was one glorious jam, with a little bit of structure in there, like chord progression was obviously written before. There were a lot of other things which were almost live onto tape, like, the two acoustic songs. There were pieces where Cevin and Dwayne had the music prepared before we got into the studio and basically said, “write some lyrics for that” and try to fit the melody into that, like R&V. There were a lot of different approaches for Last Man To Fly.

M: what about Sheila Liked The Rodeo?

E: Sheila Liked The Rodeo, you’re getting the hard jams live onto 2-track – the second half of it. we improvised an awful lot of it – just straight live everything, vocals, everything. Whereas the first half of it, the music was prepared by Cevin and Dwayne, mostly, apart from Sybil the Spider, and all I had to do was write the lyrics and sing.

M: so you’re saying that for Sheila Liked The Rodeo, that’s basically all you did. You had lyrics written before you came in?

E: No I wrote them on the spot.

M: You wrote them as you were jamming?

E: I wrote them as I was either jamming, or sort of in the studio… The whole Tear Garden project was done like that. It was a very creative time.

M: You guys going to do be doing another project soon?

E: Don’t know when. We will, cause we’re extremely fond of Last Man To Fly.

M: Speaking of another project, you were supposed to do something with Bill Leeb.

E: Time in a way didn’t permit it, and I must admit, he sent me some basic material which is good, for sure, but if I actually added my own contribution to it, in the way Bill wanted me to add it, it would have sounded exactly like Tear Garden, and I don’t think it is right. Tear Garden is Tear Garden, y’know.

M: Which Tear Garden? They’re so different.

E: Oh true… Well, like the mini-album, Centre Bullet. That kind of thing, which I didn’t think it is such a positive thing – you gotta move on…

M: Do you think it’s because Leeb actually wanted to produce a Tear Garden type of thing, or was it accidental?

E: I don’t know – that’s something you’d have to ask Bill.

M: So basically that’s not likely to happen? That was three years ago, now.

E: I don’t really know… I don’t have so much contact with Bill. I have much more contact with Skinny Puppy as a whole, they’ve been close friends for many years now. There’s a good chemistry there between the Dots and Puppy.

M: Here is another question regarding projects, what exactly is the difference between Dots material and your solo work?

E: Well, the solo stuff is absolutely conceived. The Pink Dots, it is very much 5 people who are putting in their ideas, and it’s better that way. It wouldn’t be a band if it was “I want it done this way, right down to the letter.”

M: But you used to do that in the beginning with the first couple of albums…

E: There were elements of it, not quite as hard as that, but certainly they played their parts. But you see, I do have that side to me, and the only way I can reasonably realize that need is to make solo albums as well.

M: So basically the solo album is your opportunity to do what YOU want, without anybody else meddling with it.

E: That’s true, ad they’re highly constructive…

M: None of this improvisation stuff?

E: Not really, well, there are elements of it at times but there is a very good idea of what I want to do before I record it.

M: In 1986 you were singing ’89s a good year. Was that 1889 or 1989?

E: 1789, actually. The year of the French Revolution…

M: Why did you move out of London’s east end?

E: Basically I had a dutch girlfriend at the time, and I never felt particularly comfortable in the East End of London. It was a tough childhood. I’d never seem to be able to completely shake that off, the only way to really do it was to get the hell out of the country.

M: That was what, 10 years ago?

E: 9 years ago.

M: And, you ever look back on that decision?

E: London’s a nice place to visit now. We play there every year, maybe I go back there at x-mas, to see my mum. It’s great for about 10 days, but I wouldn’t live there.

M: Whereabouts in Holland are you living?

E: A little town called Nijmegen, on the German border.

M: Why? Most artists seem to flock to Amsterdam…

E: A Long complicated story, really. We lived in Amsterdam for 5 years, but we were squatting, and they knocked the house down. Our friend, Niels, who is in the band, had a farm close to Nijmegen, and we stayed in the caravan for 6 months because we couldn’t get a place to live, at all. Basically the people who deal out the houses say that you don’t earn enough. Eventually with a few well-chosen lies, we convinced someone to let us hire a flat, and Nijmegen was the closest city.

M: So you still making the rent?

E: Oh we always made the rent, but in Holland officially, it’s supposed to be a 5th of your income. Our reality, it was more like half of our income, and it’s either lie and get somewhere to live, or try and go back to England, which would also be impossible now, because how the hell can you get a place there? It’s a very tough time.

M: Alan tells me that Xymox is also based in Nijmegen. Is there any connection between the two of you?

E: We don’t know Xymox at all.

M: Really? How big is Nijmegen?

E: Nijmegen is a city of 100,000 people.

M: And you don’t know their music at all? You must have been asked this question several times…

E: I know their first 12″, but I didn’t get along with their stuff later. I thought it was a little programmed for my own personal tastes. There is one other great band in Nijmegen which who hardly anybody knows called U-Slashes, there used to be a band called Mechanic Commando… They are wonderful, but not so many people know them over here.

M: What label are they on?

E: Their own.

M: That’s probably why they’re not getting very much international distribution…

E: It’s true, but they deserve to really.

M: what kind of stuff is it?

E: Nowadays, it’s quite folky mysterious, a little like current-93.

M: I’m not familiar with Current 93.

E: Ohh, it’s a good band.

M: Ok, here’s another one…The press release goes on about…

E: Oh the cult in Tucson Arizona! [the 4th secret]

M: I spoke to you two years ago when you played the Foufounnes show, I asked you about “The Prophet” monniker, and you said yeah it’s a bunch of baloney, a bit of humour. And you start off in this press release with the cult in Arizona thing..

E: I must explain about this Tucson, Arizona thing, it’s not our story – it’s a story concocted by a very imaginative spokesperson at Caroline.

M: So it is actually fiction?

E: There isn’t a cult in Tucson, Arizona at all… I’m actually quite thankful for that.

M: The last question I got for you is one from one of your fans – are you going to be touring Israel soon?

E: We already played there.

M: You did? Did you like it?

E: It was fascinating. We played two shows, we were a bit wary of it, before we went, but when we got there it was like the reality of the place isn’t anything like it’s presented to you on the news, y’know? Two sold-out shows, a lot of very friendly people, be them Israeli or Palestinian. Tel-aviv is actually a very relaxed city; I won’t say the same for Jerusalem. We didn’t play in Jerusalem, we can’t play in Jerusalem, actually. It’s a very divided city; fascinating, but by God I wouldn’t [undecipherable]…

M: There is also a Hebrew connection with the Shadow Weaver. The press release says that the title is a translation from ancient Hebrew, but it doesn’t say that the story is a Hebrew story. Is it something you came up with yourself, or what?

E: Malachai? It’s “The angel stands in the shadow of god.”

M: There is also an inscription in Shadow Weaver, “Mezhkal Zhaveeda”

E: That’s another bunch of baloney…

M: What is the Shadow Weaver story?

E: It’s not so much a story – it’s a quest for enlightenment. It’s the all-powerful being is just outside the corner of your eye. He who weaves the shadows, he who is in between the dimensions, but is absolutely there, but where?

M: Is this a concept of yours, or is it a mythological concept that is…

E: Just a passing thought, really, but a really big passing thought.

M: So that’s the idea behind the Shadow Weaver title. Does that continue, is that a theme for the albums?

E: It’s an ongoing theme that started with Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, went through The Maria Dimension, and sort of crystallized in Shadow Weaver. Where it will go from here, I don’t know. I’m busy writing for the next album already.

M: What is that theme, can you quantify it in better words than I’ve used?

E: Tentatively, the next album is “The Politics of Agony”. But it’s tentative.

M: What’s the concept with that? Is it the same theme you’ve been running with for the past 4 albums?

E: I don’t know, they tend to take shape with passing of time. It’s very early to say more about it at this particular time. It makes sense when we’re actually recording it, all the minds are focused on it. At the moment all the minds are focused on the tour but the first steps have been taken towards that next record.

M: You seem to be doing a sort of hopscotch tour.. All over the country…

E: All over the world, actually.

M: How is it going so far?

E: Fairly well, in America. It seems quite remarkable. We’ve sold out in a few places already over here. Biggest shot was Los Angeles, 500 people turned up at the Roxy, on Sunday night; nobody expected it – the club or us. It goes better here than in Europe these days..

M: Is it? It used to be that you had your success in Europe and the North America was a flash in the pan for you…

E: Europe is a patchwork. France is always a great country for the LPDs. Germany, it’s like little pockets of fanatics. Holland is by nature, a very trendy country, and you’re either in favour or not in favour, and I’d say we’re not particularly in favour in Holland at the moment, although there’s a loyal bunch. England it goes well now, where it never used to. And Eastern Europe is like the big blossoming flower.

M: What kind of shows are you playing in Eastern Europe?

E: It’s still to come on this tour – we’re going to do a little of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and probably Moscow. We’ve been invited. Maybe we’ll go to Japan for the first time as well.

M: You have significant sales in Japan to justify that?

E: I have no idea what our sales are like there. We’ve just been invited. If we’ve been invited, sure we’re going to go to Japan!

M: Why not… The Australia, New Zealand tour comes next, ay?

E: We haven’t been invited there yet, but who knows, I’m sure there is a bunch of people who know us there, but you get surprised all the time.

M: How many Canadian dates have you played so far?

E: Just the one in Vancouver.

M: And how was that one?

E: For me, personally, I thought it was the worst show of the whole tour. It was one of those seminars with 4 bands… All these bands perform “for the industry” kind of thing, We just kinda wandered into it, not knowing what it was all about, and it was a 4-band bill. It was a disastrous sound on stage, and we were only allowed to play for 40 minutes. The whole band tends to hate those things. If we can avoid them, we will avoid them, but there was no choice. It was just the time we arrived in Vancouver and this is going on all over the city for that week, and you can’t afford to wait until the festival is past and then play, you have to play when you arrive, and we had little choice in the matter. I mean, the people liked it; I just didn’t personally like it.

M: Is Montreal the second and only Canadian stop, or are you going to do other ones?

E: At the moment it looks like it. It doesn’t look like we’re going to play Toronto. It’s still in the wind a little bit, but Montreal looks like probably the main show of Canada. It’s always a place that we love to go to.

M: Why?

E: The crowd.. The audience, yeah, it’s like playing Paris.

M: Really? How is it different from the rest of North America then?

E: Well, the fact that the audience is French, really makes a big difference, sort of – for some reason we really connect with French people. LIke in Paris, the next time we play in Paris, we have to do three shows in a row, it’s sold out in Paris whenever we play there. It’s a special connection.

M: And you’d say Montreal is one of the best responses in North America, or one of the best crowds?

E: It’s both really. The two Foufounnes shows were pretty full, but the reaction is what counts more. If 100 people reacted like that, it would really make us feel good. It’s on par, sizewise with a lot of crowds we’re playing to these days. All up the west coast you get 400 – 500 people, that seems more to be more the rule rather than the exception these days, which is quite good for us.

A: I suppose the only lingering question I have is, if you are disappointed by the recording quality of the Lovers, have you ever thought of re-recording it in the studio, at least those first four songs?

E: I wouldn’t… Yeah, that smacks too much of going back. I’ve always been allergic to going back.

A: Why is that?

E: I don’t know why. It’s just a thing of me, really. It’s like Laugh China Doll, if I re-recorded Laugh China Doll, I’d do it completely differently, because I’m quite fond of the songs, i’m not very fond of the arrangements or the sounds I used. But I couldn’t go back.

A: Does going back, for example, bring back unpleasant memories associated with the songs?

E: No, it’s just a need to move forward all the time, to sort of like, we’ve re-recorded a lot of songs which were on the very old cassettes, y’know. I would say around only half of them improved the originals. Like, Light in My Little Girls eyes was less than the original. Plasma Twins was WAY less than the original! That’s why the original appeared on the pink box, because I *LOVED* the original. Some with drastic re-interpretations, like The Blessing, I thought that was good, and Tanz Der China Dolls is certainly good, but y’know it’s a question of, if you got so many new songs that are just waiting there to be recorded, why go back to old ones?

A: I see your point… If it’s any consolation, however, I should mention that I’m in contact with about 70 fans around the world through the computer internet –

E: Yeah – that’s great!

A: I can tell you more about that when I see you, but there are quite a few of them that are longing, hoping and praying for another album that is sort of the same style as Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, and if you THINK that it’s likely that something might turn out like that if you do this collaboration with Bill Leeb, then you’ll get the appreciation of the masses with that! It’s something to think about, anyway.

E: Well we’re not desiring the appreciation of the masses, y’know.

A: It seems to be that that was your goal with The Maria Dimension though –

E: Oh no, no, it’s just the way it worked out. No – it’s just the mood of the moment in the studio that produced The Maria Dimension and coincidentally it seemed to catch the mood of the masses; we don’t know why y’know. It’s never even considered. It’s quite possible there will be something along the lines of Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, something from the Dots, or from the Tear Garden, again, but it won’t be planned – we never make a commercial career move – it’s completely alien to us.

 

Interview Legendary Pink Dots: Edward Ka-Spel & Ryan Moore
By Ivan Drucker Portland OR, May 5 1993

 

This is an interview I conducted for KLC radio in Portland about three weeks ago. In retrospect, I realize that I was quite flustered at the time (for any number of reasons) and so this interview is far from perfect…there are a lot of things I meant to ask and didn’t, and there are some things I don’t know why I asked at all, but in any event, here it is. I hope you enjoy it. (This was conducted before I was on this (cloud Zero) mailing list, and thus I was in communication with very few Dots fans…)

 

me: I have a friend who saw you in Los Angeles, said your show was great…

EK: That was a good show…definitely the best of the tour.

RM: Probably one of the top three since I’ve been playing with the band.

me: How is this tour going…how far are you in it?

RM: We’re almost exactly at the halfway point now.

EK: Yeah, L. A. was the halfway point…although there may still be a couple of shows coming on that make this the halfway point.

me: I imagine you’re meeting plenty of different sorts of audiences?

EK: It’s similar…a lot depends on the age of the audience…when it’s an all-ages show it tends to go better than if it’s an over-21 show. This particularly American phenomenon…we don’t have this in Europe at all. L.A. was an all-ages show, sold out…it was an extremely electric night for us. We almost had slam-dances [laughs]…which I’ve never seen a slam-dance at a Pink Dots show before.

RM: Crowd-surfing.

EK: Crowd-surfing, that was what it’s called. There was only one person…

RM: And I suppose it was actually disruptive

EK: It was during the slowest song, it was strange!

me: Really, what song?

EK: “Close Your Eyes, You Can Be A Space Captain.”

me: Oh, you played that! Are you going to play that tonight?

EK; Don’t know, depends. We change it from night to night.

me: Oh, that’s interesting…that’s one of my favorite tracks actually.

EK: Well maybe we’ll play it then! [laughs]

me: The new records — Shadow Weaver part one and part two — to me those sounded as though they represented a shift musically, in terms of song structure and the way the songs and sounds were set up…was that a conscious decision?

EK: It represents the band at a particular time. It represents a band that had just changed. Ryan joined us for the Shadow Weaver project, and Martijn had just come into the band as well, and it’s his first recordings with us. So it’s like two new inputs into the band. And to a point we were getting to know each other, in these recordings, and it was, you know, very rewarding for the old members of the band as well. There was a lot of experimentation, a lot of improvisation, in the studio. It’s always nice to have a fresh, new breeze going through the band.

RM: As far as being a conscious decision, how everything turned out, I would say it was more of like an unconscious decision. It was more a result of throwing the five of us in the studio, having a few peanut butter sandwiches, and that’s just what would come out…I would say that the common thread between it all is the fact that there was little or no pre-planning.

EK: That’s true, and it was fresh in the aftergrowth of the Tear Garden recordings, as well, very soon afterwards, which had lifted us quite a lot, we enjoyed that. That’s where we met Ryan, he plays on the Tear Garden, and he flew six thousand miles to join us…[laughs]

me: I thought it was interesting how different the two Tear Garden albums were.

RM: You mean “Last Man to Fly” with what came before…I think once again with that you hear the effect of different people bringing in their influences…

EK: It has to be said that “Tired Eyes Slowly Burning” you actually hear how the Tear Garden itself was evolving. The first side, actually, all the music was composed before I even got there…things that cEvin had made. All I had to do was simply write the lyrics and sing. The second side, however, was written there and then in the studio between the band, as such. The second side, I think, relates very much more towards “Last Man to Fly” than the first side does. So you are seeing an evolution…it’s not just a sudden “flip the coin.”

me: There have been a number of lineup changes over the years…has that, aside from bringing in new influences and producing new results, have you felt that has changed what the band is in some way?

EK: Essentially the thought and spirit within the band I think is completely unchanged from the very first day when we sat in this cold little room, wrapped up in overcoats because there was no heating, and jammed away for fifteen hours. I think that technically the band has come along quite a way, like myself and Phil, the two originals, we both play better than we did back then ’cause we never even touched a keyboard before that time. But sure, new people coming in all the time, it must have its influence and it must change the sound in subtle ways but I think the Pink Dots always sounds like Pink Dots. It’s a band that’s never made a career move in its entire existence, it never will, it can’t…more like it’s this underground institution, and it’s really an institution, it’s a lot of lunacy… [laughs]

me: What kind of following do you have at this point?

EK: Well…a very curious following, I would say. I mean, in L. A., someone was arrested before the show because he was trying to get in with a gun. In San Francisco I was given a dead scorpion, a plastic rat [laughs], some kind of amulet which is obviously some kind of magical thing…I mean, all of this is blowing my mind. I have no idea why anybody would want to come to a show with a gun (I actually don’t want to know either), I have no idea why anyone would want to give me a dead scorpion or anything like that…I think in some ways these people are actually getting the wrong idea. A lot of the people are quite obsessive who come to the Pink Dots shows. A lot of the people are gentle, sensitive, great people…but some go a little over the line and sometimes make you want to escape in the corner, to be honest.

RM: I would sort of classify it as a small but loyal following. I mean it’s around the world, in Europe, America, in Israel…

EK: There’s even one fan who’s actually come from Belgium to see this tour. That’s quite dedicated, I’d say…In America especially, we encounter a lot of travellers, some people travel like 800 miles a show, day and night just to get to the show.

me: I’m actually quite excited because I’ve never seen the band live before.

RM: Oh! Well, you never know what’s going to happen…I would say the one thing that sort of typifies the present mode of the band and going on tour is that you never know what’s going to happen. Every night is different, it’s a constant mutation in the sound, and how we approach the songs, from one night to the next and definitely from the beginning to the end of the tour it’s changed.

EK: And it all depends on the atmosphere. We’re very sensitive to the audience itself and the space that we’re playing in. San Francisco was very different to Los Angeles even though we actually played the same songs in those two shows (bar one, we just changed it by one song). It’s quite a voyage, in itself, the tour, musically for us, not just what we see, but…

RM: There’s all sorts of factors, the kind of which I can’t even put my finger on, that make these changes.

me: You make, I think, a very personal sort of music but you express that in a lot of different ways…I’m curious as to how you feel the expression of ideas through music and how those are presented, be they political ideas or personal ideas…

EK: It’s entirely personal. I’m not trying to preach to anybody. I like people to fill in their own spaces in the lyrics. They may actually come up with interpretations that are completely different to how I saw those particular songs, and that’s fine, that’s what it’s meant to be like…I get a little allergic when people sort of like hold me up as the person who speaks the Great Truth…it’s only one truth, it’s my own ideas, it’s my own view and it could be completely wrong. And I can also change my mind from time to time! I deserve that right, I’m just a human being, you know…

RM: I think the thing that some people miss in Edward’s lyrics is actually the fact that he’s someone with a big sense of humor. I think many things have a very ironic quality to them.

me: I’d say that would be hard to miss, actually…

EK: Well, some people do miss it completely, unfortunately [laughs]. Like the guy from Brasil who wrote to me just saying how intensely depressed he was all the time, and…*You Are To Blame!* [suddently pointing his finger outward], pointing the finger at me. I mean, what do you do! I don’t know this guy, yet he’s blaming me for his perpetual depression.

RM: I guess it’s something that’s open to interpretation, so what one person could conceive as, you know, the grimmest, most depressing, darkest, gloomiest thing you could possibly imagine, another person could get an image of soaring through the clouds with images of sun beaming down.

EK: In some ways it’s all things, it’s like all colors, it represents the entire spectrum. There are dark moments, for sure, because who amongst us doesn’t have a dark moment when he looks inside himself.

me: Have you encountered any problems either in touring, or artistically, or with your record label that impede what you’re doing?

EK: You mean the industry…I mean nobody dictates to us what we must do, and any attempts at that have been absolutely shot down at birth. Once in a while Play It Again Sam, the record company, will say, “Can we hear a demo tape” and we will automatically say, “No.” And we simply deliver the master tape, and the deal is that they have to release it. Sometimes they don’t promote it, because they weren’t so fond of Malachai, it went very much out of the lunatic threshold for them…and yet it’s doing as well as anything else. I mean, the Pink Dots does. We reserve the right to take the journey where we want to take it, where we want to see it go. And the album will have its own head space…we already know what we want to do for the next album, we know the kind of direction we want to take it — and it’s a constantly changing direction.

RM: To elaborate more on that subject, the other side of that is that necessarily because our involvement with the music business is so minimal due to the sort of loathesome characteristics contained therein, that necessarily keeps the band small. Because we don’t want to play that game…that also has the effect of keep it at a very underground level.

EK: We can’t relate to the music industry as such. We’re with a label that’s good, I think…I would never put them down.

me: I remember reading that you said you were on finally on a record company that didn’t rip you off.

EK: That’s right, and it’s a relationship that goes over years. Everybody before, actually, treated us appalingly before this label. At least there’s a nice mutual respect. They stick with us as we stick with them. We actually haven’t had a written contract for five years, so it shows there’s actually a decent level of trust — and I like it this way.

RM: We’re also self-managed, as well, so there’s nobody pulling our strings really. We do whatever we want.

me: Was Shadow Weaver conceived of as a two-part project?

EK: It was conceived as a two-project, but it was a very loose concept. I mean the way we worked it out is that we noticed that there were a whole number of songs in a particular mood, that made there a subtle journey within itself, and that’s what became part one. The wild experiments we had — the improvisations, the mini-symphonies, things like that, they sort of like seemed to sort of go together very well on part two. And the completion of the two parts, there was actually a three-month bridge in between. We hadn’t actually finished part two when part one came out, you know, we carried on working for a little bit, but largely we wrote them side by side.

me: You, I think, create sort of a fanciful image of the band, in your names, they way they’re presented, in the artwork, and it kind of varies from record to record and I think it’s interesting to see what overlaps from one record to the other in terms of various characters or themes that are repeated. I’m curious as to where you draw upon that from, or whether it just comes from somewhere, or…

EK: Impossible to say. It’s like one big tapestry, really, and it’s a tapestry that sort of like is extended and extended, and sure characters reappear, references come…I mean, musical references like “We Bring The Day”…sort of the tune of the little song part of “We Bring The Day” actually appeared once before for ten seconds on “Khataclimici China Doll.” Things like that reoccur…reference points, points of reflection that you have to bring it, to tie it all together. I like things that way. Pink Dots never actually made a concept album; in a way the tapestry is the concept.

RM: And who knows where it leads…I mean it’s kind of like now we’re on a new trail and definitely there’s lots to explore there. I’m pretty excited about it…I kind of find these latest records, you know, it’s just the sound of we’re kind of finding our way. There’s lots of possibilities.

me: What do you see the relationship as being between the Dots and your solo work, or the Dots and side projects?

EK: It’s a bit within this idea of the tapestry, they go side by side. On a personal level, the Pink Dots is very much five people putting in their ideas, it’s very important. The solo records, actually, reflect my need sometimes to be a dictator. I can’t be a dictator with a band, I’m not that kind of person and don’t want to be, but I do have a need, within me, to have complete control on certain things, and that’s what ends up as a solo album because I can start dictating to myself, and take it the way I want to go. It’s just one side of me, and as long as the solo records are there that need is satisfied, and the band doesn’t feel like it’s in chains or anything. I don’t want that…a band is a band.

 

PERIOD PIECES

AFTER 13 ALBUMS, THE LEGENDARY PINK BOTS STILL PLAY BY THEIR RULES

By Ted Simons | published April 28, 1993

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Attention! The prophet Qa’Sepel is about to speak:

“It shocks me when people seriously think I have answers to anything,” says the tongue-in-cheek, self-anointed seer. “No one has all the answers. No one ever reaches their ultimate destination. And in a way, I’m kind of glad of that.”

Qa’Sepel, better known as Edward Ka-Spel, is the front man and chief songwriter for the Legendary Pink Dots, a longtime Netherlands-based cult band. With Ka-Spel’s prodigious imagination leading the way, the Dots have released 13 mystical, hippie-dipped albums since first forming in London a dozen years ago. Ka-Spel has also released four solo CDs (a retrospective is due next month), and he has collaborated with members of Skinny Puppy in an art-noise band called Tear Garden.

Most of Ka-Spel’s work is charmingly moody. It’s rich in psychedelic earwash with plenty of electronic gimmickry on the edges. But even with all the artifice, Ka-Spel’s music can be curiously tuneful and attractive. Especially engaging–most notably with the Pink Dots–is Ka-Spel’s all-consuming gothic mindset. Ka-Spel plays the part of the English eccentric with panache. His songs are composed from an inward line of sight and his sing-talk sounds like a wobbly Syd Barrett before the fall.

On “Stitching Time,” a magnetic opus from the Dots’ 1992 disc, Shadow Weaver, Ka-Spel croons sullenly that, “The rules of the game are all mine for the making/You’ll cheat all the same, but you’re mine for the taking/There’s no special favors and no one forsaken/I live for you all, but I’ll die alone.”

Such evocative navel gazing has made for a devoted battalion of Dots fans worldwide. But anyone looking for scripture in the Ka-Spel canon will likely find his private “prophet” looking straight back at him.

“My music allows space for interpretation,” Ka-Spel says, his British accent dripping long-distance from a Florida hotel room. “I once wrote a song [Space Between’] based on the idea that events have feelings. We played the song at a show here in America, and this one time a girl came up and said, ‘I know what that song’s about. It’s about abortion, isn’t it?’ I thought about it, and I could see how she thought what she did.

“Those kinds of things can be scary,” Ka-Spel continues. “My music is very, very personal with many, many messages. A lot of emotion goes into it. A lot of questions are asked with very few answers. It’s all very much a personal search–a realization of how utterly small everyone in the human race really is. Including me.”

Ka-Spel’s existential crusade includes an array of offbeat visions. An example is the Dots’ 1988 concept album, The Golden Age. It tells the tale of a psychotic slacker who thinks his former lover, now a wildly succesful model, is taunting him via TV shows and magazine ads. Other Dots ditties range from “The Death of Jack the Ripper” (off 1990’s The Crushed Velvet Apocalpyse), on which Ka-Spel intones a “Jack is dead” mantra over the sound of dripping water, to Shadow Weaver’s “Prague Spring,” a subtle but stunning neoclassical piece.

The resulting eclecticism brings to mind early-’70s art-rock acts like Can and Faust, along with such disparate avant-gardians as Syd Barrett and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Ka-Spel says he doesn’t mind the inevitable comparisons–not much, anyway.

“No, it doesn’t bother me. I just don’t think the Syd Barrett comparison’s a good one. Nobody could be Syd Barrett,” he says. “He’s a unique character and such a magnificent songwriter. It would be a disservice to him to say we sound similar.”

The Legendary Pink Dots’ most recent album is Malachai/Shadow Weaver Part 2. It was recorded at the same time as last year’s Shadow Weaver disc. But Part 2 is more ambient and textured than its predecessor. The latter release also incorporates a slightly more acoustic soundscape with “special guests” Patrick Q. Wright (viola, violin) and Steven Stapleton (exotic devices) adding to the efforts of Dots regulars Phil “Silver Man” Knight (keyboards), Martijn de Kleer (guitar), Ryan Moore (bass) and the aptly named Niels Van Hoornblower (sax, clarinet, flute).

“We like using acoustic instruments very much,” Ka-Spel says, belying his band’s reputation for electro high jinks. Ka-Spel maintains that “a sampled cello isn’t quite right. It’s like a blurred Polaroid. Electronics should only be used for sounds that you can’t get naturally.”

But the Pink Dots are still most “legendary” for their more adventurous noise applications: sampled car horns, dentists’ drills, the rhythmic bluster of someone snoring like a sailor–they’re all in evidence throughout the Shadow Weaver discs. One of the band’s more inventive audio ideas was to use a creaky floorboard for percussion on a Malachai song titled, imaginatively enough, “On the Boards.”

“We simply put a contact mic on a noisy floorboard and stepped on the board for rhythm,” says Ka-Spel. He adds that the original version of the six-minute song went on for a full 17 minutes. “The person ‘playing’ the board couldn’t walk for a week,” he laughs. “On the Boards” likely won’t be performed when the Dots hit the Roxy on Wednesday. Ka-Spel cites too many “exotic devices” needed to re-create the song live. But the fact that Ka-Spel and crew are even touring at all this spring is something of an achievement. The Dots’ current U.S. tour had a shaky launch, to say the least.

“We started out the tour with the worst disaster in the entire history of the band,” Ka-Spel says, a sense of wonder slowing his voice. “Someone stole $6,000 from us in Amsterdam right when we were leaving. It put us in an atrocious position. We recovered, but when we got to New York, we learned our tour bus was in Montreal. We also learned our first show, in Washington, D.C., had been moved up a night. So we had to drive up to Montreal, back to New York and then down to Washington without stopping. But we made it. And we played well when we got there.”

Ka-Spel’s expecting a much smoother ride the rest of the tour. And he says he’s especially looking forward to the Phoenix date.

“We’ve been there a couple of times,” he says of the Valley. “In 1987, we opened for Skinny Puppy at a wonderful place called Crash. It was a brilliant space to play, great atmosphere. I still consider that show as one of my all-time favorites.

 

Machine Power, Number Two. Winter 1992.
Interview with Silverman (Phillip Knight) by David Faris

Keyboardist and programmer Phil Knight, better known as “the Silver Man”, has been collaborating with Edward Ka-spel and an evolving lineup of musicians for over a decade, producing progressive/expressive music under the group name The Legendary Pink Dots. A wide range of musical styles have been explored and integrated into the Dots’ distinctive sound, a dark modern psychadelia where innovative electronics meet Ka-Spel’s brooding lyrics, where bursts of noise collide with pop melodies and tribal rhythms, where the unexpected is in turn shocking and pleasantly surprising. The Legendary Pink Dots embarked on their second North American tour as a group in July of 1991. David S. Faris spoke with Phil Knight by phone prior to the Dots’ spectacular Toronto show about Pink Dots, crop circles, and the apocalypse….

DSF: Edward Ka-Spel’s solo tour with Skinny Puppy back in 1987 was the first exposure that North Americans got to the Legendary Pink Dots live. Why did Edward perform solo, rather than having the Pink Dots come over?

PK: That was due to the connection with Cevin Key from Skinny Puppy, really. Cevin was a great fan of what we did, and he made it possible to get Edward over for a few shows, and also to work with Skinny Puppy. That in turn helped introduce audiences in North America to the music of Legendary Pink Dots, and made it possible for the Pink Dots to tour as a unit in 1989.

DSF: The LPDs are often associated with the “industrial music” category, maybe because of your work with Skinny Puppy, and the fact that you operated in that field. Do you think that’s very accurate?

PS: There are of course elements of industrial music in what we do, because we work quite heavily with electronic, but I think it’s actually rather difficult to put the Pink Dots into any one box. People find it very difficult to describe our music, you know… we tend to bleed over between a number of boxes, whether it’s industrial, psychadelic, avante-garde, pop music, whatever. There are elements of all that in what we do, and I think that’s healthy. In a way, it’s the trend for the nineties, which is more of a synthesis, you know; the nineties are very much a sign of people synthesizing all the different types of music together.

DSF: “The Maria Dimension” seems to have Eastern Influences incorporated with the earlier electronic sound, and you’re using more traditional acoustic instruments.

PK: Yah. Well, we recorded “The Maria Dimension” in a very different way. Quite often, Edward and I do a lot of pre-composition work before we record albums, but in the earlier days of the Pink Dots, we used to leave much more to chance, and sort of really get into band compositions that were spontaneous in the studio, but there’ve been so many lineup changes in the Pink Dots over the years that Edward and I had to, in a sense, fall back into more sort of pre-compositional work. With “The Maria Dimension”, however, we purposely didn’t do the pre-composition work. We just wanted to do it spontaneously, and get the other members really working on the compositions with us as we recorded them. It provided for a wonderful atmosphere, and we had a great time, and we really think that the music came out great because of that.

DSF: One of the most powerful tracks on the album is “The Grain Kings”. It mentions on the sleeve that the lyrics are influenced by author Keith Roberts. Are they very directly related, or are they more spontaneously composed as well?

Pk: It wasn’t such a literal influence. I think just in general Edward enjoys the work of Keith Roberts, and… I mean “The Grain Kings” has a lot to do with a phenomenon that’s happening all over the world at the moment, and it’s happening particularly in England, where these strange circles have been appearing in the corn fields, and nobody knows how they’re created. It seems to be some sort of energy vortex or link from another dimension that’s creating these circles that in the last year have been getting more and more complicated, turning into very complicated piktograms, and it’s obviously an intelligence working behind these pictograms. I think that it’s one of the most interesting phenomenon that’s happening right at this moment in the world, and it’s something that, you know, you can’t say it’s a hoax, and you can’t say it’s UFO’s landing, or something like that. It’s really some sort of intelligence trying to come through, and I think it’s trying to shake us up, the human race, and to say, “Look, you know, there are things greater than you”, and I think it’s very relevant to the times, very important.

DSF: The lyrics of the Pink Dots are usually very tragic, dealing with themes of desperation and the apocalypse. There are also references to altered states of perception and dream-like experiences.

PK: It’s all a sign of the times, it’s not… ok, a lot of people say it’s the new age, and you can put whatever label on that you want, but the fact is is that there is some expanding consciousness going on, and either you’re going to go with it, or you’re not, you know. The term apocalypse, I think people always look at that in a very black sense, and think of maybe nuclear holocaust scenes and things like that, but you know, it’s not necessarily so. I think there’s movements happening all over the world, the old ways are breaking down, like in Europe, the East European countries are now really shifting, and things are shifting and coming back together in different ways. We’re a bunch of people that like to read the signs of the times, and I think that for a lot of people who also are going through similar things, and changing their lives, the Pink Dots provides a connection and a comfort for them, that there’s other people out there who are also taking an interest and are aware of the same sort of things going on. Maybe the leaders of the world aren’t aware of it at the moment, but they’re gonna be very soon.

DSF: Do you find that you make much more contact with people through your music, and make much change at all, or do you think it’s missing the mark, if that’s what you’re trying to do?

PK: Well, we get alot of mail, and I think people do sort of understand us, you know. Of course, there are people who misunderstand us. I mean there’s always people that are going to want to put you up on a pedestal and make you into some big cult thing, you know, like the Temple of Psychick Youth or something, and I think those people miss the point. We don’t want to be put up there. We may use names like “The Prophet Qa’sepel”, and stuff like that, but I mean that’s our sense of humour, and I think there are people that misinterpret us who don’t realize that we have a sense of humour.

DSF: What’s the origin of the Silver Man persona? Is it from your stage makeup?

PK: Yah.. I mean, I’m not going to be going ’round with my stage makeup, wearing a silver face on this tour. Its not something I want to do for the rest of my life. The name “The Silver Man” came from a song on “The Lovers” album, called “Flowers for the Silver Man” and it’s sort of a character that I felt empathy with when we made that song, and that’s how I took on that name, but well, I’m not going to go around wearing a silver face for the rest of my life, you know… I’m me. The stage show can still be very dramatic, and I think there’s always a theatrical element to what we do. Edward is a very charismatic performer, I think, and uh.. you know, he still wears his cracks, and he’s still pretty intense on stage. It’s still a pretty intense stage show.

DSF: I’ve heard that there are plans for another Tear Garden album, as well as a for a collaboration with members of Front Line Assembly.

PK: Yeah, there are in fact. The tour’s arranged in quite a neat way, where we sort of start off in Canada, go into North America, around North America, and then end up in Canada at Vancouver, and Edward and I will be staying in Vancouver, because we’re both going to be working on a new Tear Garden project with Cevin and Dwayne. Edward was also planning a collaboration with Bill Leeb (FLA) but unfortunately in the end there just wasn’t the time, so that’s not going to be happening now.

DSF: There’s also a collaborative project with members of HNAS.

PK: That’s right, the MIMIR project. That’s also a very special project for us. I mean, we’re very close friends too with the HNAS guys, and it was a very interesting project. It’s music that I think people will be quite surprised by. It’s really something that’s totally different from the Pink Dots. It’s totally different from HNAS too, but you know, I would have to warn people that if they’re expecting to hear Edward’s voice, well, they can forget it, because it has no vocals on it. It’s purely instrumental music, and it’s quite intuitive music, and it has quite a dream-like atmosphere to it, but if people are expecting the Pink Dots, you know, don’t, because Mimir is something that’s totally outside of what we do with the Pink Dots, or with Tear Garden.

DSF: Have the Pink Dots released any video work, or documentation of their live shows on video?

PK: We have never done a video yet. We’ve never found, up to now, the right people that we feel have got the imagination to match our work. Sometimes I wonder whether video work might spoil that for people, because at the moment we get people to use their own imaginations, and I think that’s very important. I think, you know, there’s always a chance that we’re going to try some video work in the future, but we’re not in a hurry. If the right people come along and we think it could enhance what we do, then we’ll go for it.

DSF: After over ten years of recording and so many albums and side projects coming out, is there a chance that you’ll slow down in your output, or do you think that you’re going to be continuously inspired to produce more work?

PK: Oh yah, I mean, we never run out of ideas. There’s always fresh ideas coming up, and there’s always so much happening around to fuel new ideas. I think that our music, the music styles that we use in our music, you know, it ensures that we never get stale. We’re never in any one style or form of music, a formula that we get stuck in, because we always like to pull in so many different influences. They’re not conscious influences, I don’t think. I think we just like good music, and we like good sounds, and you know, we’ll use sounds and aspects from anywhere, whether it’s opening a window and sticking a microphone outside to get environmental sounds, or whether it’s using elements of ethnic rhythms and things, or just really going far out into the electronics sphere, or just beautiful simple pop melodies. I mean, it’s so wide for us, and that ensures that we never get stale with what we do.

 

There was a short interview with edward ka-spel in the sidelines section of melody maker (january 18 1992 issue, with primal scream on the cover). here it is, for your reading enjoyment:

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The point of philosophy, many have said, is that a question is only worth asking if the asnwer generates more questions. It’s the way the Legendary Pink Dots have always worked; forever on the move, a continual process of exploration, where each discovery acts as a new point of departure.

“Tanith and the Lion Tree” takes up the Dots’ lineage (stretching back over 10 years) and takes it further out still, but, this time, seer and lead singer, EDWARD KA-SPEL, has decided on a temporary solo voyage. Like before, its network of moods, processions and hallucinatory tales flourish and surrender to each other, but they’ve never been quite as disperse as this, subsuming into near silence as each element communicates and responds among the most delicate of threads. It’s like playing Chinese Whispers in Little Nemo’s Slumberland.

Ka-Spel has built up his own world through TLPD, so, was “Tanith” a deliberate continuation?

“In a way,” he says, “everything I do seems to have that kind of tendency towards it. Even with the new Dots’ album, that comes out soon, there are scenes that relate to what’s gone on before. It’s like an ever-widening tapestry. You gradually fill in the colours and make it a bit more detailed. It’s never complete, so there’s always a little bit of white that needs to be filled in, and you can fill it with one colour, or you could make it another little universe in itself.”

How real is this world for you?

“It’s real enough, because I’ve been living in it for so many years now you begin to wonder what is real, and what isn’t. Have you ever had an experience where you have this very vivid memory where you’ve done something? Maybe it’s a childhood memory, and you talk to your parents about it and they say, ‘What are you talking about? That never happened.’ It becomes apparent that you’re remembering a dream you had in your childhood.”

Tanith has a similar effect, as if it inhabits a strange borderworld between the concrete and the non-existent, a recollection you can’t quite place.

“That’s the sort of thing I try to put in writing,” Ka-Spel explains. “I’ve had a lot of experiences that way. It’s disorienting, it makes you question your entire history in the cold, hard reality. It feels less important in fact, and the fantasy, to me, shares that reality.”

People only enquire into the world around them to discover what their place in it is, but, since your world is never fully apparent, and all the elements you create can never be traced back to souce, this must be a very inconclusive project.

“I think that’s the story of TLPD. It ever expands, and becomes more colourful. It’s never complete, it never can be complete.”

Impossibility; the language of faith, the purest motivation.

Desi The Three-Armed Wonder Comic jondr@sco.com