The Legendary Pink Dots in concert is a memorably unique experience. I had the chance and the pleasure to see them for the first time in Basel, Switzerland, recently (on December 1st 2004) and really enjoyed the performance.

Before their show, the Legendary Pink Dots’ front-man Edward Ka-Spel was nice enough to sit and answer a few questions for Chain D.L.K..

Chain D.L.K.: It’s very nice to sit and talk with you. You seem in good spirits…
the Legendary Pink Dots: aaaahhhh… (laughs) here and there… (the candle on the table goes out) The candle went out as soon as I said that…

Chain D.L.K.: Hmmm, hope that’s not a curse…
the Legendary Pink Dots: I hope not… (both laugh, re-light candle)

Chain D.L.K.: I would like to talk a little bit about the tour. You have been touring an awful lot…
the Legendary Pink Dots: That’s for sure…

Chain D.L.K.: A different city every night: how do you keep up the energy?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Well, it’s a strange thing – mostly you really lose the energy in the days off. We were touring absolutely, indeed rigorously, a show every day for quite a while. And then we went to Greece. We had to get there first and we had to drive the entire length of Italy and take a ferry and so on. And then on the way back it was similar and we had a few days when we did not have shows, and that was when we tended to somehow lose energy, because you get into a rhythm and it’s hard when the rhythm is broken in a way. Even if you are doing nice things like visiting Pompei, which we all did in fact, walked around old ruins and so on. We needed more shows, we needed to get back into the whole… wheel going around again… because it’s like: what do you do when you’re not playing? We all went a little crazy in that time period.

Chain D.L.K.: So you need to go with the momentum?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Ya, we need that momentum. I think it is quite possible that we could easily play 20 or 30 shows in a row, if the drives weren’t too long. Because it becomes like this purpose, this goal, it is relentlessly a strive to achieve day after day.

Chain D.L.K.: It sounds like you really enjoy touring and playing live shows then.
the Legendary Pink Dots: Ya I do, I would say that. No matter what’s going on in your life, after a show I always, well normally, feel this kind of… sense of exhilaration that makes you feel that there is a point. And you need to feel there is a point.

Chain D.L.K.: Do you receive a lot of positive reaction from the audience? And do you feed off the audience energy when you’re playing?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Sure. It varies greatly from country to country, especially in Europe. You do not know how people will react from show to show… makes it a challenge. It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Like last night, we played to 30 quite drunk Austrians… not a pretty sight (laughs)… No, actually they’re very sweet in a way, I shouldn’t say that. But then literally just a week before there were like 600 Greek people who reacted in their own very peculiar, very Greek way…

Chain D.L.K.: What way is that?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Well, some of them want to hear the old stuff… and by old stuff I mean 16 year old stuff – it’s like woaaaa, that’s a long time ago, these songs you want to hear! (laughs) And some of them reacted to what we are doing now. We are not an 80’s band, we are not a 90’s band… the band has been going on unbroken. So obviously we are very much focused on what we are doing now.

Chain D.L.K.: Since you have been around for so long and have so many songs, how do you decide what to play and do you play the same set every night or do you change it?
the Legendary Pink Dots: It’s changed a bit here and there on this tour, but mostly in just shuffling songs around and we’ve pulled a few songs into the encores. We do need something to really settle with I find, like a set of songs, in order to develop it. Because if you change the songs too quickly then you feel that you haven’t given that song a fair chance. I think it’s good to give a song a chance to change or to grow. So to have a solid set is not a bad thing. I mean it really has changed since the beginning of the tour. Some songs have just taken on a new life, grown wings… it’s a nice feeling. Even the old ones, because we are playing old songs too, but mostly new interpretations of them.

Chain D.L.K.: What song is requested the most from an audience?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Usually “Belladonna”. But, we haven’t played that one for years (laughs).

Chain D.L.K.: I’ve read the lyrics in some of your CD booklets, they are absolutely beautiful…
the Legendary Pink Dots: Thank you.

Chain D.L.K.: Have you published a book of your lyrics?
the Legendary Pink Dots: There is a book. A friend of mine in San Francisco, she actually had the idea of putting the book together many years ago, but it was very slow to be realized, simply because I was so flaky basically (laughs). But ultimately I had a rush of energy and together we finished the book. Actually she made a lovely job of it, it’s a lovely looking thing.

Chain D.L.K.: Earlier, we were talking about the ring you wear on a chain around your neck. You said that a fan gave it to you. Do fans often give you little mementos and souvenirs when you meet?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Yes quite often…

Chain D.L.K.: What kinds of things have you received?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Well, the last thing I received was a blue rose in Athens. That was really nice, I really liked that. In America, it is quite a lot of things… you get to the end of the tour and you open the drawer and you are overwhelmed with what drops out of it (laughs).

Chain D.L.K.: It was nice to arrive at the show here and see you casually walking around and talking with people. You seem like an out-going, friendly person and you seem to really like your fans.
the Legendary Pink Dots: I like the fans, but I am actually a very shy person, to be completely honest. Off-stage I am actually very nervous.

Chain D.L.K.: Do you feel like you become a different persona on stage then?
the Legendary Pink Dots: It’s still me… but it’s other sides of me that come up that shouldn’t really be revealed in day-to-day normal life.

Chain D.L.K.: No where other than the stage…
the Legendary Pink Dots: It belongs there, truly.

Chain D.L.K.: And, what will you do after the tour?
the Legendary Pink Dots: Oh God… who knows? (laughs). Actually we’ll probably record again… probably it’s the 53rd album, I think… (laughs) I don’t know, I don’t count…

Chain D.L.K.: Another album? That’s certainly good news. Do you feel like you could go on doing this forever and ever?
the Legendary Pink Dots: I hope so! I mean I’ll keep doing it as long as there is something to say and somewhere to go. Because as soon as there is nowhere to go then really you should stop. But I don’t feel that I’m even close to what I want to do yet.

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

anglo-dutch psychedelia? join the dots

By Sergey Chernov, Staff Writer

With 30 full-length albums in 23 years, a relocation from England to Holland and a huge cult following all over the world, the Legendary Pink Dots have certainly earned their name.

Based in Amsterdam, the seminal Anglo-Dutch band has stretched the bounds of musical style with its signature blend of psychedelia, industrial music and goth. This week, it brings its legendary sound to St. Petersburg.

“We are working on fairly recent songs for the Russian shows, because we really enjoyed the tour that we just did in America, at the end of last year. We’re adding a few extra things,” singer, keyboard player and lyricist Edward Ka-Spel said by telephone from his home in Amsterdam last week.

Over two decades, the band has gone through a series of lineup changes, with its list of former and current members numbering around 30 – as well as various “guests and friends.”

The current members include keyboardist and group co-founder Phil Knight (a.k.a. The Silverman), saxophonist Niels van Hoorn (a.k.a. Niels van Hoornblower), who joined the band in 1989, and recently-added guitarist Eric Drost. Consolidating the lineup is Raymond Steeg, responsible for the sound.

Having grown up in east London, Ka-Spel moved the band to Amsterdam in 1985 for personal and political reasons.

“I had a Dutch girlfriend at that time … one very big motivation for me,” he said. “I also didn’t really like the way England was. It was the time of Margaret Thatcher, and reflecting on the British Empire again, which is long dead and I’m quite glad for that. There was something very unpleasant in the air back in the middle of the 1980s in Britain.”

He said the move was productive for his work.

“In Holland, I just took a big jump and tried to live from music alone,” he said. “I was squatting for the first few years there in a house in Amsterdam … I could focus completely on just making music. That really helped. That sort of put me on my feet. … In England I don’t think it would have really worked.”

The political events of the last few years, such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made a particularly strong impression on the Legendary Pink Dots that can be seen in the band’s most recent albums, “All the King’s Horses” and “All the King’s Men” (both released in 2002), which Ka-Spel described as “brother and sister.”

“It was like the world had turned upside down, and you can’t help being influenced by such enormous events as those,” Ka-Spel said of the Sept. 11 attacks. “As frightening and uncertain as the world became, it also meant there was a plenty of food for thought. I wrote furiously after that event, still am. It’s almost as though there isn’t enough time to say what you have to say.”

While the band’s 2001 album, the three-CD “Chemical Playschool, Vols. 11, 12 & 13,” is, in Ka-Spel’s words, “our ultimate psychedelic release … a 3 1/2-hour psychedelic journey,” the 2002 discs are gentler and more melodic.

“We wanted to present the lyrics in a very forthright way,” he said. “So perhaps they were little less psychedelic, but very, extremely direct.”

The Legendary Pink Dots gig at B2 in Moscow on Thursday was not the first Russian performance by the band, which played a much less publicized concert in Kaliningrad in 1999.

“That was a great experience, I absolutely loved that show,” said Ka-Spel.

His own Russian experience goes back to even more distant past – to the late 1970s, when he came to Moscow and St. Petersburg by train.

“I felt a little lonely, as I knew ten words of Russian, I tried them all out. And people were very kind to me,” he said. “There were odd things, like the phone in a hotel would ring in the middle of the night, but I think it was down more to a faulty phone service than anything more sinister. I basically walked around Moscow and St. Petersburg just to explore … to get a feeling of the two cities.”

Although Ka-Spel did not meet with Russian musicians on that first visit, he said he later had brief contact with ZGA (“fantastic group”), an experimental band from Riga, Latvia, that moved to St. Petersburg in 1991. He also boasts a collection of albums by the late local experimental composer Sergei Kuryokhin.

“Kuryokhin [is] someone I admired very very much,” he said. “I have a lot of records that he made when he was alive. [Kuryokhin’s band] Pop Mekhanika is wonderful, actually.”

With over two decades of music-making behind him, Ka-Spel, whose favorite acts include Krautrock bands from the 1970s and Sid Barrett-era Pink Floyd (“Barrett was absolutely fantastic!”), insisted he is in no way looking backwards.

“There’s obviously many people who speak in a way that things are not what they’ve used to be, etc. etc., but frankly I’m not one of those,” he said.

Instead, he sounded very positive about the current rock music scene.

“There’s a hell of a lot of interesting music around,” he said. “One of the most popular bands in the world is also one of the greatest bands that I’ve ever heard – Radiohead. … They are the proof that the music hasn’t died.”

The Legendary Pink Dots play Red Club at 8 p.m. on Saturday.