PERIOD PIECES

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

By Ted Simons | published April 28, 1993

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:

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

source: http://www.dr-yo.com/writing_pink_dots.html

We are The Legendary Pink Dots, and this is a serviette. We are not here to serve you, but to get you. Yes, to get you. To change all your petty, pretty, shitty preconceptions about life.

Do not expect entertainment! We do not jump through hoops for you! You will not be spoon-fed, this is not a circus — just accept that your continued existence depends on your interpretation of this message:

BELIEVE! Because we believe. But we are not telling you what we believe in…

Sing while you may!

— Edward Ka-spel

In a world oversaturated with meaningless information and assembly-line art, The Legendary Pink Dots represent individuality laughing in the face of oppression. They stand in opposition to the vampirism of contemporary pop culture, in which artists and co nsumers alike are drained by media parasites. No other band provides such an effective vaccine for the malignant cultural viruses which plague us all.

Based in Amsterdam, the band is half English, half Dutch. After ten years of relative obscurity, their peculiar form of psyber-shamanism has finally been recognized by the American mainstream. Their latest release, The Maria Dimension, is among t heir finest — and its success may well inject much-needed creativity into the stagnant gene pool of popular music.

The Pink Dots are the inheritors of Syd Barrett’s artistic legacy. From a panchromatic sound palette, they generate iridescent psychedelic visions — like Tibetan thangkas painted on crushed velvet. Each song is a universe in itself, populated with peacef ul or wrathful beings. As the title implies, The Maria Dimension is primarily an invocation of The Goddess in her various avatars.

Effecting the individual on mental, physical, and emotional levels, this music is a holistic experience. The Dots induce trance states, synaesthesia, and emotional resonances without compromising one’s intellect — a remarkable achievement. There is a phi losophical and psycho-spiritual element to the lyrics which shines like gold, even from the pit of insanity and existential despair.

Edward Kaspel, lead singer and lyricist for the Legendary Pink Dots, spoke with Christian Atrocity and myself in Los Angeles. [December 1991.] Competing for Edward’s precious time were various drug casualties, Hollywood scenesters, and clueless artist wannabes. We clocked in just under 30 minutes alone with this enigmatic but amiable man.

— Aaron Ross

Aaron Ross: Could you give a brief history of the Dots and tell us how you evolved into a collective organism?

Edward Kaspel: It’s basically a band of friends. Back in 1980, it was myself, Phil, who plays keyboards, and a girl named April. We lived in the same area and practiced in an old house in East London. Since then, the band has changed lineup maybe 19 time s. It’s never been the most stable of bands, mainly because of the type of music we make — it’s a recipe for poverty.

Christian Atrocity: Are you able to support yourself with your music?

EK: Now we can. As soon as we began selling more than 10,000 records.

CA: Has that effected your music?

EK: Not at all. All we ever do is hand over a finished master tape to the record company. We refuse to give them any demo, we refuse to give them any indication of what we’re busy recording. There’s a certain trust between us and the company.

AR: Have you reached a wider audience over the past few years?

EK: Yes, but we don’t know why! If anything, the music has become less commercial in the last few years. But, at the same time, the audience has grown, especially with the last album — it actually doubled the audience within the first month of its release. I think Caroline Records had a lot to do with it.

AR: Were any of you academically trained in music?

EK: No, we’re completely self-taught.

AR: There’s a very distinctive color to your music . . .

EK: A distinctive multicolor!

AR: It makes me think that timbre is the most important thing. You seem to spend a lot of time developing the sound aspect of your music.

EK: We’re total perfectionists, but it’s so intuitive … you just simply know. Its an emotional thing. None of it is premeditated; a lot of what you hear on The Maria Dimension was recorded live in the studio, excepting the vocals, which are added later. I do believe that music is mainly a thing of emotion, although I think it’s lovely if the head is purring as well.

AR: Do you record at home with a mobile?

EK: Neils, our saxophone player, has his own farm by the river, an hour from the nearest village. He has a barn where we have our own eight-track.

AR: It sounds so finely crafted, I thought you’d hauled in a digital 24-track!

EK: No, it’s a Tascam! An old one.

CA: They’re workhorses.

AR: In writing the lyrics, do you see it as a process of communication with your audience, yourself, or the other band members?

EK: Largely with myself. A lot of the lyrics are extremely introspective, and I write them primarily to please me. If they can twang a chord in somebody, then all the better. They’re open to great misinterpretation, but I can understand that, and I actually don’t mind. I think it’s great if people see something totally different in it than what I see. There’s a track called “A Space Between” on The Maria Dimension. It’s basically about “What do we know?” We know nothing, really! What if events have feelings, too? A girl came up to me in Detroit and, “Yeah, that’s all about abortion, isn’t it?” I thought, “Where’d she get that from?” I looked at the lyrics in a different light, and I could see it!

AR: “We all have names.”

CA: People are just reading in what they want.

EK: That’s all anybody can do, unless you’re sloganeering at people. I don’t like beating people over the head with a club with my opinions — which may well be wrong!

AR: Didn’t you say, “We’re here to get you, to change your preconceptions”?

EK: Oh, you heard that! That was just us winding the audience up. We love to play mind games. There’s a lot of humor in the Pink Dots, always has been. And the funniest part of it all is how seriously people take us. I nearly fall down laughing when peop le come up to me and say, “Oh, it’s the PROPHET!” That’s the whole reason the term, “The Prophet Qaspel” came to being. After I watched myself on a video, stomping about a stage in my long cape, with lines painted all over my face like the Rock of God, I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought, “You pretentious bastard, you look just like one of those old prophets. That’s a great name! I’ll be The Prophet Qaspel on the next album — everybody’s going to laugh.” They didn’t.

AR: I did!

EK: I’m glad. You’re the first.

AR: Is your philosophy of “sing while you may” an optimistic one?

EK: We talked a lot about this thing called the Terminal Kaleidescope. If you look at the history of the planet over the last few hundred years, you become aware of a rapid acceleration of events. It’s rather like the planet was a drowning man watching its life flash before its eyes, as it goes down — maybe for the last time, maybe not. But how can we relate to that? Be glad you live now, you’re witnessing the most significant period in the entire history of the planet. Cherish this time; sing while you may.

AR: The human race is in its adolescence.

CA: Let’s hope it’s not a suicidal teen.

EK: I still don’t actually believe that the human race is capable of destroying this planet or itself.

AR: The planet’s going to fight tooth and nail for its survival.

EK: A lot of The Maria Dimension is about this astonishing arrogance. We can’t even explain how a bumblebee flies yet; that strikes me as being quite primitive, scientifically.

AR: About the song, “Blacklist.” Is that a true story?

EK: It’s just an observation of certain trends. It was inspired by a very simple incident. We’d come back over the German-Holland border, and our sound man, Hans, got hauled over to the customs office by the police. He hadn’t paid a parking fine a few months earlier. I thought, “My God, they can track you even down to an unpaid parking fine!” And he wasn’t allowed to pass back into his own country until he paid it. That’s sinister.

CA: Who are the most pathetic musicians you can think of — your antithesis?

EK: I never usually like slagging off other bands, but I’m pretty offended by Guns ‘n’ Roses, because of what they said about gays and anybody else who simply deviates. I hate fascism of any kind, and I think they’ve been responsible for some pretty bad shit that way. However, having said that, I don’t know their music well. If I consider something bad, I simply choose not to listen to it. I never listen to the radio, for instance; it’s a waste of time.

AR: So you keep yourself isolated and uncontaminated?

EK: Not completely — there are many bands I admire. For example, Nurse With Wound. They’ve been going for even longer than us. I enjoy a band like Coil, because they can always surprise you. And there were so many bands that were great at the start, and somehow they lost something on the way up. Like Chrome — the early Chrome was fantastic; now it’s a little bit mechanical, I think. It can happen to musicians, I don’t know why.

AR: Don’t you think they might burn out?

EK: I’m not so sure about burning out, but sometimes motivations change. Often I’ve seen bands chase the money out of desperation. I wouldn’t lay into them for that. We had members of the Pink Dots before who desperately wanted the band to become big, but there was always a balance of people who desperately wanted to keep it small.

AR: A hypothetical question: what if you do become “big”?

EK: We’d probably make an album with one tone, with backwards guitars all over it. Then we’d really give the audience a hard time.

AR: Didn’t Lou Reed do that?

EK: If we become big, it’ll be totally on our terms, and our terms won’t change. They can’t, not after ten years. And yet the distribution has leapt, and we don’t know why. It’s not as if we’ve made any compromise at all. Whereas it seems that more and more bands are getting into the house sound, we decided a year ago that we’d kick the drum machine out! I’m totally allergic to being hit over the head with things.

AR: So who plays percussion now?

EK: We take turns banging and thrashing anything within reach, but we can only do that in the studio. On tour, the rhythms are stored as loops in the EPS.

CA: So what have you done in America besides the tour?

EK: We’ve just toured. If we have a day off, it’s a luxury. But we finish with a collaborative recording session in Vancouver with Skinny Puppy.

The Dots’ current lineup:

• The Prophet Qaspel (Edward Kaspel): Left brain, larynx, keyboards
• The Silverman (Philip Knight): Right brain, keyboards, electro-wizardry
• Father Pastorius (Bob Pistoor): Guitars of all sorts
• Niels Van Hoornblower (Niels Van Hoorn): Saxes, clarinets, flutes, analog wind controller (which makes no sense)

B-side magazine, Oct/Nov 91. Article by Bill Lamorey

They played at the New Music Seminar, but the Legendary Pink Dots are by no means newcomers to the music scene. These English gents have been together since the late seventies, making records since the early eighties, and ignored by virtually everyone right into the nineties. Yet, the Dots have persevered and finally seem to be receiving some of the recognition that they’ve deserved from their start.

Troubles and tribulations have greeted the Dots around nearly every corner of their musical journey. Disputes with record labels coupled with financial hardships nearly led to the breakup of the LPDs on more than one occasion. However, iron wills and a blinding passion for creating audio masterpieces have held them together for their latest release, The Maria Dimension, released domestically on Caroline records.

Though the line-up has evolved over the years, the core of the LPDs remains intact with vocalist/lyricist/etc Edward Ka-Spel and main keyboardist/programmer Phil “the Silverman” Harmonix. The nucleus of the Dots is radiantly augmented with further colors by a host of other musicians that varyingly are Pink Dot members and guest musicians. Because of their bizarre noms de plume, it’s difficult to keep up with who is who each year.

Unlike last year, the LPDs were cleared to enter the US for an entirely too brief tour. And to think that this band could be questioned on artist merit merely due to the fact that they aren’t mega-sellers. That’s certainly a valid judging point for allowing bands into the country. After their diminutive fling in the US, the Dots will be doing some dates in Canada before returning home away from the maddening crowd in the Netherlands.

While touring in the States, the “Prophet Qa-Sepel” conducted in in-depth conversation with B-Side.

BS: You’ve just completed your European Tour. How did it go?

EK: It was good generally, especially France. We didn’t have enough shows in France; we only played two. There are really quite huge crowds there. There are quite a few French fanatics and they all think they’re the only LPD fans in France. Then they go to the show and there’s like 700 people there with them. It’s a strange thing, because we don’t get much publicity, we get very little. We don’t covet publicity, we never have. In a way, we’re too busy creating the music.

BS: I understand you played at the New Music Seminar in New York?

EK: Oh yeah, the New Music Seminar, a dreadful affair. It’s like all these guys from record companies walking around looking important, trying to impress bands with how influential they are. I’m rather allergic to that. It’s our New York show, that’s how I look at it and that’s how we got through it. You know, we don’t really want anything to do with the bullshit that surrounds it.

BS: How well in sales is the Maria Dimension doing?

EK: TMD sold 20,000. This is in a way, a kind of breakthrough. They all still go, even Brighter Now (the Dots first LP) is still 1000 a year. We’re like a phenomenon at Play it Again Sam. They don’t understand how a band works like that. The back catalogue keeps turning over as if they were new records.

BS: I believe that’s because it’s timeless music. It’s not dated where it becomes old and stale in a year.

EK: It’s great to hear you say that. I mean, that’s the intention. I hate trends and fashions.

BS: That’s obvious from the music. How does it feel to be a creative artist who’s made many brilliant albums and still remains relatively obscure? Do you get angry when you see pop sensations with minimal talent and zero creativity climbing the record sales charts?

EK: I’ll be very honest about it; once I did. In the early days you think “Why? Is there a lot of money being pumped into these bands?” Usually that is the case. The LPDs, in a way, are quite lucky. We’ve been a totally underground band for years and years and years, and we’ve now had some sort of recognition. I mean the fact that we can come to America denotes some kind of recognition. There are other bands, which I would say, are also wonderful bands, extremely creative, who’re still selling like 700 records. That’s really unfair. Bands like HNAS and Nurse With Wound – I think they’re brilliant. And how many records do they sell?

BS: Right. And then you see the New Kids On The Block and similar dross soaring the record charts.

EK: Yeah, but in ten year’s time they’re gonna be pretty old kids on the block. If you’re in it purely for the money, ultimately what do you get at the end of it? You may as well become a bricklayer and own your own little building company eventually. You’ll make as much money maybe. But where’s the fun in it? Where’s the joy in it? These people deny themselves joy for a few years just to sort of get the big dollar. How do they spend it ultimately? It’s not my way really.

BS: Are your album sales enough to support the band financially now? Didn’t you have day jobs up until a few years ago?

EK: I haven’t had a day job since ’84. In the early days it was very, very hard. I mean it was even difficult to buy food and things like that for a while. We earned about $3000 a year in the beginning. Now it’s well liveable. It’s not fantastic, we’d still get more if we lived off the state in Holland, but in comparison, yah, I do what I enjoy and I’d never
complain. Say there was no band, I would have wanted to see all these places and it would have cost me a fortune.

BS: Conceptually how does TMD tie in with your theory of the Terminal Kaleidoscope?

EK: To be honest, I don’t talk so much about the TK anymore. That’s not to say I don’t believe in it, but in a way, I’ve explained it too many times to a point where I felt like I was repeating a kind of formula. I think in some ways what I’ve said about that is not a new theory at all. I mean, I’ve heard other people that have talked in the same way, but never called it the Terminal Kaleidoscope. Philosophers and the like, and I didn’t know that at the time. But you know, I think it is something that is very obvious now. Which is just the acceleration of things. It seems to be a natural process, this acceleration… and never has it been more obvious than now really. I mean, just the dramatic changes in climate for instance.

In some ways, you can say it’s scary. I don’t think it’s actually scary. I don’t think the human race is capable of destroying this planet, maybe mutating it, but I think the planet is stronger than the human race. There’s a bigger hand that sort of like really pulls the strings.

BS: Is it still a goal of the Dots to transcend reality?

EK: To create our own peculiar reality, I’d say.”

BS: You still use characters and settings from your own “peculiar reality” on your records. Is TMD meant to be another chapter in your created reality?

EK: TMD is full of songs and questions. And they’re questions that I’ve been asking myself for years and trying to express in lyrics form. Like the idea of events having feelings too. I mean the deeper root is basically, how much do we actually understand about the nature of things? And actually, we understand so very very little. Who has successfully explained the flight of the bumblebee yet? You know, this bumblebee flies around and around and he doesn’t have anything to stay in the air. That’s just a small thing, but it goes to show, how much do we really know. And it’s nothing compared to what there is to understand.

So you propose preposterous ideas, and they could be true. You know, events maybe have personalities too. You know, who’s to say they don’t? Who’s to say the world will end in an ecological disaster when it could just as easily turn into a giant cornflake? We don’t really understand the nature of things and the instability, or the apparent instability, of the
patterns of nature. I really think we’re novices in these kinds of questions.

BS: How would you describe the type of music that the LPDs create?

EK: What we’re projecting is ourselves, it’s ourselves in the finest detail. Sort of things that you’d maybe liked to cover up as well; the dark things, the optimistic parts… We want to make people cry, we want to make people laugh; all mixed together, just to get to all those emotions. Get to the parts of people they’d maybe like to cover up within
themselves. I think it’s a very emotional music. That is the criteria when we start creating. We really want to put ourselves so totally into it that it sort of makes us feel personally uncomfortable when we hear it.

BS: So it’s never meant to be background music for casual listenings?

EK: It’s never meant to be background music. You know, if people are sitting, having dinner with the LPDs on, it’s better that they’re silent. You know, we’d really be annoyed if anyone talked all over it. I mean, some people will, I think they should maybe put on something else. All good music demands attention.

BS: TMD seems to contain less of the classical elements that pervaded many of your previous releases.

EK: It always depends on how we feel at the time, when we’re composing. I would never say that the classical element is gone. It’s likely to rear its head strongly again. On TMD and Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, we really
wanted to make sort of total sound pictures. Really sort of like a movie for the ears. We’ll probably continue on this line on the next one too. We’re enjoying this line at the moment, trying to make it even more vivid album by album.

BS: Are you planning a follow up single to TMD?

EK: I think that’s unlikely. Singles were very much a record company idea originally. We never actually played that game. You’re supposed to take the 12″ single from the album to promote the album. We thought that’s ripping people off, they’re buying it twice. It sort of caused dilemmas between us and PIAS. They saw things in a marketing way and we saw things in an artistic sense. Ultimately, we agreed to stop it with the singles.

BS: Well, your singles were never on any of the albums anyway.

EK: See, that was the dilemma. You know, we wanted them to be entities within themselves. We didn’t go out to make a single, we went out to make an EP. There was an EP released with TMD in Europe. A Three inch CD. Very nice we think, but absolutely nothing like a single. Five new songs which were not contained on TMD. I think they should have pressed more. I think 500 are being pressed for America.

BS: The message “sing while you may” appears on nearly all of your records. It seems fairly simple, but I gather it’s very important to you.

EK: It is very important. It’s to do with that Terminal Kaleidoscope idea. But taking it further, is there any more significant period in the history of the planet so far than now? When you look at things it’s exciting actually. Even if it’s disturbing in some ways, be glad you live now.

BS: At what age did you realize that you wanted to be a musician?

EK: In a way, I always did, even when I was a little kid. It’s just something that was part of me. I come from a very unmusical family really. No musicians at all really. I was 17 when I first tried making music. It was ok. It was naive but it was a start. Everybody has to start somewhere.

BS: How many albums do the Pink Dots have total, including casette only releases?

EK: I couldn’t say, I have no clue. I know there’s 13 albums including the Pink Box. That doesn’t include solo records, which I think is another seven, casette-only releases, Tear Garden and other projects.

BS: Of course my next question is, how do you find time to write and record all of this diverse material?

Ek: I think it’s a natural thing. When you’re really into it, and you’re working 356 days a year on it, maybe 40 or 50 songs a year is not so many. We don’t really take days off, because we enjoy it so much. If you really enjoy things that much, you want more and more of it. It’s a creative addiction. It’s the same throughout the band, we can’t stop.

BS: Have you completed the album you were working on with Nurse With Wound’s Stephen Stapleton?

EK: We started work on it back in November. We’ve got to get together again. Steve lives in the west of Ireland. I plan to go to Ireland for a little while and then Steve will come to Holland. We’re also going to do a little recording together in New York. It will come together when it’s finished. It’s like everything, we never release anything until we think
it’s absolutely finished. It’s silly to rush anything. It will be different. As strange as spiders’ kneecaps. A strangeness you can’t relate to any other strangeness.

I think Steve’s one of the most talented, inventive people on this planet. I mean, why aren’t people talking about Steve Stapleton? Some people are looked upon as pioneers, great experimentalists, and you listen to it and think “Oh, God.”

BS: When will the next Teargarden LP be available?

EK: The whole recording will take place in August. We’re starting from scratch with no preconceived ideas about it at all, which is a nice way to enter an album. You can be totally open-minded. I’m holding myself back from preparing some lyrics, because I want to write them at the time. It just means I have to bite my fingers, sometimes.

BS: How did you get involved with cEVIN Key?

EK: He was writing to me for years, before Skinny Puppy even started. He liked the LPDs and wanted some of the early casettes and things like that. Then I was invited to Vancouver for some solo shows, and then Skinny Puppy
were in existence. We basically got together in the studio because it seemed such a logical move. We found that we got along really great and the friendship lasted right ’til now and continues. He’s a very creative guy himself.

BS: Are you still going to release a book with all of your lyrics and poetry?

EK: That’s still pending. I think it will take a while yet. I have to get together on it with Elke. Sometimes it gets put on ice for a couple of months. I want it to be good. I don’t think I’ll ever fit all of the lyrics in there. It’d be like a Bible or something. I don’t think anyone needs another Bible.

BS: Rumour has it that you have one of the most impressive record collections on this planet.

EK: That’s not true really. It’s been blown all out of proportion, I have 1000 records. It’s actually quite small compared to a lot of people. It’s an extremely esoteric collection. I’d say three-fourth’s of it you won’t find in your local record stores. I love the music, I just love the sounds these guys make.

BS: What’s your all-time favorite record?

EK: That’s a hard one… Cottonwood Hill by Brainticket. That might be my favorite.

BS: Do you have any plans to release another solo album anytime soon?

EK: Oh yeah, there’s one coming out in a month or two. Tanith and the Lion Tree. It’s all me. Some parts of it are very harsh, some parts are very beautiful, and it throws you from the harshness to the beauty in very short spaces of time. I love it now. There was a period of time where I wasn’t sure if it worked, but I’m convinced it works now. It’s a difficult album to digest. There’s a lot of information on the record in a way.

BS: Despite all of the apocalyptic visions on your album, there is also a very light side to your music. Are you generally a happy person?

EK: Yes, I am. Why should I be depressed? I don’t need to walk around feeling dejected all the time. In some ways, I am having the best time of my life these days. Though many of the depressing lyrics are written from recollections of moments of despair.

BS: It’s good to see that the Dots are still getting by despite Bob having recently been claimed by cancer.

EK: Not only did I lose a fellow Dot with Bob, I lost one of my best friends. Since it happened, my fears of death have freshly disappeared. I mean, I still feel his presence very strongly. Up on stage, it’s as though he is there with us still. You cannot kill the spirit.

BS: What is the ultimate goal of the LPDs?

EK: There is an obscure image of perfection. There may be moments when we feel we are close, but we’ve never quite reached it. I’m not really sure if it can be reached. In a way it would be sad if we reached it, because there would be no more need to continue with it. I’m not really worried though. I’m sure that we have a long way to go yet.

Interview in Spiral Scratch Magazine (a UK record collectors magazine) September 1991.

After some months of overcoming the difficulties of planning a virtual world tour, the Legendary Pink Dots finally landed in the UK to perform the fourth concert of nearly 7O across Europe and America, promoting the wonderful new album The Maria Dimension on Play It Again Sam Records. I caught up with Edward Ka-Spel, singer and Lyricist with the group, at the first of only two UK shows on the tour, the second being some time this June.

J Initially, when did you first get into making music, and were you a writer/poet before making music?

E: I was a poet who used to put his poems in a drawer for years and years, and it was in 1980 I kind of thought that, it was a time of Throbbing Gristle and people who couldn’t play were making music, but it still sounded great. I thought, well if those guys can do it, and they were encouraging other people to do it, I could do it too. Myself and Phil, our keyboard player, went to Stonehenge Free Festival and saw a little band playing at two o’clock in the morning at the end of a field. We were the only audience and that was probably the second that the Legendary Pink Dots were conceived. As soon as we got back from the festival, I bought a very cheap synthesizer on hire purchase, and an old drum machine and amplifier, and suddenly there was a band there. We were quite obsessive, right from the start, playing about 15 hours, improvising night after night. It was a time when many people were making cassettes, selling themselves, designing the covers themselves. This all really appealed to me, basically, that’s how we started.

J Why the name ‘The Legendary Pink Dots’?

E: It was to do with these mysterious blobs of pink nail varnish on the keys of the piano, and we were talking about those `legendary pink dots’, and nobody actually christened the band at any time – we were just stuck with it.

J That was the first band you were in?

E: Oh yeah

J Was it ‘industrial’ music, like Throbbing Gristle, that was the influence on the band’s sound initially ?

E No, not so much musically. It was quite ‘industrial’ but more like industrial…nursery rhymes! Very much our own kind of sound, we never wanted to sound particularly like anybody else. We just basically improvised all the time.

J So the first album was Brighter Now on In Phaze. Was In Phaze your own label?

E: Oh no, it was run by a guy called Pat Birmingham. Actually, we got dreadfully ripped off, right through the In Phaze years.

J So, how long was it between that and being picked up by Play It Again Sam, as they are now re-releasing all the old material?

E: Well, there’s been four labels, in fact. We went from In Phaze to this little Dutch label called Ding-Dong who absolutely murdered us as well. We quickly got out of that and went to another small label in Holland. and they weren’t so good, and then it was Play It Again Sam who actually signed us, although we’d already had two albums out on PIAS.

J In 1985, the band emigrated to Holland. What were the reasons behind the move and why choose Holland?

E: Well, it was the first country which acknowledged our music properly, you know. We’d just brought out The Tower in England, which was a really important album to me, because it was all about England. It was about a trend that I saw in England, like this growing fascism type of thing – it was a real scream against it, and it was ignored! Apart from David Tibet, who did a review in Sounds, but even that was six months after the album came out. I just thought, well, ‘Damn You, but it was praised in countries like Holland and Germany and countries like that. Holland seemed a good country to live, and l had a girlfriend at the time who was Dutch so there were all sorts of reasons to go. It also forced me to try to make a living out of music without any kind of jobs.

J Is this something you’ve achieved now?

E: Yeah, it’s very important.

J What is the significance of the sub-title ‘China Doll’ that appears on so many tapes and records?

E: In a way, I think it outlasted it’s welcome (laughs). It’s just basically to do with a mental state, you know. I touch you and you start to dance, push you and you fall to pieces, I lived that sort of, life, really. They are very personal songs, especially on things like Laugh China Doll. A very, very personal album. I’m still extremely fond of that record, though it’s extremely primitive, it was done in four days, you know. I’ve dropped the China Doll’ prefix on solo albums, the next one won’t be called ‘China doll’.

J is this the one with Steve Stapleton of Nurse With Wound?

E No, that’s another one (laughs). There’s a solo album coming out in a month, with Third Mind Records, Tanith And the Lion Tree, which is alone. I’m working on one with Steve Stapleton, during the course of the year, working on the third Tear Garden LP in August

J What is it like working with Skinny Puppy? Their use of electronics is a lot more extreme, directed towards hard, dance music. Is it difficult working with people whose ideas may be such a contrast?

E: No, because there is a great deal of respect going on and a great deal friendship as well with Cevin for many years. Cevin was into the Pink Dots before Skinny Puppy existed, that’s how the whole thing happened. I just played some solo shows in Vancouver and he came to see them, and just said, ‘We should go into the studio together”. That’s how it worked out, and we liked it so much, we want to carry it on whenever it is possible. It’s very open. We work well.

J How do you feel about The Maria Dimension as a part of the Ka-Spel career?

E. I’m totally proud of it. I’m not wild about every-thing we’ve done, and we’ve done an awful lot in our time. There are things I can look back on and think ‘that was a mistake, maybe’. But the last two albums, I’ve really felt very close to and I think Crushed Velvet Apocalypse was aiming for what we’ve achieved on Maria Dimension, very swirling, very colourful. It has an atmosphere that drags you in and drowns you, in a way.

J What other Music and Art inspires you?

E: Other bands – I like a lot of the German psychedelics, like Brainticket, and groups like that. I like a lot of avant garde music, musique concrete, not from an intellectual point of view, I just enjoy the sounds that are used and the textures that are employed.

J What about writers?

E I don’t really read so much, I’m so busy all the time (laughs). My favourite author is, probably, Harlan Ellison, an American sci-fi writer, well, it’s not really sci-fi, more psychological. Robert Sheckley I also enjoy.

J. What is the point of the imagery of The Maria Dimension, the Madonna with child in those snowflake things… ?

E: That was a dream, actually We were looking for a title for the album. We knew it had a certain feeling to it, but we couldn’t t think of a title at all and I was in Greece with Elke my girlfriend and I had this dream of Six Virgin Mary’s waving and smiling, inside these like, soap machines. I woke up and “This has to be the cover of the album!!” “Sounds great, but what do you call that scene?” – well, it’s the… “The Maria Dimension” (laughs). A dimension where Virgin Mary’s smiles and waves from soap machines…

 THE PHILOSOPHY

“So it goes, we stand alone by standing stones, and we turn them into circles… ‘

Since the dawn of time, we’ve looked for answers, and merely unearthed a myriad of questions. Circles within circles. The root of our insanity, on a global scale, in our daily shuffle around the supermarket. The answers simply aren’t there – we re all pawns in a game that we don’t understand the rules of. Hyekk! And now time accelerates and the insanity grows and the millennium approaches and the whisper is ‘apocalypse’. Fact is, the world is as likely to end by turning into a cornflakes as it is by war or ecological disaster. How arrogant of the human race to think it could honestly bite the hand that feeds it. Isn’t it better to embrace the game, enjoy this time of change? Sing while you may

These are exciting times for us all – maybe it is the most exciting time in the whole history of the planet. Legendary Pink Dots are offering a soundtrack of this process. We do it in our own peculiar way – and respect others who are also playing their part. But if anyone is really looking for THE ANSWER, we suggest they look inside themselves and start exploring those circles. It’s a fascinating practice.

Edward Ka-Spel, Nijmegen.