EDWARD KA-SPEL

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Release date and tracklist

1996, reissued 1998
US 7″ Anomalous Records ‎– ANO1
US 7″ Robot Records RR13

1. The Man Who Never Was – [MP3]
2. Fuse – [MP3]

Credits

• Edward Ka-Spel – keyboards, voice, violins, devices
• Lady Loop – devices, engineering
• Raymond Steeg – engineering, mixing
• Caylxx – bouncing presence

Notes

These tracks were recorded in 1992.  Played at 33 1/3 RPM.
1996 edition limited to 1000 copies on black vinyl
1998 edition limited to 500 copies on clear vinyl and features redesigned labels.  This edition was re-cut as the pressing plant lost the plates from the first pressing.

‘The Man Who Never Was’ re-released on “Down In the City of Heartbreak and Needles Volume 2” CD.  ‘Fuse’ was eventually released on the 2001 compilation “Needles Three”

EDWARD KA-SPEL

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Release date and tracklist

September 1, 1998
US CD Soleilmoon SOL60

Credits

• Edward Ka-Spel – voice, keyboards, electronics, percussion
• Lily Ak – lady voice
• Elke Skelter – voice & synthesizer
• The Silverman – keyboards
• Christoph Heemann – sonic manipulation

Notes

Down in the City of Heartbreak and Needles Volume 2 is a compilation of tracks from rare and out of print albums by Legendary Pink Dots leader and vocalist Edward Ka-Spel, and by its name is a continuation and extension of the first Down in the City CD from 1995. Five tracks are very old, from 1984, three more are from 1993, and the last three are previously unreleased.

Track 1 is from Dance China Doll 12″ EP (1984)
Tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8 are from Laugh China Doll (1984)
Tracks 4 and 5 are from Robot Records 10″ mini album (1993)
Track 6 is A-side from Robot/Anomalous Records 7″ single (1993)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 are previously unreleased

Reviews

Overall impression: very good. Despite Ka-spel’s vast array of songs with the Legendary Pink Dots, Edward still has an abundance of leftover odds and ends that he (thankfully) puts out as a solo artist. “Down in … Volume 2″ continues where Vol 1 left off, collecting those odds and ends from the past 14 years onto one beautifully designed digitally mastered disc. Track 1 is from the 1984 Dance China Doll 12″ EP, tracks 2, 3, 7 and 8 are from the 1984 Laugh China Doll LP, tracks 4 and 5 are from the 1993 Robot Records 10″ mini album, track 6 is the a-side from the 1993 Robot/Anomolous Records 7” single and tracks 9, 10 and 11 are previously unreleased (no dates given, but I believe they’re all 90’s works). As you can see, the cd is split about evenly between old and new. The ’84 songs are keyboard and vocal oriented, more structured and “song-like” bizarre pop ditties with the unique Ka-spel lyrical/vocal touch. The 90’s songs are generally more experimental, often lengthy ambient/noise pieces (“A Crack..” is a noisier extended re-working of the song from LPD’s “9 Lives to Wonder” album). I appreciate the balance here, the older and newer songs counterpoint each other nicely. All in all, a great sampling of Ka-spel’s many worlds and yet another must have for the LPD fanatic. – Mark Weddle

***

This collection of odds and ends brings together some highly rare tracks from various singles and EP, and (nearly) completes the CD re-release of the Laugh China Doll LP started by Volume 1. Unfortunately for completists, there are still missing tracks, so it’s still going to be necessary to hunt down the originals.

“Even Now” is an all too-brief, simple soaring melody based on a typically arpeggiating keyboard line from the Dance China Doll EP, while “Lady Sunshine” has a similar approach to heartbreak and yearning from the same era (1984). “Find The Lady”, “Paradise Then” and “Atomic Roses” are engaging, cyclical ditties which show both how much and how little the essential heart of Ka-Spel’s muse has changed over the years – especially in the case of the latter’s cheap drum-machine and keyboards arranged into bouncy apocalyptic angst, which Edward continues to re-work live on occasion.

With the chronological order of the songs abandoned and a sprinkling of alternate unreleased versions, City Of Heartbreak 2 is constructed as a work in its own right rather than just a straightforward compilation. “Inferno” and “Illusion” are two early Nineties pieces of lengthy Ambient Concrete layering and reflective mythological worrying placed in between the older material along with “The Man Who Never Was” (now re-released as a 7-inch on Anomalous Records), a downbeat track which could have come from the contemporary Pink Dots release 9 Lives To Wonder. The same applies to “A Crack In Melancholy Time,” which is an ominously Ka-Spellian reworking of a piece from the same album showing that what constitues a solo release is more a matter of mixing than the norm with other musicians.

“The Fool With Spanners” and “Number Nine Number Nine Number Nine Number Nine” close the CD with shimmering, vindictive ennui, and that old favourite, a backwards-looped radio abstraction respectively, completing what in any other hands could be a set of detritus and ephemera, but here is testament to the seemingly boundless creative energy of one of the great musical artists of the underground. – Antron S. Meister, Freq E-zine

EDWARD KA-SPEL

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Release date and tracklist

12 November 2012
NL MP3 self-released on Bandcamp

1. Scarlett Cross 03:57
2. Supper at J’s 10:11
3. A Roman Candle 04:12
4. Design Fault 04:31
5. Hotel Y 12:26
6. Cause & FX / Mosquito Munch Fandango 08:38
7. Gemini 03:12
8. Shall we Share Water , Brother? 09:49
9. Blue Room 03:06
10. They came, They saw ,They scarpered part 1 11:22
11. They Came , They Saw , They Scarpered Part 2 05:22
12. They Came , They Saw , They Scarpered Part 3 02:49
13. Wounded Knee 06:49

7 May 2024
NL/UK remastered MP3 self-released on EK’s Bandcamp

1. Scarlett Cross 03:53
2. Supper at J’s 10:01
3. A Roman Candle 04:11
4. Design Fault 04:31
5. Hotel Y 12:26
6. Cause & Effect / Mosquito Munch Fandango 08:38
7. Gemini 03:50
8. Shall we Share Water Brother? 09:48
9. Blue Room 03:06
10. They came, They saw ,They scarpered part 1 11:22
11. They Came , They Saw , They Scarpered Part 2 05:22
12. They Came , They Saw , They Scarpered Part 3 02:49
13. Wounded Knee 06:49

 Credits

• Edward Ka-Spel – voice + instruments
• Nienke Poiesz – voice/lyrics on “The Blue Room”
• Raymond Steeg – engineering, mixing, sound wizardry
• Frack Verschuuren – engineering on “A Roman Candle”

cover and layout- Rachel K.
cover painting- Nienke Poiesz

Notes

Vinyl edition limited to 1000 copies.

From Bandcamp:
1997. Times were hard, the house was tiny, the Ka-Spellian studio had shrunk to a
what could be fitted onto a tiny table on a platform where the stairs turned. Normally a session meant wearing a coat as heating wasn’t so effective but still cost a fortune.
Despite all that “The Blue Room”still feels like a fresh album.  Initially meant as part of a trilogy of colours, but the 3rd part was never finished.
Included in this Redux edition is a previously unheard piece “Wounded Knee” which is from the time. -EKS

Just before the Year 1,000 BC a great civilization collectively decided that there was no future on the planet known as Earth. Within the space of a few short days, scientists designed and technicians created a fleet of spaceships to take them to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. They didn’t make it – the entire armada crashed into a lesser moon of the planet they called Zob. All traces of this civilization vanished forever.

Just before the year 0, a mysterious bearded man irritated an unpopular but influential monarch by telling him that a great man was going to be born who would change EVERYTHING. The mysterious bearded man was beheaded. The great man was born, changed EVERYTHING and was executed.

Just before the year 1,000, an entire multitude of people renounced their worldly possession and settled for a life of poverty. Others, fearing the worst, jumped from high towers. Usually the latter action proved fatal. Just before the year 2,000 a few thousand people retreated to their rooms and meditated on “The Blue Room”, the latest album by Edward Ka-Spel, singer with The Legendary Pink Dots.

This goes to show that Charles Darwin was right after all.

***

2024 remaster:
Uploaded to Edward Ka-Spel’s own Bandcamp page
“A rather drastic remaster for this album from 1998. This is the Redux version including tracks from the long out-of-print vinyl edition plus an exclusive piece from the sessions.”
-EK

Reviews

In his inimitable style, master mythologer and spinner of eerie Millenial tales for The Legendary Pink Dots here presents some further solo efforts. There’s the hissing, steaming clockwork music box of “Supper At J’s” with unsettling reflections on the state of virtual 1999, which rises and falls from song into semi-orchestral concrete-samplescapes as the lead-in for an album which includes the disturbingly groovy “Cause and FX”, with its misguided protagonist with his “cute Colt .45/splits a mole-hill from a mile” and a penchant for saving the world, whether it wants it or not.

Edward Ka-Spel knows his psychopaths as well as he knows his lyrical dreamers, and The Blue Room features several of each. The arrhythmic drum machine and mocking New Ageisms of “A Roman Candle” combines scathing, sardonic half-believed cynicism with a yearning for human warmth ; “Design Fault” manages the astounding trick of pulling a melody from what sounds like “D’y Ken John Peel?” and, through judicous use of echo, plus one of the more stumbling, minimal drum machine patterns and sample loops of recent years, with the poetic, sub-religiose revolutionary nihilism of the lyrics, makes for the best Ka-Spel track since the awesome Tanith and The Lion Tree album. “Hotel Y” has a shuffling, brushed percussion loop and watery, self-despairing lyrics about the end of a relationship which seem to form a good proportion of Ka-Spel’s solo songs, before another extended instrumental suite which moves from upbeat stabs of brassy samples into washes of blanched atmoshpherics and recycled, glitched sample loops which converge into discordant babel.

What refreshes, as ever, is the variety pulled from the keyboards and samplers, the compositional deployment of a distended rattle here, a pulsing loop there and the cunningly peculiar use of vocal and instrumental effects which transform EK’s voice from the hushed tones of an existential coward into the demonic giggle of a maniac with the space of a single song Sparking emotion and inventive discordia alike, The Blue Room establishes its own self-contained universe, bearing a passing resemblance to the mundane reality, populated by melancholic lovers and vampire suitors, earnest declarations of re-incarnated eternal love to a soundtrack of mellow Jazz and jet engines at take-off; and the guest vocals of Lisa, who provides the stirring title track with both a different voice, and a reference back through Ka-Spel’s past albums and their guests.

There’s even “Shall We Share Water Brother?” – which is part Vangelis, and perhaps part Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land if the post-Messianic mood connects to the reference in the song title. Strangely familiar as Ka-Spel’s alternate world maybe, it’s probably best not to live there too long for the sake of sanity- though, compared to the dissapointments of this one, it’s an intriguing place to visit. – Freq E-Zine

Lyrics

Scarlett Cross

Her vampire lover kept the ritual
sacred every moonless night
she’d cast her clothes in all directions
dance with lanterns, freeze with fright
when his uncanny gaze would catch her
through lacy curtains, locked outside

yet always she would raise the window
always silent, in he’d fly
and on those virgin sheets, she’d spread
herself and call him to her
with those pearly hands
her vampire lover hovered sobbing
but he never chose to land

and come the mourining she would wake
untouched alone
tucked deep inside her bed
she’d see the window
locked from inside
see those virgin sheets were
ruby ruby red

Supper at J’s

13 plates, a goblet + we’re bleeding from the wrists.
J said ‘Go ahead, have one more for the road’-
it came to this.
and one by one we knelt before him,
one by one we kissed him on the mouth.
Our eyes averted as if it was the first time
But hey, it’s 1999 + J has lawyers in the fold
+ J’s accountain can recite
the greatest story ever told.

There is no need to walk the mean streets
patching wounds and saving souls
Because just like midas everything we touch
is turning gold.
Just like it did the last time.

Type http:/ you’re chosen, broke
But closing in on satan with a stun-gun
sweeping demons from the screen.

This is your entrance to the kingdom
use your fingers just for him
+ be quite certain your reward is lying
deep within – just like it did the last time.

And if I kick him hard enough, now will I see him fly?
If I stare hard at that bastard will he shrivel up and die?
And will I walk the waves & carve my name on tablets in the sky?
Will they remember me with reverence until they pull the plug on time.
Now back again and forwards – shift
a bouncing ball – two facing walls.
Now back gain and forwards –
It’s just a game, eh, J? (hit delete)

A Roman Candle (transcribed by the Plasma Twins)

Praise the lord and pass the ammo. Firewalks, god damn. Could build a
fortress with this hammer. We’ll peel away the night.
So lay me down, lay me down. I need to feel your fire.

We’ll line the corridors with lava lamps. Madonna’s retro band dig
the weather. Revolving plastic prophets.

aohhhhh. touch me. lay me down, I need your fire. Lay me down, I need
your fire. I need your hands all over.

Dark faces in the headrow, jealous eyes spy from the stars. Down by the
west wall, they were scraping someone’s bugged chocolate bars. so will
you die with me? I promise you a fortress with a wall that’s ten miles
high.

Lay me down, I need to feel your fire. lay me down, I need that fire.
lay me down, I need your fire. (lay me down) I’m wired up, and your
finger’s on my detonator. My detonator’s itching.

There’s a place for us ( your finger’s on my detonator ) A little north
of here, it’s made for us. (your finger’s on my detonator) I want you
there. I want your hands right here.

Design Jault (transcribed by the Plasma Twins)

filling in the space, only filling in the space. case they catch me
empty-handed. killing time and losing base. got to run now cause those
idle hands are cradling my face. find me drifting into sabotage,
dreaming of escape. now this is heresy against the revolution. i’m
feeling faintly proud cause i don’t believe in anything. i said i’m
feeling faintly proud cause i dont believe in anything. anything that’s
allowed. this is against the revolution. catch me there before i am
channeling. you better hold me down or chain me up. you can’t contain
me. spirit of the universe is drowning me. i feel i am clinging to a
cloud. the rusty courts of my industry are strewn across the ground. i’m
losing touch now. i cut the cord now. this line is grinding to a halt.
this is where the empire falls. this is against the revolution. i’m
losing touch now. i cut the cord now. this line is grinding to a halt
now. this is where the empire falls. (now this is heresy). we are
against the revolution.

Hotel Y (transcribed by the Plasma Twins)

What would you do if i slammed the door, vacated to this perfect space,
made my escape? And you never saw it coming. what, what would you do, if
I told you that it’s over now and it never really started? Now, I long
to fly away. Don’t worry now, for this is simply make believe. My death
wish- it’s a lie. And it never, never, will be uttered. See, I just
can’t understand. Can’t understand the joy I am feeling now. cause it’s
all so undeserved. It’s obscured. but, the voices, the voices keep on nagging.
They are eating me alive. They are teasing. I don’t know the reason why.

why now? why now? why now? why now?

Cause and Fx

Mincing through the magnets like a ballerina
did you scan my magnum.45?
it splits a molehill from a mile +
no-one gets away alive
So do you read me?
any shadow in my ribcage?
if I flash a card, will you drop your guard
+ say ‘sir now, that will do just nicely.
like the suit.’
come on in I have the class of ’99
so baby take this hulk to cuba
I got hostages, no humour.
When I count to nine, it’s ali akhbar boom
boom boom ba
Be no compromise
up there begins the great solution
read my name in lights
in headlines eight miles high
I got the whole world on my side
it’s for the people, only for the people
so how about a “thank you” people –
I do it all for you.

(Lights! Action! Read me, nine miles high)

Mosquito Munch Fandango

(instrumental)

Gemini

When I look into those eyes
I see the sadness of an ancient soul
World weary.
Yet, you’re learning from mistakes
Still many, many, many lives to go.

And I’m bound to be there with you
because we’re bound up like a double rose,
and sometimes we are choking
but this is the path we chose.

If I had the chance to start over again,
I’d choose the same
I cannot live without these chains…

This is where I shall remain
For all eternity.
This is of my volition
We’ll never die.

Shall we share water brother? (instrumental)

The Blue Room (transcribed by the Plasma Twins)

A corner of the blue room will be mine. though you froze me in the shadow,
though you try to turn away, i will stay a statue to remind you of the thing
that was. what once we were, the things we had and held and felt. the knives
you threw. the lies you fed. and all the promises you made. for i hate the
way i am left here in a corner. while the wound still bleeds and my heart
still aches. and i still need to scream over you. and i know you need it
too. for i hate the way you pretend not to see me. how i crumble, how i
rust. the way you claim that you no longer care. but, i can see you just
don’t dare to look back at me. and at the crust, the garbage of a good life.
but, this corner will be mine. for in the blue room, there’s no time.
there’s no future. nothing’s passed. for in the blue room, love and hate,
lies forever.

EDWARD KA-SPEL

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Release date and tracklist

June 1, 1999
US 7″ Brainwashed BRAIN002

Credits

• Edward Ka-Spel – vox, keyboards, toys, acoustic guitar
• Lisa – lady voice

Notes

EDWARD KA-SPEL

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Release date and tracklist

EDWARD KA-SPEL

<< back to the Combined Discography

Release date and tracklist

***
10 August 2014
NL Enhanced MP3 self-released on Bandcamp

1. Illumina 2 / Forbidden Zone / Flesh Parade / I Dream Of Jeannie 19:11
2. Prisoners Of War / Suicide Pact / Hotel X / Atomic Roses 20:49
3. A Crack In Melancholy Time / Tanith And The Lion Tree / Aa∆zhyd China Doll 12:57
4. The Qa-Spel
5. The Third Secret (First Version) / Loop 1-8 14:57

 Credits

• Edward Ka-Spel – keyboards, voice
• The Silverman – keyboards (1-8)
• Frank Pett – sound (1-8)

Notes

Tracks 1-8: Live in Nantes / Salle Paul Faure March 1998
Tracks 9-13: Live in Toronto / Music Gallery November 1993

LPs:
Track D1: recorded at Dolls House sometime in 1990.
Track D2 recorded at Dolls House sometime in 1991.
• 1st CD edition is limited to 500 copies, with the first 50 packaged in a cloth bag. Copies 51 – 500 packaged in a DVD case.

• Second edition (2001 CD) features cover artwork by LPD fan James P. Bergman. This edition was limited to 400 copies and packaged in a DVD case.
There were also 50 copies of this release pressed for the Legendary Pink Dots European tour in 2001. This version, according to Edward, was a small scale version of the first edition with the same cover.

• US 2xLP MT017B: Packaged in a cardboard box painted black with a paste-on cover and spine. Two LPs, the first on pink vinyl and the second on black vinyl, are packaged in a single handpainted jacket. Also included in the box are a slip of paper signed by Edward Ka-Spel and featuring the copy number; a spray painted puzzle, a vinyl sticker for Beta-Lactam Ring Records; a vinyl sticker for “Public Disturbance”; a single-sided, 8.5″ x 11″, b&w, ink jet printed insert with credits; a single-sided, 8.5″ x 11″, b&w insert with the text “edward ka-spel public disturbance” over a live photo of Edward; and a signed copy of the cover for the “Angelus Obscuros” CDR release. Limited to 100 numbered copies.

• US 2xLP MT017B-Art: Packaged in a cardboard LP mailer, tied together with a piece of yarn. Two LPs, the first on pink vinyl and the second on black vinyl, are packaged in a single handpainted jacket. Also included in the box are a slip of paper signed by Edward Ka-Spel and a single-sided, 8.5″ x 11″, b&w, ink jet printed insert with credits and the numbering. Limited to 3 hand numbered copies.

from Bandcamp: One of the earliest releases from the wonderful Beta-Lactam Ring Records. A plethora of special editions and the vinyl version (a double, hand -painted covers, in a serious pizza box) became quite a major rarity.  All are long gone, but for the sake of posterity, here is an enhanced version of that vinyl edition. -EK