As the long hot Summer recedes here in London, I can’t help thinking back to the glorious seasons  at the beginning of the 90’s when The Dots worked  on “The Maria Dimension”.
It’s predecessor, “The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse” was a highly composed affair and there was a strong desire in the band to throw the dice, press record and see what happened. Exotic instruments were strewn around the studio ; Bob Pistoor reserved a permanent corner for his sitar, kettle drums were hoisted up the stepladder….hell we even tried recoding the sound of the mosquitoes.

After a few weeks of improvising, the band took a month-long break. A rendezvous in a remote little town in Northern Greece named Floriana was organised between myself, Elke, Bob and his girlfriend ,Sabine. From there we wound our way in a small car to the coast where I wrote the lyrics to “Belladonna” paddling in the sea. Yes there is a photograph and no, we did not have a smartphone.

When we resumed recording back in The Netherlands, we gave shape to the hours of sessions, tried some dedicated thematic experiments (“Disturbance” ,”The Fourth Secret” ) and ultimately mixed “Maria Dimension” together with four pairs of arms stretched across the mixing desk twisting pots, pushing sliders, trying  to keep the levels out of the red but usually failing.

All these memories flooded back when I was remastering the “Maria Sessions” last week. The source of the album was a cassette in a box which nearly came to a premature demise due to the amount of plastic that could have either been waded through or tossed away a few years ago. Happily, we opted for the former option.

We’re down to the last handful of the gloriously packaged double vinyl edition now, and it felt timely to give it new life with an updated edition on cdr together with “The Maria Sessions Volume 2” which had previously only been available as a download. You can find this small corner of Legendary Pink history right here (EK 15.9.2018): https://legendarypinkdots1.bandcamp.com/album/the-maria-sessions-volumes-1-2

Please make direct enquiries to qaspel@gmail.com

THE MARIA SESSIONS:

AVAILABILITY

2 x LP in heavy duty gatefold sleeve (last copies!) 35 euros plus postage & packing
The Maria Sessions Volumes 1 & 2 (2 x CDR)  20 euros plus postage & packing
The Maria Sessions Volume 1
13,50 euros plus postage & packing

The Maria Sessions Volume 2
13,50 euros plus postage & packing

CDR editions are in production right now and will be shipped during the next 2 weeks.

Continue reading THE LEGENDARY PINK NEWSLETTER- AUTUMN 2018 →