The Legendary Pink Dots’ mood-altering mix of psychedelic pop and trippy jams

By Sam Prestianni
published: November 13, 2002

Like any mood-altering substance that may be hazardous to your health, the Legendary Pink Dots require a certain leap of faith for a successful experience. Listeners must trust that Edward Ka-Spel’s parade of freaky noise will send them somewhere over the rainbow instead of stranding them in the existential gutter on the way there. With his latest release, the three-CD Chemical Playschool Volumes 11, 12 & 13, Ka-Spel puts this premise to the ultimate test.

The box set’s individual discs — Excess, Where the Hell????, and I Can See Clearly Now (I Think) — are basically nonstop soundtracks, with no digital time codes separating tracks such as “Furtherfurtherfurtherfurtherfurther” and “OK, It’s Betsy the Bumblebee.” Without being able to simply access specific songs, the listener must submit to a full hour of LPD overload in order to reap maximum benefits. In an attention-deficit world, this is no small demand on even the staunchest fan.

But after dozens of Pink Dots recordings (and plenty of solo albums) since he began making music in 1980, Ka-Spel has proved himself a trustworthy designated driver with a clearly defined, hyperwired vision. He brings the finesse and sophistication of classical avant-garde composition to an alien mix of psychedelic pop (reminiscent of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd), trippy ’60s jams (à la the Grateful Dead), mind-melting industrial thump (think Skinny Puppy), and synth-deep rave grooves designed for astral projection. If you put your faith in the transformative power of LPD, Ka-Spel will steer you out of both mind and body.

Where: Slim’s, 333 11th St. (at Folsom), S.F.
Details: Friday, Nov. 15, at 9 p.m.
Tickets are $15-17
522-0333
www.slims-sf.com

Forget that goths love them. Focus instead on the fact that the Brit-Amsterdamian, doom-laden, sampladelic Dots have had more oddly-foreign recruits in their 22 years than the touring company of Mamma Mia. One consistency of LPD — from 1985’s The Lovers (a personal favorite) up through new notorious fare like All The King’s Horses (Solielmoon) — is their savage republican ethos. It’s a vicious, vexing but somehow sober mix of eclectic, erotic, electronic sounds, wretched but subtle reed arrangements and scabrous messages. Their most recent electro-operatic-epic, the three-CD Chemical Playschool features old songs made new and nervous and holds nothing dear — not LPD’s avant-classical past, not their wrinkled goth pedigree. Instead, Playschool is a trip-dub-kraut-freak-folk mess of long mood-swinging instrumentals and shouted-down epiphanies powerfully linear in its diversity.

Sat., Oct. 12, 9 p.m., $14, with Oragami Gallactica, The North Star, 27th and Poplar sts., 215-684-0808.

—A.D. Amorosi

Artist: Legendary Pink Dots
Album: Chemical Playschool 11, 12 & 13
Label: Soleilmoon
Review date: Apr. 6, 2002

I Was Raised To Expect Continuity…

The eventual ubiquity of CD burners will close the book on our old pal the mixed tape. Not just the format, but the medium. Used to be crafting the right mix was like inviting someone into your head, hoping they had the patience to follow your whims for 90 minutes and the soul to interpret the subtle cues you’d hidden in transitions and continuity. Burning someone a mixed CD, that’s a whole different show. You can index the tracks, which will allow random access. Basically, that makes it your own personal Totally Hits comp. Nine times out of ten, the recipient will burn the two or three songs he or she likes onto another disc and chuck your gift faster than Sam hocked your band’s promo. Or, you can put all the tunes onto one hour-plus track, if you’re that kind of an asshole.

That’s what the LPDs do on each of these three platters. They’re plenty of SONGS, just no TRACKS. So, if you play one through and really dig something about 52 minutes in, the number with the ominous voodoo drums and obsolete synths oozing out of the speakers like molasses spiked with LSD, or the part that’s on some weird-ass bossa nova shit, or that one bit that sounds like and Edison cylinder in reverse, you’ll have some manual fast-forwarding to do if you want to hear it again. Soleilmoon’s explanation is a tad hard to swallow: “It is not a collection of ‘greatest hits,’ nor does it have any potential for radio airplay.” Sounds like a serious snub to college radio, but hey, you’re the DJ, I’m only the rapper. And I suppose that, in the age of shuffle, program and download, this is one of the few remaining ways to make an LP feel like an odyssey.

Indeed, these three stashboxes of downers and psychedelics are best consumed in toto. It’s profoundly passive music, tone poetry trimmed with opaque anecdotes from dreams and soaked in all the excretions of readymade profundity. Particularly sneering, wheezing, hook-free guitar. It’s a lot like being, uh, dangerously fucked up. With only the neighborhood’s most antisocial bookstore clerk to talk you down.

UMMAGUMMA!

By Emerson Dameron

by François Couture

After performing each year at the Melkweg (“The Milky Way” in Dutch) since 1984, The Legendary Pink Dots gave their final performance there (at least at the time) in 1994. VPRO Radio had recorded the concert, but it took six years to release it, almost hot on the heels of another live LPD album, Live at the Metro. Luckily, these two albums present entirely different setlists and, if Live at the Metro has a slightly more interesting (and diverse) selection of songs, Farewell, Milky Way boasts better sound quality. The performance itself is excellent, the whole band giving it their all. Said band included at the time bassist Ryan Moore and guitarist Martijn de Kleer, Neils van Hoornblower, in addition to the unremovable Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight (aka The Silverman). The set list relies heavily on the group’s then-recent albums, especially 9 Lives to Wonder. That album’s epic “9 Shades to the Circle” becomes the centerpiece of the live set, showcasing Ka-Spel’s eery storytelling talent. Other highlights include the early classic “Vigil-Anti” (from 1984’s The Tower) and a take-no-prisoners rendition of “Demolition 13.” Neils van Hoornblower shines throughout Farewell, Milky Way, whether adding aerial flute lines to quiet songs (“Bella D.,” “On Another Shore”) or honking out ferocious grunts in “Demolition 13.” The very good recording quality makes this a must-have for the fan and a good choice for the casual listener, especially since The Legendary Pink Dots’ discography is a bit thin on live documents.

(The date of this review is unknown.)

Firmly in their psychedelic- goth period, A Perfect Mystery is one of the more conventional and enjoyable releases in Legendary Pink Dots’ extensive discography. The album settles into a pattern where songs begin with a slow, atmospheric start and then increase instrumentation, which turns up the musical tension and explodes in a trippy fury of mad, whirling, musical dervishes, with Edward Ka-Spel‘s foreboding lyrics wavering over everything. It all comes together perfectly on “Pain Bubbles,” where the Silver Man’s swirling keyboards and Niels Van Hoorn‘s sax dance around each other over a pulsating beat. A gentle exception to the pattern, and a standout track, is the gentle groover “Blue,” a spacey guitar-and-drums ballad that mutates into ambient dub that evokes drummer Ryan Moore‘s side project, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System. “When I’m with You” shows the rockier side of the group, a slow groover that intensifies and peaks majestically with an outstanding sax solo. The only misstep is the apocalyptic Appalachian chant “Skeltzer Speltzer.” a psychedelic hoedown that sounds like Malcolm Mooney-era Can, but at one-quarter speed. Overall an excellent introduction to the band. Those not afraid of mildly challenging material should dive in enthusiastically. Note that the vinyl version of this album contains different mixes than the compact disc, and also includes an additional track.

by James Mason
(The date of this review is unknown.)

critic pick|rock/pop: Legendary Pink Dots

It’s hard to reconcile this band’s marriage of psychedelia and darkwave, but throughout the Legendary Pink Dots’ 20-year career, they’ve managed to circumvent most attempts at genre pigeonholing. In the process, they’ve lost track of how many albums they have released. However, add one more to the list, the just-released A Perfect Mystery (Solielmoon), which will no doubt continue LPD’s tradition of releasing critically acclaimed albums that move between casual Syd Barrett-influenced psychotica and jarring electronic strains best compared to the likes of Skinny Puppy. In fact, if you haven’t heard of Legendary Pink Dots, despite their wide-reaching appeal along several musical spectrums, you might have heard of The Tear Garden, their side collaboration with Skinny Puppy. Lyrical brilliance, classical motives and epic concepts all fuse with elegant layers of guitar and programming for a trip for neohippies and gothlings alike. Not to be missed.

—Helen H. Thompson