This 1997 entry from the band’s continuing exploration in dark psychedelia is, like so many of the Legendary Pink Dots’ efforts, a winner in both quiet and overwhelming modes. Sliding into things with the steady “On High,” Edward Ka-Spel and his merry men aren’t going to provide longtime listeners with any surprises, but as with most of their late-’90s albums, the combination of rich recording and production quality with subtle twists and variations works very well. The looped rhythm of “Harvest Babies,” leading into a dramatic keyboard/guitar conclusion that conveys a sense of the band’s strong live power, reflects the band’s not-quite-relationship with modern electronic dance, though the roots are generally more in space rock trance than Goa. Mellower songs like “Mekkanikk” and “Destined to Repeat” show how the band’s sense of drama and space can work just as effectively on low volume as well as on overload, as well as giving Ka-Spel a chance to make his cryptic imagery stand out more strongly. Ka-Spel‘s vocals in particular bring up some understated differences — consider the shift on “Spike,” where it almost sounds like he’s biting down on his word once the full chug of the song starts, or the buried delivery on “All Sides” and the a cappella, conversational beginning of “The Saucers Are Coming.” That the latter song turns into the killer freak-out on the album — at once paranoid and a charge to the heavens — seems only appropriate. One of the best moments is “Sterre,” with its acoustic guitar start and gentle, mournful air (Niels Van Hoornblower‘s clarinet/sax work here, set against some delicate electric guitar wails, makes for an entrancing conclusion). “Lucifer Landed” has a similar start and an even more stripped-down, calm air — it’s one of the band’s most conventional songs in ways, all without losing Ka-Spel‘s obsessive focus or the detailed arrangement that the collective band is known for.

by Ned Raggett
(The date of this review is unknown.)

Under Triple Moons is a compilation of electro-experimentalists the Legendary Pink Dots’ early material. All of the tracks were previously very hard to find, since they were only issued on cassettes non-commercially (for fans only), and were personally compiled by the band’s singer and leader, Edward Ka-Spel. Ka-Spel’s name may be familiar to Skinny Puppy fans, since he’s collaborated with them often, but Under Triple Moons sounds nothing like Skinny Puppy’s volatile music. What you’ll find here are icy cold synthesizers merged with hard to decipher lyrics sung in a heavy European accent (“Amphitheatre,” “Frosty,” “Splash,” etc.). Although it doesn’t rank with the Pink Dots’ best work, it’s still recommended to hardcore fans of the band.

by Greg Prato
(The date of this review is unknown.)

A slightly curious release, this is actually the retitled American version of an Italian-issued album, Greetings 9, from 1989, along with a bonus track that surfaced on a re-release of Greetings 9 two years later. Discographical oddities aside, It’s Raining in Heaven is a nice little bit of music for the hardcore LPD fan, consisting for the most part of live recordings from 1988-era concerts. Given how the band really seems to come to life in concert — a pity no recording can really capture the sense of disorienting swells of sound that Ka-Spel and cohorts cook up on a regular basis — it’s always nice to hear some further examples of the same. Ka-Spel‘s occasional spoken introductions amp up the mood even more; they are wry, threatening, and calm all at once. The first three tracks are from a French date, starting with an excellent “Puppets Apocalypse,” with Ka-Spel sounding a little more sedate and moody than usual, then shifting into a beautifully fraught “Poppy Day,” haunting and just vicious enough. The next three, from a show in Holland, include the distorted electronic crumble and stuttering punch of “Only When I Laugh,” sudden synth stabs adding to the creeping chaos of Ka-Spel‘s chopped-up singing, and the music-box-gone-horribly wrong “Lyriex,” featuring some of the weirdest random samples one might ever hear this side of early Faust. The final track, “Premonition 11,” is actually a fusion of two separate recordings, the first part being the original song from 1982 (appearing as a vinyl single), the second a later extension. The end result is one of the band’s murkiest, most mysterious numbers, with the low-key bass synth crawl of the start setting a strange bed for Ka-Spel‘s slow and steady delivery before shifting into an electric guitar-led extended zoneout and a final vocal/sax jaunt.

by Ned Raggett
(This review’s date is unknown.)

With the stable, 1990s lineup of the group now well-seasoned indeed, the Legendary Pink Dots kept on keeping on with From Here You’ll Watch the World Go By, one of the band’s most wide-ranging and consistently successful efforts. Generally speaking, the focus on the album is on group performances with odd interjections as opposed to full-on cut-up efforts, with Ka-Spel‘s now sui generis lyrical approach and delivery leading the weird and wild way as always. There’s almost a glam feel at many points, whether it’s the combination of descending chords at some points or the easy chug of “Remember Me This Way,” the album’s lead single. When the group tries for its own variants on techno and electronic dance as filtered through other perceptions, the results can be most intriguing, as the dark bubbling up of “1001 Commandments” (with a great husked Ka-Spel vocal and excellent percussion work from Ryan Moore) demonstrates. Spoken word turns on “A Velvet Resurrection” over tranced-out, space rock zone, and the slow-building feel of dread and collapse on “This One-Eyed Man Is King” shows that some things will forever remain LPD at its most intense. More than once, though, the music is as mainstream as the band might ever get — consider the lovely opening track “Clockwise,” which could have easily been someone’s English folk rock underground hit in 1970. Ka-Spel‘s singing is lovely, wistful yet still slightly damaged, while the arrangement — polite, attractive, just haunting enough and benefiting from the Silver Man‘s piano — is a sweet dream, ending on an quietly electric flow. Other acoustic efforts, in keeping with the just-beyond-the-fields-we-know efforts like “I Love You in Your Tragic Beauty,” include “Friend” and the concluding “This Hollowed Ground.”

by Ned Raggett
(The date of this review is unknown.)

After the relatively sunny The Golden Age, Ka-Spel continues with his plan to meld psychedelia to dark and deep electronic soundscapes. Though it starts out fairly deceptively, with the haunting, beautiful, and mostly acoustic “I Love You in Your Tragic Beauty,” the rest of the album descends into more complicated fare, abrasive and richly textured. As usual, many of Ka-Spel‘s lyrics seem mostly impenetrable, fantastical, and paranoid. The only complaint: At nearly 70 minutes, it may be a little too much darkness for a single sitting.

by Sean Carruthers
(The date of this review is unknown.)

In 1984, British experimental rockers the Legendary Pink Dots relocated from London to Amsterdam; core duo Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight (aka The Silverman) remain based in Holland to this day. Their first release after the move was The Lovers, an album of all-new material that was recorded live: side one was a September 1984 performance at an Amsterdam nightclub, while the suite of four interconnected songs on side two was originally recorded for the Dutch public radio station VPRO the same year. As with all of the early Legendary Pink Dots releases, the original press run on the miniscule Ding Dong label was extremely limited, but in 1985, The Lovers was the first Legendary Pink Dots album to be reissued through the band’s ongoing association with the Belgian label Play It Again Sam, making it the band’s most visible release up to that point. It’s an unusual introduction to the group, but then, that could be said of almost any of this idiosyncratic band’s releases. The four live tracks on side one are interspersed with clanking, near-industrial tape loops that hark back to the band’s noisy synth roots, but the songs themselves are straightforward synth-rock powered by Roland Calloway‘s fluid, danceable bass lines and Ka-Spel’s elegant vocals: Japan circa Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids is a fair point of comparison. The far more ambitious material on side two is better still: the two-part title track frames the side with genuinely lovely string parts scored by violinist and pianist Patrick Wright, overlaid with occasional bits of sound effects (rainstorms, children at play, etc.) and an oblique narration by Ka-Spel in lieu of traditional verse/chorus parts. In between, the lengthy “Flowers for the Silverman” and its instrumental introduction “Silverture” return to the gothy dance pop of side one, combined with the narrative form of “The Lovers.” All CD versions of the album add both sides of a contemporaneous 12″ single: “Curious Guy” is one of the Legendary Pink Dots’ most straightforward pop songs, albeit with an extended violin solo by Wright, while the eleven and a half minute improvisation “Premonition 16” returns to the band’s noisier, less structured roots, complete with a wild-eyed and slightly disturbing lyrical and vocal freakout by Ka-Spel.

by Stewart Mason
(The date of this review is unknown)