Matt Condon
October 11, 2016

The Legendary Pink Dots are one of the most prolific bands that you may never have heard. In 2016 alone they’ve released a new studio album, Pages of Aquarius, a double-disc release in their long-running Chemical Playschool series of soundscapes (this one numbered 19 & 20), and several live recordings. And that’s a fairly typical (somewhat slow, even) year in Pink Dots-land. Existing somewhere in a hard-to-categorize space between psychedelic rock, post-punk, avant-garde experimentalism, and industrial noise, the band has built a small but faithful following over the three and a half decades of their existence.

With an ever-changing lineup, the band’s sound has changed significantly over the years, though the core throughout has been singer Edward Ka-Spel and electronics wizard The Silverman (Phil Knight). Dutch guitarist Erik Drost joined the band in 2003, and they began performing in their latest incarnation as a trio after the departure of saxophonist Niels van Hoorn in 2010. It was this electronics-heavy version of the band that returned to the US for their first tour here since 2013.

(photo by Matt Condon / @arcane93)

The Legendary Pink Dots performing at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, NY on September 30th, 2016 Continue reading The Legendary Pink Dots at the Knitting Factory (chunky glasses) →

Experimental psych-rock vets Legendary Pink Dots played Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory last week (9/30), a show that halfway through their North American tour with Orbit Service. Ever-led by Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight, LPD have an enormous catalogue and at Knit played selections from throughout their career, as well as tracks from their latest (40-something-th) album Pages of Aquarius (which you can stream below).

Opening was Orbit Service, aka Denver musician Randall Frazier, who has toured with LPD in the past and delivered a 30 minute set of electronic psychedelic space rock explorations. Pictures are in the gallery above and remaining LPD tour dates are listed below.

View 43 photos of LPD and Orbit Service by Greg Cristman here.

Source- Brooklyn Vegan
By BrooklynVegan Staff October 6, 2016 10:05 AM

Edward Ka-Spel’s brilliance with The Legendary Pink Dots is to introduce us to isolated characters and then immerse us in their world-view through expansive and mysterious soundscapes. He begins with the most restricted, infinitesimal point of consciousness and then slowly expands it outward towards a state of ‘cosmic consciousness’ (to use the phrase of 1960s psychonauts). Musically, he often follows this template of expansion, with simple melody lines repeating and layering in increased complexity of texture. Much of the LPD’s music is an undertaking to help the listener (and perhaps composer) escape his/her own head. Lyrical phrases, musical motifs, album titles and themes recur across decades, but tonal shifts between albums are slow and subtle.  Hopefully, The Legendary Dots Project, like the Residents and Sparks projects before, will provide the keen reader and listener with a giddy entry-point into the Legendary Pink Dots’ musical world. Fulfil the prophecy!

Tom:   Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 is another gargantuan release: disparate in its balancing of marathon soundscapes with off-kilter tunes and a greater than before quota of politics.

‘The Top’ upends the “kitchen sink”, associating Joe Lampton with ‘synthetic manliness’. ‘Neon Gladiators (Version 1)’ is tremendous proto-acid house, with gadding bass and dovetailing squalls of synth and guitar. Chaos is evoked; capsizing walls, condemned criminals and a reference to statuary. There’s gleaming, off-centre organ that lends this deranged stomper a graceful, woozy undercurrent.

‘Obsession’ is one of those occasional LPD relationships songs, and is a typically dank scenario of break-up and solitude. Following the split, he ends up “playing patience on the floorboards” – not the only account of Garbo-esque solitude on this album. It’s a glum guitar confessional not all that far from Peter Hammill on Over (1977). There’s a terse, metaphorical economy to the lines: “I had a picture of you. I sliced it up in two and half my love went in the bin, with the letters.” There are naturalistic references to the offending minutiae: burning the eggs, smoking in bed, buying trivial knick-knacks. Taking not just the records, but the cat: ‘My charity’s all gone, like those records that you stole when you rolled up our relationship and slipped out unannounced. Christ! You even took the cat.” It’s a partial perspective, as is inevitable with such rejoinders.‘When the Clock Strikes 13’ concerns an idealised, desperate romance, viewed as if a French film take on Bonnie and Clyde: a defiant stand against a hostile world, a fugitive couple up against it. Like Tracy Barlow and Rob in Coronation Street, as almost was – in recent episodes of that longest of ongoing British narratives.

‘Curse (The Sequel)’ has stifled, urgent imperatives (“curse your daughters”, “slaughter with a glance”) giving way to baleful declaratives (“I’ve got your picture. I’ve got the pins”). It’s one of those early LPD guitar-led songs not far in form from Television Personalities, but the lyrical content is infinitely more macabre. The effigy inevitably suggests burning or hanging. The wistful, plangent guitar tune transmogrifies into an ambient murk. We catch snatches of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown’s ‘All I Do Is Dream Of You’, transporting us back into Broadway-Hollywood dreamland. A song recorded not just by Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Alma Cogan, Johnnie Ray, Doris Day and Twiggy, but by Al Bowlly back in 1934 – its year of publication – and Chico Marx in the following year’s A Night at the Opera. This version is from the cartoon flapper character Betty Boop, who was subject of sanitisation by the Hays Code from 1935. This evocative sampling is supplanted by gently wheezing, choked windbag organ; rather like something James Kirby, aka. The Caretaker/The Stranger would come up with: sublime unease, or an uneasy sublime. ‘Hideous Strength’ is a tale of a man transformed into a lion – and then being incarcerated, echoing the Greek myth of the lovers Hippomenes and Atalanta being metamorphosed into lions by Cybele. This song’s leonine figure is more rampant than dormant, proclaiming to be “king of all the jungle”, linking with the lion’s omnipresence in royal arms of medieval and Tudor monarchs. The lion may be significant, in that the title echoes C.S. Lewis’ science fiction novel, That Hideous Strength (1945), which assailed scientific materialism running amok, destroying spirituality in its wake. It has striding Aslan-ish bass, there’s more glistening organ like in ‘Neon Gladiators’. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All good kittens go to heaven!” This memorable, repeated chorus ought to have landed the LPDs a number one single; better this than ‘Too Shy’, ‘Red, Red Wine’ or ‘Baby Jane’, surely. A piercing three-note synth riff (03:11-03:25), and emotive ‘miaow’s are where it should have been at, instead of spandex, smugness and inexcusable blonde hairdos.

The instrumental ‘Film of the Book’ has a richly evocative, almost Eastern sounding, keyboard refrain – patiently, celestially repeating. It is our passage to ‘The Tower’, our introduction to Ka-Spel’s ‘Tower’ mythology. The titular edifice is impregnable, ‘a beacon in the dark’. ‘The Tower (Version 1)’ details seemingly unfathomable incarceration: ‘And no-one names a crime committed, no-one blames a soul. Their cases heard so long ago – forgot about parole.’ Josef K’s bleak situation in Kafka’s The Trial comes to mind: with its labyrinthine justice system – marked by perpetual deferment and opacity. The constantly repeated closing refrain: “No one has the key to the Tower” is a very Kafkaesque scenario of impersonality and hopelessness. This first Tower track is an inexorable twelve minutes of anti-progress towards chugging emptiness. The second ends with archaic, military-style horns and ‘salutes’. ‘Tower 2’ is a bleak scenario of monkey torture and a man-eating Doberman. Humanity is de-personalised, police state authoritarianism runs rampant, enabled by democracy: “And there’s weeping in the queue, and Lady Gwyneth’s weeping too – sickened, yet she voted blue. She knows it. And night patrols are doing rounds. There’s Tower complex, Tower Towns. Population’s going down, but we’re great again.” This implies the unemployment and severe population decline suffered by most British cities in the 1970s and 80s. As well as the Falklands War and subsequent facile economic ‘boom’, leading to a hollow proclamation of Britain’s renewed ‘greatness’.

As early as January 1979, cultural theorist Stuart Hall had identified an ‘authoritarian populism’ as one of the dominant strains of Thatcher’s politics. Hall described her politics as ‘unlike classical fascism’, in ‘retaining most (though not all) of the formal representative institution[s] in place’, while simultaneously constructing ‘around itself an active popular consent’. This involved associating with simplistic, homely notions – national fiscal policy as akin to a household budget, ‘HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS’ – and a strong law and order agenda: getting the police onside and enlisting their more reactionary tendencies to combat left-wing opponents.

The idea of property ownership was dear to Thatcherite hearts. In August 1983, the Times article entitled ‘Home is where the heart is’ reported that, by the end of 1983, 59% of homes in the UK would be owner-occupied, 3% up on 1981. Nine out of ten of those aged 25-34 saw home ownership as the ideal. Ka-Spel was 29 and clearly not one to write paeans to home comforts.

The 59-second ‘Glad He Ate Her’ continues the dystopian focus. It is a brief, disturbing vignette, with the objects of the ‘screwing’ left ambiguous: “They threw off their dressing gowns, and screwed for the Empire. Screwed for the Queen.”

‘Tower 3’ begins with “The echo of a thousand marching boots hammers on the air.” It’s a queasy, frenzied account of ‘entitled’-feeling boot-boys who are “singing anthems, chanting oaths and [who] whistle as Salome lifts her skirt because they’re ‘real’ men and they’re healthy, happy… own the place.” A mythical striptease viewed by proprietorial 1980s men. The policeman – a “uniform” – tells them their petrol bombing of opponents is against the Law but they’ll “ignore it this time. Peace Krime’s got to be official!” Thus, collusion between far-right bovver boys (“Keep it pure, keep it white”) and the authorities is made clear. They can – and will – put down non-whites and CND.

EKS details a living room – it is unclear whose – with Playboy-style pin-ups, pictures of the Queen and a homely proverb (“HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS”) forming a tellingly contradictory collage: signifying authoritarian populism. The song goes onto detail a cowed, unquestioning public turning blind eyes, while patriots stay indoors, warmed by their leaders’ promise of a new ‘Golden Age’.

‘Lullaby for Charles’ Brother’ emerges from arcade bleeps. It could be a seventeenth century English folk song, but rendered on minimalist synth sequencer and simulated woodwind. It concerns an urban political protest from a disgruntled misanthrope, raging against the police (‘piggies’) and as inevitably doomed as the miners were at Orgreave: “Drew out a carving knife for his course: piggies in blood across the wall. Mummy was shocked but he’s immortal, four page pull-out in the Sunset.” There’s a pointed refusal to directly refer to Murdoch’s regrettably successful tabloid. Unlike the miners at Orgreave – as depicted in the recent documentary Still the Enemy Within – there’s little sense of collective struggle. The protagonist’s grievance is unspecified and his link with the demonstrators is ambiguous.

The magnificently titled ‘Expresso Curfew’ suggests the hegemonic dominance of consumerism, with its intermingled Big Ben chimes and science fiction bleeps. Future and past. Time and space. Binary associations and oppositions assert themselves. An enforced adherence to a system that allegedly grants its citizens ‘choice’ is implicitly critiqued. Indeed, ‘The Plasma Twins’ develops into what sounds like a halting ballet of the TARDIS roundels being rounded up and put to humiliating work by the Krotons. ‘Surprise, Surprise’ includes an ephemeral section of ethereal female vocals, followed by ricocheting percussion and, again, that ghosting organ. Flags, medals, bouquets, limousines, the banal ‘Golden Age’ dream: all detonated in a Goon Show-esque explosion.

‘Premonition 10’ is an immersive thirty-two minutes, a somewhat more percussive variant on the deep ambient of :zoviet*france, who I recently saw headline the Friday of Newcastle’s TUSK Festival. That performance transported you to a rainforest; this propels you into the star-spangled ether and the grimy basement – often simultaneously!

‘Cherry Lipstick’ adopts the ‘Film of the Book’ refrain, overlaying corporeal concerns onto what was otherworldly: “I like you with your make-up on”. “Let’s paint the town together” adopts the American phrase ‘to paint the town red’; concerning celebrating without inhibition and which originally alluded to a red light district permeating the whole town.

The closing ‘The Glory, The Glory’ evokes Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ Statues Also Die, and directly misquotes its title, enlarging the statues’ stature. History will not devour these mythical statues. A potent, swelling organ enters alongside the adjective “naked”, as it becomes clear the statuary is sentient. These effigies are “waiting for their turn to rule a world where nothing speaks and nothing’s small – nothing’s ever worshipped”. It’s an unnerving picture, as the statues become gods in a world of silence, “on their own, alone”.

Adam:  1983 was the last year that Edward Ka-Spel would spend in London before he decamped to Amsterdam and you can tell listening to Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 that he was sick to the back teeth of living in Thatcher’s Britain. While it is nigh-on impossible to make any encompassing judgements about a compilation that is approximately two hours long, many of the tracks feel strung-out and disconsolate, even by the Dots’ typically restless standards. There are slow, contemplative pieces characterised by foggy drones and Ka-Spel’s plaintive knowing whisper, such as ‘She Said’, but these are islands of uneasy respite amongst long stretches of skittish dissonance. Even a piece like ‘The Plasma Twins’, that starts out sounding like one of the Dots’ cosmic soundscapes – in this case a rather lovely Brian Eno-ish composition, though everso slightly threatening – ends up transforming into a looping cycle of whining guitar that sounds like a wasp trapped in a kazoo and an ominous, shark-toothed bass line that would sit comfortably (ha!) somewhere on Portishead’s Third (2008). The narrator of ‘The Plasma Twins’ sounds tetchy and testosterone-charged in the grotesque, predatory way we previously encountered on ‘Thursday Night Fever’ on Only Dreaming (1981) but here he is diminished and vampiric, clawing and needy. His invitation “I’ll show you my muscles, if you give me your corpuscles. I’ll have your blood, and you’ll have my seed” repels, though Edward sounds seductive and solicitous.

Elsewhere, the album’s lyrics offer flights of fantastical release from suburban squalor, which warp into troubling hedonistic visions or hysterical reveries of violence. The opening track on my edition of the album, ‘The Light In My Little Girl’s Eyes’, begins with the lyrical equivalent of an establishing shot that tracks across a city’s streets, taking in the smell of coffee, shops stacked with stereos and the sun dancing on the chromium of limousines. Lights turn red, a car crashes, and in a moment of strange alchemy the paving stones turn to playing cards and the singer finds himself ushered away to the palace of “the blackest queen”. Soon, in the throes of animalistic passion, they are tearing chunks of flesh from each other, gobbling down body parts, like the two teenager lovers in the infamous Supernatural episode  ‘My Bloody Valentine’ (2010).  What starts as a simple procession of chords on the keyboard builds in stages, adding in brisk, purposeful drumming; a gloomy yet funky bass courtesy of Roland Calloway; vocal echos; tight little flurries of guitar; weird treated keyboard sounds… until Ka-Spel is calling out a repeated refrain of “Brighter now! Brighter now!”, the name of an album from the previous year, that indicates how early in their career the Dots’ began building a self-referential mythology across their discography.

‘Neon Gladiators’, which sounds like ‘Crosseyed and Painless‘ from Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (1980) played on low battery in a dingy video arcade, conjures a scene of shag-pile carpeted opulence before summarily smashing it to pieces with a murderous cavalcade of sword-wielding living statues. Similarly, the party of chin-wagging socialites and military bigwigs in ‘Surprise, Surprise’ is gleefully blown to smithereens by a present-wrapped bomb, although the effect is rather more like a scene from The Young Ones (1982-1984) than The Anarchist’s Cookbook (1971) especially since Ka-Spel manages to crowbar throwaway innuendo (“it was a master bake”) into the lyrics.

On this collection, outcasts and non-conformists don’t fare much better than members of the establishment, however.  ‘Hideous Strength’ is a character portrait of an individual that society would label “crazy”, the type of which characterises the Dots’ later 1985 album Asylum. Ka-Spel’s sympathies are clearly with the deviants, not the “army of the upright” (to use a phrase of Virginia Woolf’s) though he never outright romanticises mental illness or alienation. Leo, the character in ‘Hideous Strength’, believes himself to be a lion… a natural extension of his taste for raw meat and a conclusion he reaches by observing his long hair in the mirror. As an interesting aside, his transformation is the same experienced by the narrator of The Residents’ ‘On the Way (to Oklahoma)’ on their 2005 album Animal Lover. Leo is clearly very unwell, but his vibrancy and virility seems far healthier than the masculinity of the vampiric narrator of the aforementioned ‘Plasma Twins’ or the moody brooding of the love-sick obsessives of ‘The Waiting Game’, ‘She Said’ or – indeed – ‘Obsession’. Another alienated (anti?)hero is the lone activist of ‘Lullaby for Charles’ Brother’. The song sounds like a nursery rhyme played on keyboards submerged underwater. The talk of ‘piggies in blood across the wall’ and the name Charles, summoned the spectre of Charles Manson to my mind. Indeed, there is something of the soured idealism of 1969 on this album… a film by Jean-Luc Godard watched on a lossy VHS cassette.

With the density of lyrics on Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 it’s very easy for the listener to disengage from the music, experiencing it as background furniture for Ka-Spel’s storytelling. This becomes especially pronounced in his later solo work, in which lyrics are sometimes spoken rather than sung and longer tracks like ‘The Voyeur’ from 2012’s Ghost Logik essentially function as short stories. Indeed, this review has focused perhaps a little too exclusively on the album’s lyrics and it is worth turning to the instrumental tracks to give them the consideration they deserve.

‘Film of the Book’ is a deeply lovely mirage of a song, sounding like the music that might play in some celestial cathedral in a Japanese RPG. It’s crystalline and plaintive – Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’ as dreamt by an alien civilisation. I feel as though I might have encountered in before on an earlier release, but it hardly matters when the music is so soothing, especially on an album that often makes for uncomfortable or anxious listening. ‘Collapse’ sounds crueller and more sardonic – an insidious little tune that recalls the mangled and diminished refrains of Fats Waller on the soundtrack of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977). It segues very pleasingly into the non-instrumental track ‘Tower 2’.

The wonderfully named ‘Barbed Obituary’ is a wash of glooming keyboards. ‘Expresso Curfew’ might have been recorded in the engine rooms of a Vogon Constructor Ship / the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. ‘The Bride Wore Green’ is curious but pleasing and reminds me a little of one of my favourite early Dots tracks, ‘Voices’, if only for the wind effects. ‘Premonition 10’ is a bewitching medley-cum-soundscape of backtracked choirs and percussive drums. It sounds like it might have been built from the same Notre Dame field recordings that composed ‘Basilisk 2’ on the 1982 album of the same name. ‘Grind’ is another long soundscape, though only really gets interesting near the end of the track. It would, to its credit, fit in nicely alongside the more abstract pieces on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction programme (which often features musical treasure and is worth checking out). ‘Apocalypse Gone’ is like a horrible deconstruction of a Shostakovich violin concerto. Finally, ‘It’s Raining … Again’ contains some really interesting sounds, the origins of which are difficult to discern. It’s non-essential, but would make super background music for a David Firth animation (which is meant in all earnestness – it’s a track that demands visuals).

Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 is long enough that it seems reasonable to save discussion of the ‘Tower’ tracks for The Tower (1984) album itself, where they acquire more muscular production, bring Ka-Spel’s vocals to the fore and really come into their own. It is fascinating to hear these tracks emerge from the foggy production of the Dots’ very early years. They become more direct, more visceral and acquire an even greater degree of sardonic bile and political desperation. They also become funkier. The tracks – ‘Tower 1’, ‘Tower 2’ and ‘Tower 3’ – are wonderful here, of course, but they’re swamped by the surrounding material. Although it is something frustrating when a band revisits material, I’m very glad that the Dots decided to do so with these tracks.

So, Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 is a heady, disorienting and often gloomy mix. The quality is high, but it’s a lot to imbibe in one sitting. Of particular note are Ka-Spel’s vocals. He manages to be theatrical without ever being anything less than convincing. A track like ‘She Said’, which I otherwise find musically forgettable, is saved by Ka-Spel’s cracked delivery and mournful tones. As a listener you’re often thrust into the strange position of sympathiser; bemused on-looker; victim; co-conspirator, by turns. He’s knowing, tainted and faintly abject on the odd nasty ditty ‘Glad He Ate Her’. He sounds like a drugged and emaciated ghoul on ‘The Top’, with its talk of a belly full of seeds. On ‘Cherry Lipstick’ (which reprises ‘Film of the Book’) he is needy, wretched, pawing. He cries and whispers like Robert Smith on ‘Just Passing Over, Lovely…’

To quote T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922): “he do the police in different voices“.

Matt: Well, obviously, “Hideous Strength” is my favorite track — you can never go wrong with meowing in a song.  But I dig the synth line, and the story, which as Adam points out is similar to “On The Way (To Oklahoma)”, one of the handful of Animal Lover tracks I quite like.  And what with the Pope recently saying that animals can indeed go to heaven, it’s as timely now as ever.

As for the rest of the album — it’s another long one, but, again, a collection of good songs rather than filler.  “Neon Gladiator” has a wonderful driving, poppy beat combined with the noises of destruction — The Important Sound of Things Falling Apart.  Honestly, it’s one of the LPD songs I could see being a hit had things properly aligned — though I’m not sure if Ka-Spel was even particularly interested in that.  I kind of get the impression that his main driving force is making music, and if anyone else happens to like it, all the better.  But I imagine that even if there were a worldwide campaign to get him to stop (And in that case: The world would be WRONG) — he still wouldn’t.  He’d continue through making records with his blinds drawn to hide the ocean of picket signs outside his door.  And that’s awesome.

I also love the texturing on “Film of the Book”.  While instrumental, it demands attention. It leads into “Tower 1”, using the Tower of London as its central metaphor and is about oppression — which makes me wonder about the use of so many songs to feel oppressive (in a good way, though — speaking artistically here, not just “oh no, I have to sit still for two and a half hours!”).  A lot of the material on Chemical Playschool 3 & 4 has a similar sonic pallate — and I guess you could say that about the Dots’ other material up to this point as well — which means you’re in a dark, stuffy, murky world.  And given his criticisms of Thatcherite Britain, it’s a political world as well, and it’s easy to see the more fantastic tracks (like, again, “Hideous Strength”) being an expressionistic explanation of the feel of being under Thatcher’s thumb.  I’m a little young to have experienced Reagan’s America firsthand (or, rather, though I was alive for his entire Presidency, I wasn’t terribly politically aware at that point, starting as an infant and ending his run at the age of eight) — but we’re still living with the decisions he made.  The homeless problem can be linked back to his closing of the mental hospitals, he was a strikebreaker which kneecapped labor in this country, he hemmed and hawed on AIDS, the list goes on.  And seeing as he and Maggie were best buds (that and a healthy Chumbawamba fandom on my part filling in some of the details), I’m imagining that it was similar across the pond as well.  

That said, too, it’s not just as a nostalgia piece that this method and material works.  If you listen to “Tower 3”, it’s particularly relevant in 2014 America, despite being about 30 years old — “In the living room a picture of the queen nestles in between Miss August and a placard saying HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS. (Keep it pure, keep it white. Keep it free of undesirables because freedom is so valuable and getting scarcer.)”  Sound much like, say, Ferguson, or Eric Garner, or hell, just the anti-Immigration bullshit from folks like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, folks who want to be allowed to card Latinos to “make sure” they’re legal — which doesn’t sound like racially motivated harassment at all, no sirree.

I think it’s this feeling that makes it kind of hard to listen to this album all in one go.  As relevant as it is today, I almost kind of want to go into the Escapism World and listen to happy, shiny music to take my head off things.  But I also know that that’s NOT the way to go, since it’s that kind of thing that keeps the status quo. So, dare I say it, but this album might be actually Capital-I Important?

Either way, though, it should be listened to, even if you have to break it up into 45 minute chunks.

source

Sie sind wieder da. Nicht, dass sie jemals weg gewesen wären. Aber sie sind wieder da. Dass die Legendary Pink Dots zu meinen absoluten Lieblingsbands gehören, dürfte jedem Leser, der mehr als zehn meiner Reviews oder Geschichten gelesen hat, bekannt sein. Ich stufe es mal so ein: Meine Grundprägung auf anspruchsvollere Musik habe ich von Pink Floyd bekommen. Doch deren Tage waren, als ich sie richtig kennen lernte (mit The Wall), quasi schon gezählt. Meine Prägung auf durchaus experimentellere Musik leiteten dann ausgerechnet Talk Talk ein, die ich als Popband kennenlernte und sie mich mit ihrer Entwicklung mitgenommen haben. Die Legendary Pink Dots kamen dann genau zu rechten Zeit und öffneten meine musikalische Ausrichtung noch viel weiter. Und das Wichtigste: sie begleiten mich seit dem ich sie 1987 entdeckt habe Jahr für Jahr weiter.

Die Band um die Masterminds Edward Ka-Spel und The Silverman machte in diesen Jahren musikalisch und personell unglaublich viele Wandlungen durch und blieb sich doch immer treu. Die letzte große Wandlung war wohl der Weggang des langjährigen Wegbegleiters Niels van Horn 2009. Sein Spiel auf den Blasinstrumenten war gut 20 Jahre ein sehr prägendes Element des Pink-Dots-Sounds. Danach wandelte die Band sich zu einer fast rein elektronischen und überaus experimentellen Band. Die Kreativität nahm fast sogar noch zu. Doch die Alben wandelten sich von den songorientierten Popperlen zu ausschweifenden Erkundungen der elektronischen Musikwelten. Auch dabei entstanden ausgesprochene Perlen wie z.B. Chemical Playschool 16 & 18, zwei Randvolle CDs mit nur drei Stücken. Musik zum Entdecken und darin Versinken, doch ohne diesem naiven Popappeal, den die Dots bei allen Experimenten immer auszeichnete. Und just wo ich mit der neuen Ausrichtung abfinden wollte kommen sie nun mit Pages of Aquarius, einem fetten (Vinyl-)Doppelalbum und blasen mich wieder einmal weg.

“Mirror Mirror“ eröffnet mit fetten elektronischen Beats und breiten, eingängigen Soundflächen. Dazu eine ebenso fette, rockige Gitarre, ein Gesang von Edward Ka-Spel auf höchsten Niveau. Dazu brodeln psychedelische Klänge im Untergrund. Mal wieder ein erstklasssiger Opener.

“The greatest Story ever told“ bleibt zunächst treibend. Der dunkle Keyboardsound ist omnipräsent, besonders betörend der eigentlich einfache programmierte Rhythmus. Manchmal reicht ein einziger unerwarteter Ton um einen Ohrwurm zu kreieren. Sicherlich kommt hier auch Edwards Zusammenarbeit mit Der Blutharsch durch. Das Stück würde zweifellos auf ein Album dieses Projektes passen. Ab der Mitte löst sich das treibende Stück in die schon vorher präsenten psychedelischen Klangspielerin auf und mündet in einer Art Postpsychedelik mit hymnischen Keyboardklängen und einem dieser typischen Textmonologen Edwards.

“D-Train“ bleibt kraftvoll. Eine sphärische Gitarre, pulsierende elektronische Beats und eine dunkle, wavige Melodie wie man sie immer wieder gern von den Dots hört. Dieses Stück hätte eicherlich auch bereits schon Ende der 80er entstanden sein können, besticht aber durch seinen überaus modernen Sound. Wäre das Album nach diesen drei Stücken zu Ende, wäre ich wahrscheinlich schon glücklich gewesen und würde sie auf Dauerrotation stellen, aber zum Glück geht es ja weiter.

Die zweite Seite des Vinylalbums beginnt mit “Credibility“. Hier finden wir einen absolut typischen Pink-Dots-Song. Ein leichter Walzerrhythmus, das führende Piano spielt eine herrlich naive Melodie und die Gitarre umrandet das ganze suptil psychedelisch. Die Elektronik begnügt sich mit dem einstreuen einiger Effekte, um das ganze schwebender und psychedelischer zu gestalten. Erinnert mich an „Hauptbahnhof“, einem ganz alten Stück der Band. Nur eine selbstbewustere Fassung, was sich im Gesang und auch im Text niederschlägt.

“Trending“ bleibt ebenfalls in der sphärischen, ruhigen Stimmung. Die Keyboards / Elektronik kreieren einen schwebenden, von Glockenklängen unterstützten Sound. Die Perkussion ist ganz sanft, postrockartig gesetzt. Dunkle Drones überlagern den Sound, durch den Keyboardklänge wie Wassertropfen perlen. Ein elektronisch-psychedelisches Kleinod, das von der perfekt eingesetzten Gitarre veredelt wird.

Touching the forelock“ bietet dann einen typischen, schrägen Popsong der Band. Ein fast schunkelnder elektronischer, dunkler Beat, schräge programmierte Perkussionen und jede Menge psychedelische Sounds. Dazu singt Edward leicht abgehoben. Für Dotheads wie mich Pop pur.

Die dritte Vinylseite gehört dem zweiteiligen “Don´t go there“. Die Laufzeit von 17:10 verteilt sich auf den ersten Teil “Pages aquarian“ das mit einer rockigen Gitarre, einem treibenden Bass aus dem Synthesizer und vielen elektronisch-psychedelischen Sounds besteht. Das Ganze ist sehr mystisch und dunkel angelegt und zieht den Hörer in fremde Welten. Hieraus entsteht ein kurzer, spaciger, etwas zefaserter Part der in einem großen, elektronischen Rauschen mündet, das mit Sprachfetzen und Sounds unterlegt ist. Nach einer ganz kurzen Pause brandet das Rauschen nochmal auf, mündet dann aber sofort in einer mächtigen elektronischen Perkussion.

Damit sind wir im zweiten Teil “Jacob’s Ladder“ angekommen. Ein Stück das in seiner Art sehr an das Nebenprojekt Teargarden erinnert und mit seinem Beat und den vielen Sounds fasziniert. Das Stück mündet in einen wundervoll schwebenden Ende, die Keyboards klingen versöhnlich und doch melancholisch. Der glasklare Sound beeindruckt. Die Pianomelodie am Ende mit Edwards Gesang und den Geräuschen sind einfach nur faszinierend.

“Prodigal“ eröffnet die letzte Seite dieses großartigen Albums. Hier präsentiert die Band nocheinmal eine großartige, düstere Ballade. Pochende elektronische Perkussion, eine dunkle Gitarre, und dann große Keyboardflächen. Die naive Melodie lehnt sich ein wenig an der von “Jacob’s Ladder“ an. Ganz großer, dunkler Pop, mit zerbrechlichen Gerüst, großflächigen Sounds, aufbrandender, treibender Perkussion und einer Prise Optimismus im Unterton.

“The weight of water parts 1 – 4“ bietet dann einen weiteren Longtrack mit knapp 16 Minuten. Eröffnet wird mit dunklen, treibenden Beats, wieder vermengt mit psychedelischen Geräuschen. Dann setzt Edwards dunkler Sprechgesang ein. Stoisch arbeitet der Beat, ebenso stoisch wirkt der Gesang. Großflächige, hymnische Keyboardsounds setzen ein, der Beat verschwindet, chorale Gesänge tauchen auf. Dann explodiert der Song in einem manischen Beat, wilden psychedelischen Klängen und Stimmgewirr. Das Stück zerfällt, baut sich mit wenigen elektronischen Geräuschen wieder auf und dann setzt eine melancholische, aber wunderschöne Keyboardmelodie ein. Der Untergrund brodelt wieder voller Geräusche unheilvoll. Eine psychedelische Soundlandschaft aus elektronischen Klängen entsteht, getragen von einem sphärischen Keyboard, darüber spricht Edward. Dann zerfällt erneut alles und mündet in einigen Sekunden der Stille. Abgeschlossen wird mit wenigen Perkussionen, elektronischen Sounds und einer melancholischen Gitarre, die wie eine Zither klingt. Und so geht ein kraft- und phantasievolles Album stimmungsvoll zu Ende.

Pages of Aquarius ist ein absolut fantastisches Pink-Dots–Album das durchaus viele Rückgriffe auf die eigene Historie vornimmt, ganz oft an alte Songs erinnert, dies aber in einem derartig überraschend modernen und starken Gewand, dass es für mich in die Reihe ihrer besten Alben aufsteigen lässt. Das Album ist die perfekte Symbiose aus den Soundtüfteleien der letzten Alben und der Bandvergangenheit, verpackt in einen großartigen, modern klingenden Sound. Asylum, Island of Jewels, The Golden Age, Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, The Maria Dimension, Shaddow Weaver / Malachai, Hallway of the Gods, Chemical Playschool 16 & 18, Pages of Aquarius. Und zusätzlich ist das Ganze in einem wunderschön psychedelisch gestalteten Cover eingepackt.

Doch Vorsicht: Das Album wird wohl keine komplette Rückkehr zu den songorientierten Arbeiten sein, denn in einem Interview kündigte Edward Ka-Spel bereits den nächsten, opulenten Teil der reichhaltigen Chemical-Playschool-Serie mit einem 2-CD-Werk an.

Wolfgang Kabsch

source

[excerpt:]

They’re back. Not that they had ever been away. But they are back. That the Legendary Pink Dots are one of my favorite bands, probably every reader who has read more than ten of my reviews or stories, to be known….

“Mirror mirror” opens with fat electronic beats and broad, catchy sound surfaces. Given an equally rich, rocking guitar, a song by Edward Ka-Spel at the highest level…..

“The greatest story ever told” initially remains impulsive… From the middle of the driving piece dissolves into the already-present psychedelic sound player and opens into a kind postpsychedelic with anthemic keyboard sounds and one of these typical text monologues by Edward.

“D-Train” remains powerful. A spherical guitar, pulsating electronic beats and a dark, waving tune how they like to hear of the Dots. This piece could be created already at the end of the 80, but impresses with its very modern sound.…

The second side of the vinyl album begins with “credibility”. Here we find an absolutely typical Pink Dots song. A light waltz rhythm, leading piano plays a delightfully naive melody and the guitar surrounded the whole suptil psychedelic. It reminds me of “Central Station”.…

The third vinyl side belongs to the two-part “Don’t go there”. The maturity of 17:10 is divided into the first part of “Pages aquarian” made with a rocking guitar, a driving bass from the synthesizer and many electronic-psychedelic sounds. The total is applied very mystical and dark and draws the listener into unknown worlds.… After a very brief break, the noise breaks out again, then opens but immediately in a powerful electronic percussion.

And so we come in the second part of “Jacob’s Ladder”.  The piece ends in a wonderful floating end, the keyboards sound conciliatory, yet melancholic. The crystal-clear sound is impressing. The piano melody at the end with Edwards singing and the sounds are just fascinating.

“Prodigal” opens the last page of this great album. Here the band presents once again a great, gloomy ballad. Throbbing electronic percussion, a dark guitar, and then large keyboard pads. The naive melody leans a little against the “Jacob’s Ladder”. Quite large, dark pop, with fragile scaffolding, large sounds, rhythmic percussion and a pinch of optimism in the undertone.

“The weight of water parts 1 – 4” then offers another long track with just under 16 minutes. It opens with dark, driving beats, again mixed with psychedelic sounds. Then Edward sets a dark chant. Stoic working the beat, as stoically acts of singing. Large, anthemic keyboard sounds employ, the beat disappears chorale chants emerge. Then the song explodes into a manic beat wild psychedelic sound.

Pages of Aquarius is an absolutely fantastic Pink Dots album that makes quite a lot of recourse to its own history, quite often reminiscent of old songs, but in a such a surprisingly modern and strong garment… The album is the perfect symbiosis of the sound fiddling jobs of the last albums and the bands past, wrapped in a great, modern-sounding sound. And in addition, the whole thing is wrapped in a beautifully designed psychedelic cover.

But beware: The album will be probably not a complete return to the song-oriented work, because in an interview Edward Ka-Spel announced  already the next part of the opulent rich Chemical Playschool series with a 2-CD album .

The problem with the Age of Aquarius is that nobody seems to know when it’s due, or indeed whether or not it’s already begun. According to the song ‘Aquarius’ from hippy musical Hair, the dawning will come when “The moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars.” Unfortunately, as astrologer Neil Spencer has noted, the moon enters the seventh house daily, while Jupiter and Mars are aligned several times a year. Other astrologers have argued for Aquarian start dates ranging from 1447 right up until 3597.

In the popular imagination, however, the Age of Aquarius will always be associated with the “love generation” counter-culture of the 1960s, and represents the utopian new age that their flower power shenanigans were supposed to usher in. In other words, it should be here by now, and it manifestly isn’t. As Legendary Pink Dots’ mainstay Edward Ka-Spel notes, if this is Aquarius page one then love, peace and good hair are hardly qualities in the ascendant. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he writes. “Are we in for another 2,160 years of this?”

Ultimately though, Ka-Spel’s conclusions are optimistic. What we’re actually living through are the death throes of the Pisces Age, he argues; it’s brutal and painful, but it won’t last. The way to get through is by letting go, on both a personal and societal level, and in order to do this we need to look unflinchingly at where we are now, what is holding us back and what will help us move forward.

So the album’s opening track, ‘Mirror, Mirror’ tackles introspection, narcissism and self-loathing alongside the hard but necessary task of looking closely at your own self and putting the work in to improve. Stinging synthesiser blasts reflect this flinching process over driving electronic percussion, before a melancholy mellotron passage suggests a degree of sorrowful self-acceptance has been found. On ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told,’ a swarm of buzzing clockwork wasps soundtrack rising existential dread before the song shifts into a litany of reasons not to worship God, or indeed watch his movies on TV, all set to a queasy rendition of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ The Age of Pisces is often identified as the Christian era, and early Christians identified themselves using two fishes as a symbol; among other qualities, Aquarius is associated with the decline of religion and the rise of technology. “We worship technology,” Ka-Spel whispers ambivalently at the close.

How the glorious analogue squelching of ‘D-Train’ fits into the concept I’m not sure, but ‘Credibility’ and ‘Trending’ take a look at the world around us, the former cursing “Damn your eyes, austerity” over lullaby-like piano, while the latter looks at the mysterious force of the zeitgeist as represented by popular topics on social media. Watching “the great sea ripple,” Ka-Spel wonders who or what is driving the trends, directing our thoughts and attention as one linked collective organism.

The album concludes with two multi-part epics. The near-eighteen minute ‘Don’t Go There- Page Aquarian- Jacob’s Ladder’ begins in haunting yet propulsive style, discussing surveillance culture and “cameras everywhere” before shifting onto memory as a form of observation, returning to the theme of looking unsparingly at your own past actions and how they’ve led you to where you are now. A collage of found sound leads into a passage of spare percussion over which Ka-Spel considers the stars and the notion of destiny, before the final section finds tentative piano chords reverberating over the sound of a gathering storm. Here considerations of mortality and the afterlife are resolved into the need to make peace and find some kind of acceptance.

For CD listeners, that’s where the album ends, but it would be a shame to miss out on the sixteen-and-a-half minute ‘The Weight of Water Parts 1-4,’ which is only available on digital and double vinyl editions. A dry, steady pulse beat supports slabs of musique concrete and some non-judgemental meditations on self-destructive behaviour, before a frantic flurry of low piano notes in a repeating, claustrophobic loop successfully simulates a panic attack. This then shifts into an oceanic evocation of waking at 3am with the realisation that your life has been wasted in deceit and acquisitiveness, before the instrumental final section captures a zen-like sensation of beatific release, with acoustic and electronic textures beautifully balanced against each other.

Aquarius of course is the water bearer, and ‘The Weight of Water’ effectively sums up the pain and difficulty of this period of transition. There’s no need though to take the astrological metaphors literally; this album can be enjoyed purely as an unsettling and moving 83 minutes of music, and for those who do listen closely to the words, Ka-Spel’s dry sense of humour undercuts any tendency towards new age pretentiousness.

Their long history could make some wrongly see the Legendary Pink Dots as unapproachable or worse, irrelevant. But Pages of Aquarius is an album that stands on its own merits. Even if you’ve never bought a Pink Dots record before, this is a progressive, provocative and ultimately positive statement about the world we’re all living in today.

by Ben Graham, May 3rd, 2016

source

The strongest Legendary Pink Dots album of 2015 snuck in just under the wire as a digital release, with a delayed vinyl version expected in a few months from new Spanish label Abstrakce.  Intended as a “secret” sister album to the earlier Five Days, Quantum Bleats sounds a lot more like the work of an actual band, though it is no less fragmented and hallucinatory.  Everything feels a lot more deliberate, melodic, fully formed, and evocative this time around: there are a number of beautifully orchestrated passages, snatches of playful cabaret, and muscular bass lines lurking amidst all of the usual free-form psychedelic sprawl.  While it probably focuses a bit too much on the ambiguous no-man’s land between “song” and “abstract experimentation” to rank among the Dots’ best work, it is nevertheless quite clear that most of Edward Ka-Spel’s more inspired recent ideas found their way here.

Curiously, Ka-Spel has described this album as “as far out as the Dots may have gone in their history.”  In one way, that statement seems quite far from the mark, given the existence of truly bizarre past albums like The Creature That Tasted Sound or the Chemical Playschool series.  In another, however, Seismic Bleats is indeed a legitimately unhinged affair, so maybe the statement just warrants an asterisk with the qualification “at least, as far as song-based albums are concerned.”  That, said “song-based” might also warrant an asterisk as well, as only one piece fully emerges from the kaleidoscopic fantasia to make a strong impression: the fun, lurching cabaret of “Checkpoint,” which unexpectedly dissolves into a sample of an old waltz after only about two minutes.  The opening “Colonel Sanders” veers similarly close to being an instant classic, marrying a cool bass line with a strong vocal melody amidst spacey washes of synthesizers.  Again, however, things fail to progress in a conventionally satisfying linear fashion, as the song is warped and distended into near-unrecognizability around the 3-minute mark.  It feels a lot like Jamaican dub filtered through the prism of Edward Ka-Spel’s deviant mind, as recognizable bits keep surfacing from the original fully formed song, but everything else is generally replaced entirely or dissolves into vapor.

In general, the appeal of Seismic Bleats lies primarily in just waiting around to see what surfaces next from the bleary miasma of psychedelic wanderings.  Surprises definitely abound, as “Checkpoint” alone features chirping birds, wildly pitch-shifted vocals, something that sounds like a field recording from a Russian train platform, and the aforementioned foray into ballroom dance and none of it sounds at all out of place.  Soon after, a haunting tambura solo gradually dissolves into a thunderstorm, bringing the first side of the album to a close.  The second side then kicks off with a piece that initially sounds like a menacing twist on classic Pink Floyd (“Quantum Leap”), but that naturally collapses into a black void of howling cosmic horror and a deep, echoing mantra (which I believe is also being played backwards).  Once that happens, things basically stay that way: the first side of the album is devoted to far more tender, human fare and a cavalcade of small surprises, while the second side is almost entirely a dark, haunted, and sustained plunge into deep space, though it does feature an unexpected interlude of something resembling steel drums.  To their eternal credit, “Stanley Kubrick meets a resort vacation in Trinidad” is a description that I probably would not get to use for any other band besides the Dots.

Despite being quite different, there is a weird symmetry to the two sides of the album.  The first half feels like a wildly unpredictable and jumbled dream where each fresh batch of synapse firings takes me out of where I was and drops me somewhere else.  While undeniably dream-like in the extreme, it is definitely not a coherent one (even by dream logic’s very loose standards).  The second half also feels like a dream, but like a dream that a broken computer in an abandoned space ship might be having.  Or perhaps one that a quantum sheep might be having.  It is hard to say.  The one thing for certain is that it is all spectacularly warped and that it all ends in brilliantly sublime fashion (with Ka-Spel repeatedly intoning “up the river…down the river” over a bed of burbling water and eerie electronic washes and drones).  This is definitely a very ambitious and intermittently fascinating work, albeit far from a perfect one.  That said, Seismic Bleats’ faults seem to be completely by design: none of the best parts ever stick around long enough to be satisfying or leave a strong impression because everything is gleefully stretched, broken, pulled apart, or otherwise warped in service of Ka-Spel and company’s larger vision.  I just wish that the lulls between the best parts were a little more infrequent (and shorter).  Oh well.  I cannot complain all that much though, as I would much rather hear an inspired near-miss than anything familiar: this is a fine and deeply aberrant album and it is all the more enjoyable because it goes so far off the rails rather than merely revisiting well-worn LPD territory.

by Anthony D’Amico
source