Gig #80: Sampler: Legendary Pink Dots

‘Over 33 years and 40-plus albums, the Legendary Pink Dots have forged a unique, subterranean path through a cross-section of British, European and American musical subcultures. With roots in the same fertile soil of English 1980s post-punk, post-hippie, acid-informed occultism as Psychic TV, Coil, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound – equal parts Stonehenge Free Festival and Ballardian industrial estate dystopia – they’ve detoured through goth, industrial, ambient and dark folk along their journey, from lo-fi tape experiments to alternative dancefloor fillers, subversive pop to abrasive noise, often within the same song.

‘If anything, though, the Dots can be seen as a singular development of the underground psychedelia that first inspired main man Edward Ka-Spel (born 1954) as a teenager: Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, the alien visitations of early David Bowie, the art-rock of Henry Cow and the Residents, and of course the first wave of German kosmische music – Can, Faust, Neu! These early visions of artistic freedom have informed the band ever since, through changing incarnations built around Ka-Spel and founding keyboard player Phil Knight, aka The Silverman. Alongside a complex, somewhat tongue-in-cheek mythology constructed via their lyrics and presentation, this approach has seen the Dots filed away as the cult bands’ cult band – beloved of a hardcore few, quietly influential yet perpetually existing well beneath the media radar.’ — The Quietus

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So Gallantly Screaming
‘The Legendary Pink Dots’ discography is so expansive that it’s difficult to say something about their music with full authority. The Dots’ founding members—Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight—may not even know for themselves how many albums they have released by this point, although it’s safe to say the number of studio records exceeds 40. The band’s music is dark and filled with esoteric mystique, it’s loud, it’s psychedelic, it’s synthy, it’s gothy, and it’s still more thrilling today than many of the most hotly praised albums of the year.’ — Pop Matters

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I Love You in Your Tragic Beauty
‘Ka-Spel’s Legendary Pink Dots are one of the most adventurous (and ever evolving) psychedelic poppers. They began with psychedelic madrigals that were unique in the pastoral way they employed electronic sounds, for example on Brighter Now (1982). Asylum (1985) veered towards melancholy decadent futuristic pop a` la Roxy Music and Ultravox. As Ka-Spel’s skills in orchestration improved, he sculpted the neo-classic pop of Any Day Now (1987), possibly his artistic peak, and then the eccentric synth-pop of The Maria Dimension (1991), and finally experimented with the avantgarde arrangements of Malachai (1993), probably his most ambitious work.’ — scaruffi.com

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Kalos Melas
‘Unlike most acts of their vintage, The Legendary Pink Dots look forward. After more than 25 years, they continue to make compelling new music that is demanded by fans and maintains the high level of quality that set their careers in motion. Led by singer/songwriter Edward Ka-Spel and keyboardist/songwriter Phil “Silverman” Knight, the band continues to create their singular brand of modern psychedelia. Edward Ka-Spel’s lyrics breathe with a sagacity and cleverness only found in rock’s greatest writers.’ — ROIR

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True Love
‘Eric Deshayes dit d’eux qu’ils constituent le meilleur groupe au monde. Rien de moins venant de la part de celui qui connaît l’histoire des musiques expérimentales et du Krautrock sur le bout des doigts. Les Legendary Pink Dots donnent le tournis, toujours à part, suivis par une troupe de fidèles amateurs partisans du bon goût universel. Le groupe a traversé le monde, le temps, les espaces intellectuels et les vecteurs artistiques. Quasiment 40 albums, 30 ans de carrière, pour explorer mieux que quiconque, sans jamais avoir vendu leur âme, les sentiments humains, les beautés étranges de la folie, les frontières de l’aliénation avec le contenu de nos vies, l’amour, la violence, la beauté, les dérives. Toutes les thématiques des sphères gothiques en somme, mais mieux que tous, avec plus de recul que tous, pas de clichés, uniquement un défrichage prescriptif et définitif dans des chants hors du monde, à l’ouverture d’esprit révélatrice d’une intelligence qu’on les visionnaires seulement.’ — L’Embobineuse

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Casting the Runes
‘The thing is, it’s not really known generally that the Legendary Pink Dots — it’s assumed that we started in London — actually, we came from a very small hamlet in Moldavia, which of course didn’t have any street-lamps so it was dark all the time. But, as the population in this small hamlet of Moldavia evolved, they developed their own personal lights to light the streets — which were fluorescent pink lights. It was so remote, this hamlet in Moldavia, that very few people would ever find it. One day–you know, the story got around, of course, but nobody really believed it was true–some hitchhikers from the furthest reaches of Georgia sort of stumbled onto this hamlet in Moldavia and saw the locals walking around with these fluorescent pink spots all over their faces and finally someone said, “Those are the legendary pink dots!” And we were just rehearsing in a room nearby, and, that’s how we got the name.’ — Edward Ka-Spel

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Adrenaline
‘Their music touches on elements of neo-psychedelia, ambient music, electronic music, tape music, industrial, psychedelic folk, synthpop, post-punk, progressive, jazz, noise, pop, and goth rock, with a distinctly experimental/avant-garde bent; their sound has evolved over time and remains distinctive, making it difficult to place the group into a concise style or genre. The group’s overall sound combined with Ka-Spel’s distinct lyrics and singing have earned comparisons to Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett; the group also has links to the sounds of krautrock bands such as Can, Faust, Brainticket, Magma or Neu! (whose “Super” they covered on the 1999 tribute album “A Homage to NEU!”).’ — Wikipedia

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Grey Scale
‘The pulsing machine skank of ‘Grey Scale’ recognises the small compromises with the system we all make; gradual steps towards total surrender and a life lived in abject fear. “We know where you’re hiding”, mocks a sing-song voice towards the end. It traverses landscapes of strangely pastoral electronica, before giving way to the sound of a loudly creaking floorboard, or swinging door – suggesting that the way into a different space, another way of being, is right there in front of us, but hidden just out of sight.’ — The Quietus

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Love Puppets
‘The music of the Legendary Pink Dots is a pretty disparate combination of elements. It’s highly melodic, but there are some rapid-fire cut-ups and Biblical references to temper-an unusual combination. Extremely wide territory. Why are there Biblical references and collages in the midst of the beautiful tunes? It’s meant to be painting that goes on inside of me, which is hardly the most balanced human being to use as a reference point in the first place. So any beauty that is inside me, any chaos that’s inside me-they sort of fuse inside me. I paint them as they are going on all the time. The music I write is a representation of this. It’s sort of like painting your own soul.’ — Edward Ka-Spel, 1987

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Just a Lifetime (live)
‘Stravinsky said that music should not be listened to with the eyes closed. Would you agree? Yeah, I would. I like music to be almost hallucinating. It should take you places, even with the eyes wide open. To destroy the line between reality and dream. Have you ever had the experience, when you seem to remember something, and you realize what you’re remembering cannot be placed. You’ve never been there before, and you couldn’t possibly have been. Then you realize that you’re actually remembering a dream.’ — Edward Ka-Spel, 1987

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Super
‘Over the course of 25 years and seemingly twice that many albums, it’s become well nigh impossible to state simply what the Legendary Pink Dots “sound like.” The best one can hope to do is to describe what Edward Ka-Spel and company are up to at any given time. Currently, the band is in one of its most straightforward (relatively speaking) phases, and one of its best. The overall tone is one of English psychedelic whimsy mutated into darker, largely electronic forms: think of classic-era Gong and Syd Barrett’s solo albums, as remixed by Aphex Twin. Ka-Spel’s vocals have the high-pitched, childlike delivery of Barrett or the Television Personalities’ Dan Treacy, which adds an extra layer of nervous dread to the uniformly dark, foreboding lyrics.’ — allmusic

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The Lovers (Part 2)
‘How do you live your life when it feels like the world is constantly on the verge of apocalypse? Well, you’re going to find a way. It has ALWAYS felt like that — for generations in fact. Somehow the world keeps chugging along, but now and again we get little reminders — like the Haiti earthquake, the oil spill in the Gulf, or 9-11 and the wars that followed — that things are not well. And when you get down to it, you’re headed for your own personal apocalypse anyway. Nobody lives forever. The real question is, in the face of impending doom, how do you live well? I think I might have an answer, at least one that works for me, thanks to a strange and wonderful group called the Legendary Pink Dots.’ — The Music Missionary

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Hallway
‘They’ve been around for 30 years and have produced a huge body of work. They’re so experimental that getting into it can be daunting. I would recommend starting with one of these albums: The Maria Dimension, Hallway of the Gods, Asylum, Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, Your Children Placate You from Unmarked Graves, or Plutonium Blonde. There’s a lot to them. Just give them a listen and have an open mind. Their styles and sounds are so wide-ranging that you are bound to hear things you don’t like, or that puzzle you, but if you persevere, you are also going to find music you will love, music that will speak to your soul.’ — FC

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Is It Something I Said?
‘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 andSparks projects before, will provide the keen reader and listener with a giddy entry-point into the Legendary Pink Dots’ musical world. Fulfil the prophecy!’ — Kitty Sneezes

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Pennies for Heaven
‘A single lit candle is brought onto stage. This pre-performance “mood-setter” would normally give a crowded concert hall an air of solemnity, ritual and intimacy. However, rather than placed conspicuously upstage, where it might be a silent call to attention, it is set off to the side, almost backstage. Obviously, the candle is not meant for the audience, but for the private ritual of the performer. Such is typical of Edward Ka-Spel, whose moving performances offer access to an original and deeply personal vision of the world. As founder of the Legendary Pink Dots, Edward and company have put out some of the most absorbing and richly diverse music around-ballads in epic proportions without concessions given to chorus, hummable melody, or neatly coategorized style. Instead, it is almost operatic, full of radical stylistic shifts, and bound with sophisticated and sometimes grating electronics.’ — Option Magazine

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Madame Guillotine
‘The two and a half decade long musical journey of The Legendary Pink Dots has seen them traverse the psycho-goth-prog-rock landscape from one end to the other. Singer Edward Ka-Spel and songwriting partner/keyboardist Phil Knight have crossed just about every single boundary that divides the various pertinent sub-genres that are defined by terms like electronic, progressive, post-new wave, etc. Quite often there are straightforward pop tunes lurking underneath the dense layers of sound that seem to float in and out of their music, but their motif has always been to color the mise-en-scene with many hues of gray and highlights of muted blue.’ — Impose Magazine

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The Safe Way
‘The Legendary Pink Dots may have meant the first word in their moniker to be ironic back when they named themselves during the post-punk anti-rock star era. But nearly three decades later, the irony now is that they’ve pretty much ended up living up to their own billing. The Amsterdam-by-way-of-London quartet has not only held to their defiantly experimental concept, but they’ve done it independently of the recording industry. “Somewhere inside me I always knew I was in for a bit of a long ride,” explains founder and main artistic voice Edward Ka-Spel about the group’s longevity. “I did have a lot of ideas that I wanted to see through back then, and I’m still seeing them through.” Ka-Spel says he feels “no commercial consideration at all” when constructing the group’s records, which have been known to mix and match everything from off-kilter drumbeats to spoken word sections to deceptively “childlike” ditties. “Better to miss a meal and have something you feel proud of than to slowly sell your soul,” he explains. “The music we make is the most important thing.”‘ — Washington Post Express

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p.s. Hey. This gig is for everyone, duh, but it’s for Bill Hsu in particular because he suggested that devote some kind of post to Legendary Pink Dots. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! ‘Mawrdew Czgowchwz’ is an excellent place to start reading McCourt, yeah. It’s by far the easiest one to get your hands on. ‘Time Remaining’ is my favorite, and if you come across a very affordable copy, definitely spring for it, but ‘MC’ is a very good beginning. Ha ha, it’s nice that that escort’s thing was so productive. I figured, about the new ‘Terminator’. I’m saving it for a plane because those little screens have the magical effect of making mediocre blockbusters into perfectly acceptable time wasters. ‘Terminator’ can’t be worse than ‘Jurassic World’, which I strongly suggest you skip, if it’s not too late. I have a soft spot for Arnold in movies too. I dug him in the ‘Expendable’ movies. He has this surprisingly wry, playful self-conscious thing in his performances nowadays that’s quite charming, I think. Best laid writing plans that wind up delivering alternate goods is more than acceptable, you know? Broken plans and rules are usually a really good sign. Getting stressed about the unmet goal is the only enemy in that situation. I’m really glad you can sense yourself progressing. I like your ‘getting stuff out there’ plan, and, yeah, I was very happy to see that I’ll get to see your works on Mosquito. You have a good and much better than good day too, pal. ** Steevee, Ha ha, makes sense. The Jude Law thing. Urgh, so the ear problem wasn’t just a phantom. That sucks, I’m very sorry to hear that. ** James, Thank you. I don’t think James and Frank are related, but I don’t know for sure. I think McCourt is a fairly common Irish name. Well, like I said to Chris, ‘Mawrdew Czgowchwz’ is a fine start as well as the easiest place to start, but he hasn’t written a novel that isn’t super excellent, for my money, so can’t really go wrong. I’m very happy to have added a potential fan to ‘LotB’s’ cult. ** Sypha, Hi. Yeah, it’s cool, obviously, to me that you’re using my favorite novels list as a template. I have, in fact, been thinking of updating the list again, sorry. I saw Tenacious D live one time when they opened for Weezer, and they were grisly unbearable. ** David Ehrenstein, He is indeed. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Ha ha, if there’s a polar opposite writer to Hemingway, it might well be McCourt. No, I haven’t read it yet. Like I said before, I need to finish writing the film script, which is occupying my brain entirely right now, but I’m close to getting it done, I think. Again, I’m very sorry for my ridiculous slowness, but I fear I am like that, always have been and seemingly always will be. I don’t like that about myself, but it’s a force or lack of force that seems to be beyond my repairing. Are you submitting the novel to other places yet? Thanks, great, about the ‘Infernal’ piece, and very exciting about how quickly your ‘MC’ piece will appear. The new gif book isn’t a novel, it’s a collection of short works using/transmuting several different, mostly literary forms. Best to you! ** Bill Hi, Bill. I hope the gig is okay of you. Tackling their massive output is a daunting thing, and that tight selection up there is pretty subjective. Still, I hope it’s of interest and serves their work. ‘Queer Street’ is very terrific. When watching ‘Legend’, you have to allow Tom Cruise to work on you in a neutral, puzzle piece-like, benevolent way. Tim Curry is insane in it. It’s my favorite Tim Curry. But it’s the film’s style, mood, drifting trance-y quality in general that’s the pleasure, I think. ** Douglas Payne, Hi. You have an ‘in’ with ‘MC’. That’s interesting. Opera is like High Latin to me, but I loved the novel anyway. Oh, okay, how do we sort out the Skyping time? I’m ready whenever mostly. By email, via Facebook? ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, listen to Andrew, I’m sure, and your mom about the approach to the lessons. Maybe there is detailing that needs to be considered? Well, hip-hip-hooray about Episode 2! Only a week away! Very exciting, Ben! I did in fact watch that speech. Someone propped it on Facebook, so I linked to it. Admirable, inspiring speech, for sure. She seems just great! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Avoiding panic is often the cure for all sorts of physical things. Our brains are so strange. Man, that Feldman concert sounds just dreamy. I don’t know that work, but Feldman on Guston is a very fascinating idea, obviously. You’re overheated there too? Yesterday was fucking horrible here. I can’t tell about today yet. It feels ominous already at 9:40 am, though. Thanks for the link to the TI stream and the extra Moonfaced track! People seem really high on the new TI. I liked their first record, but then I watched a video of them live, and I thought it was boring and irritating. But it was a video of a concert, and how often do those work? ** Kier, Dennilingus! Whoa, ha ha. I bet that’s my nickname in heaven and/or hell. I bet when I end up in heaven and/or hell, that’s what they’ll call me. We’ve been working on the script for a while, but it has come together pretty easily and quickly. It would be great to actually finish it by sometime next week, and that’s plan/hope. I think the puppet show/TV series will be for smart, childlike adults and equally for smart, adult-y kids. It’s not going to be transgressive or anything, but it will be dark and strange. Ideally. We’ll see. It should be fun. The dummy and the ventriloquist who will star in it are really brilliant. They’re in ‘The Ventriloquists Convention’. Yeah, workhorse gets said in English a fair amount. I’m very glad your hearing is at least a little better. Man, three people on the blog are having ear issues right now, it’s so strange. Nice day there, very nice. Oh, shit, no, I would never go bungee jumping. I like thrill rides and drop rides and stuff, but bungee … no. My shoulders are tensed just thinking about it. But I totally get how intense and exciting it would be. Do it! Those new photos are beautiful, and, yeah, eerie. The eeriness is very interesting. I’m going to dwell on them and figure out how that works. Everyone, a new batch of photos by the genius Kier called ‘lambing / farm horror’ are now viewable with but a light tap on these words functioning as their entrance. Please depart. Awesome! Love, buddy! ** Gary gray, Hi, G. Cool. Yeah, being happy for happy couples seems to me to qualify as one form of joy. But you can get so seeing a stranger grin is joyful. It’s weird. I get like that a lot. I don’t even understand it. Wow, a poem where I’m in its mind? Thank you, man. That sentence/phrase is beautiful and super intriguing, so if it’s just an outtake, that’s pretty promising. Gee, thank you a lot, man, really. Hugs, love, etc., me. ** Misanthrope, That was a lustrous and lovely reverie there, George. I’d try to up the ante but yesterday was a fluke. I’ve heard people claim that geese are evil. It sounds like it. I don’t actually like zoos that much. I just like fake landscapes, especially fake mountains and very especially with fake caves inside them. But I will happily seize the opportunity to visit that open-safari zoo-like place with you should I ever be so lucky as to have the chance. You are kind. ** MANCY, MANCY! MANCY, your du0 zines are so fucking good! So great! They’ve been sitting right next to my laptop for days now, and I pick them up all the time and pore through them knowing I will get a beauty and inspiration hit. Wonderful work, great sir! ** Right. Given the fact that Legendary Pink Dots have almost 50 albums out, perhaps my little selection of musical bits and songs from them will serve a purpose in letting you enter their stuff without the usual extremely intimidating vibe. Or maybe you already like them and wish to question my choices or add your own. Or maybe you won’t give a shit, ha ha. Anything goes, is what I’m saying. See you tomorrow.