The Legendary Pink Blog: Brighter Now

Welcome to Postmodern Accident, and welcome to the ongoing Legendary Pink Blog.

Unfortunately we've got one more year before the Dots truly shifted their focus to LPs, but 1982 would at least see the official release of their first one...

...but it didn't happen right away. The Dots did hook up with Pat Bermingham's In Phaze Records to release a six-track cassette named after one of their more recent songs, the melodic but unsuccessful ballad "Brighter Now." The cassette did not include the title track but instead featured six tracks that had developed since their appearance on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2, including a reprise of the excellent "Legacy" that had been given prime placement on Kleine Kreig. Later in the year In Phaze would partner with New European Recordings to bring this material in slightly remixed form to LP, and in order to pad out the length, the Dots added three tracks.

[Discography note: Presumably by the time of the LP release, at least two of the other 1982 cassettes had been assembled if not released. Based on the appearance of particular songs, the Brighter Now cassette seems to clear the deck of some of the holdovers from earlier tapes whereas the other 1982 releases feature all-new material.]

Brighter Now

Front cover of vinyl reissue and first CD edition on Terminal Kaleidoscope


Back cover of vinyl reissue (above) and CD edition (below)

Red Castles *

Louder After 6 *

The Wedding

Apocalypse Then *

Legacy *

City Ghosts *

Hanging Gardens *

Soma Bath

Premonition 4

*These 6 tracks were on the original cassette edition of Brighter Now.

On their debut album, the Dots come across as song-oriented and gentle. Much of the experimentation littered throughout their early cassettes has been excised here, leaving at least half of the material to focus strictly on Edward Ka-Spel's voice with musical backing that applied an unexpected amount of restraint to a baroque variety of sounds and instruments. There is absolutely no doubt that the Dots are attempting to be commercial here, though the recordings are still painfully lo-fi and in some cases badly produced, meaning that a band that worked with synthesizers and electronics would already sound dated by the time of the record's release. In other words, this was not going to be able to compete with the likes of Depeche Mode or the Human League, and the band certainly must have known this. Of course, this is a major part of the record's charm.

Along with the shift in sound, the band started to develop a mythology of its own. The cover image of the winged man descending from the heavens, which is more distinctly illustrated on the cassette, is no accident, as it immediately calls to mind everything from Icarus to Flash Gordon to the Bible. Brighter Now is the album that accentuates the band's roots in hippie folk rock, '70s prog, science fiction, fantasy, and fairy tales. Characters who were once bored office workers or bohemian artists were now drawn as knights, maidens, princesses, and magicians. But instead of living happily ever after, these folks were hung for crimes they didn't do, mourned for the loss of their loved ones, and revolted in dystopian societies that tapped their phones. Underneath these gentle pop songs, with their choral backdrops, acoustic guitars, and Casio keyboard presets, an apocalyptic vision was beginning to evolve.


In Phaze cassette exterior (above) and interior (below)


"Red Castles" is an odd way to start the album, as it's one of the dinkiest sounding songs on the record. But I suppose in an alternate universe where the Legendary Pink Dots were eligible for chart success, if a song were to have been designated as a single, this might have been it. The song is especially catchy and it does a great job of establishing what the band is about thematically, as it immediately draws a parallel between the Dots' fantasy world and real life scenarios such as bar fighting and seeing a therapist. The central message seems to take on the self-help movement, where visualization exercises can help a person overcome obstacles: "You are king of the castle. Your glory excels in here." The chorus includes transcendent background vocals, but otherwise the song is brittle sounding, especially the drums. "Louder After 6" follows, and it wins the award for most improved, as it was the song on Ancient Daze that was so overheated with chirpy synth sounds that it was rendered unlistenable. Here, it is a much smoother affair, with a swinging rhythm and soft, outdated keyboards that make it sound like something you'd hear at an organ demonstration in a mall music shop circa 1979. In fact, the song is now such a harmless pop song that it is somewhat unremarkable, though the numerous phone effects at the end act as a true reminder which band this is. "The Wedding" reappears next, and it is still a heartfelt ballad, somewhat polished up and played on a real piano this time. It is a nice song with a typical Ka-Spel twist; the protagonist is marrying but feels insincere about it, and this is his inner monologue throughout the ceremony. "Maybe someday the rewards wil be there in Heaven just for us." Amen, indeed.

"Apocalypse Then" is much more interesting than I have ever given it credit for. It describes a wartime panic scenario where everyone thinks the world is ending, but it is presented in a four-part structure that feels unified and never loses focus over seven and a half minutes. In fact, it continues to build dramatically. After a narrated intro, the song features an extremely lovely middle passage with harmony vocals (courtesy Ka-Spel and guitarist Mick Marshall) and fingered guitar, then builds to an intense climax where, "You cannot keep this country down for long because we win so many fucking (wars)." It ends with a rallying crowd and the sound of a far-off belltower, achieving something cinematic that the band hasn't really tried before. The general sound of the track is a denser sound, almost rock, that doesn't rely as much on production gimmicks and therefore anticipates the direction the band would follow for the next four years.

"Legacy" (from Kleine Krieg) appears in a lush version next, kicking off the second half of the album, and it remains a standout of the oeuvre. This is followed by an update of "City Ghosts," again a trippy folk rock track with a memorably exotic sound courtesy of Keith Thompson's percussion, Roland Callaway's snake-charming bass, and Mick Marshall's Spanish-tinged guitar. Actually hearing audible contributions from all members of the band is a welcome change of pace after so many lo-fi cassettes, and at this point, the song is certainly an album centerpiece. Though its innocent pagan/hippie sound really dates it, "City Ghosts" ends up as one of the more adventurous pieces on the album, featuring a bridge underscored by percolating synths and moments of true progressive beauty. Better yet it segues directly into "Hanging Gardens," an absolutely stunning monster of a track and the sound of a band finally reaching artistic triumph. Again, the song is gentle, but its combination of ethereal synth washes, light acoustic guitar, and ever-so-slightly vocoded singing makes for irresistible atmosphere. The prettiness of the song obscures the ugliness of the lyrics, which could be about a woman with royal power who is either unable or unwilling to save her lover from a death sentence. But what knocks this track out of the ballpark is the fact that, led by a hypnotically dubby bassline, it suddenly reverses direction two-thirds of the way through.

Listen to "Hanging Gardens" here:


The album ends with an encore of "Soma Bath," apparently unchanged from its form on Kleine Krieg, which neither detracts or adds to the overall feel of the album, and finally a moody experimental track called "Premonition 4." This is the only instrumental track on the album, and after a brief moment where a girl sings "Ring Around the Rosie," it basically sounds like a 45 RPM record being played at 16 RPM so that the slow rhythm of the drum and bass fills the sound spectrum with darkness. It's a nice finishing touch to the record, if not overwhelmingly memorable. Other artists would stretch this out over 20 minutes, but the Dots know how to be economical when they have to be.

Brighter Now gained wider distribution in the late '80s when it was reissued on the band's own label and distributed by Play It Again Sam, a Belgian company that would play a major part in breaking the band internationally. However, it did not receive an official U.S. release until 1996, when it was reissued by Soleilmoon Recordings and given terrible new (goth) cover art, as seen below.





GO FORWARD to Prayer for Aradia ----->
<----- GO BACKWARD to Atomic Roses and Apparition

The Legendary Pink Blog: Kleine Krieg

Welcome to Postmodern Accident, and welcome to the ongoing Legendary Pink Blog.

By the end of 1981, the Legendary Pink Dots were starting to learn that they could pick and choose certain tracks from their oeuvre and present them in a way that served them better, rather than just dumping everything into one big pot the way they did with Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2. By ordering the tracks a certain way and using their experimental instrumental tracks as interstitial segues between various pieces, they could take their listeners on a head trip with much greater narrative, the kind of experience a seasoned drug user might expect rather than the newbie who is confused and bewildered by the sensory chaos. They did not pioneer this approach; early experimental rock act The Red Crayola did this as early as 1967 on their amazing LP The Parable of Arable Land, on which psychedelic pop gems like "Hurricane Fighter Plane" were connected to others via much less successful passages called "free form freakouts." But the whole can often end up much greater than the sum of its parts, and the Dots were finally starting to think about the whole.

Perhaps they were pruning their material in preparation for an actual LP, or perhaps they wanted to see what would happen with longer forms, but their next major release strives for epic in a way that nothing they had done previously was able to achieve.

Kleine Krieg

Defeated [aka (Still) Defeated] *

Deflated

Black Highway *

Soma Bath *

Peace Krime #2 *

Break Day *

(The Palace of Love)

Stoned Obituary

Stars on Sunday *

Vigil (aka Vigie)

Legacy *

One for the Pearl Moon *

Dolls' House *

Brill *

Down from the Country

Thursday Night Fever

Die With Your Eyes On

Opus Dei

* These tracks appear on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2.

Kleine Krieg was a single 90-minute cassette release. It was released three times over a four year period, including once as part of a package with a model airplane, but there are really only a couple hundred copies in existence. It was never reissued in the late '80s as the prior cassettes had been by the Dots themselves or any of their usual mail order accomplices, such as Jarmusic or Staalplaat, and despite its scarcity—and arguably its importance—it also hasn't seen an official CD release. Three or four of its tracks have appeared on various archive CD compilations (e.g. The Legendary Pink Box, Stained Glass Soma Fountains, and Under Triple Moons) but it really deserves a better fate, and was finally remastered in 2007 when Vinyl-on-Demand included it on double-vinyl as part of the 5-LP box set The Legendary Pink Dots, the same box which housed Chemical Playschool Edition 2. That it still remains, in early 2015, unreleased in digital form on the band's Bandcamp site is bewildering.


Kleine Krieg double vinyl release

Kleine Krieg includes a number of tracks already featured on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 but it recontextualizes them, in some cases combining them with leading or trailing tracks as described above and also sometimes editing them; the versions are the same, but they may end sooner or last even longer. The cassette editions reportedly boasted clearer, fuller sound than other tapes of the time and only a couple of its tracks fail to reach the five-minute mark, a notable distinction from the fast rush of Only Dreaming.

The vinyl release once again makes a fantastic addition to a burgeoning LPD vinyl collection because, except for one track, it does not overlap with Ancient Daze or Chemical Playschool Edition 2 on vinyl, assuring that you get the widest variety of tracks at the best possible sound quality. Of course, the fact that it is packaged with the latter means that someone obviously thought it through lovingly and carefully.

Case in point: the leading track, "Defeated." The early version of this was included on Only Dreaming but not on Ancient Daze; the second version of it opened the program on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 but did not appear on Chemical Playschool Edition 2. It finally appears here, and as a song it's very much in line with other early LPD rock songs, like "Voices" and "Black Highway," though to call it "rock" would be exaggerating its impact. Like "Voices," it's a fully realized song that makes the most of its arrangement but is simple enough (despite its complex lyrical structure) that it has likely come as far as it can. In fact, it would not evolve beyond this form. The song immediately segues into "Deflated," a spacy track that hints at how accomplished the Dots were becoming with their signature bleepy tracks. "Black Highway" reappears next in its best form, including a brief guitar intro that would grow out of the sounds of the song before. The song really pulses in a Krautrock way, betraying the obvious debt that the Dots admit to having for Neu! Unusually, the cribbing of "Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!" for the chorus never comes off as cloying, guaranteeing the song a position in the Dots' hall of fame. Edward Ka-Spel's vocal gets progressively more manic, climaxing at the end of the song in a reckless shriek.

"Soma Bath" is an ace synth track with a standout bassline courtesy Rolls Anotherone (aka Roland Callaway), whose time in the band would be short but memorable over the next couple releases. This track is another that appeared in some form on all previous releases and would make an encore performance in this exact format on the band's upcoming debut LP. It mutates into "Peace Krime #2," abandoning the song format for a piece that marries church organ with the same sample of Margaret Thatcher that appeared in the track's earlier namesake. Sounds of a rallying crowd and a peaceful keyboard melody interrupt the sample for a bit before the church organ returns. Squelchy wobbling synth tones carry over into the next track, "Break Day." One of the standout tracks from Ancient Daze due to its intriguing structure, it has been slowed down and rearranged to make the most of its tension. The music is oddly disconnected and electronic sounding, while Ka-Spel sings with wider range and more subtlety. In this instance, the Dots are ahead of their time, but the melding of avant garde techniques with a broken pop song is still impressive. The sinister lyric ends with, "Linking arms, drinking orders, urinating on the floor. Spilt the milk, split a hymen, took her wicked, made her sore... Let her know it was Break Day." It conjures images of a military rape-and-pillage scenario, a hint at the dark themes that would soon encompass the band. The song devolves into fussy atmospheric murmurs and backwards masking that may or may not be called "The Palace of Love," as it is credited on some cassette versions of Kleine Krieg.

Earlier when I described this release as "epic," I was partly thinking of "Stoned Obituary," a song that had been kicking around since the band's earliest days in 1980. Here, it is an 11-minute monster that shares melodic elements with the hippie anthem "City Ghosts" that appeared on Chemical Playschool Edition 2. One of the defining characteristics of "Stoned Obituary" is that it never stays in one place for long, changing the sonic backdrops while never breaking pace or narrative. It's not exactly a good song, but it shows that the Dots' songwriting goals were getting much more ambitious. A nice drum machine pattern kicks in about a third of the way through, increasing the song's urgency. The song concludes with Ka-Spel intoning religious funeral rites in Latin amongst a repeated mantra of "Die with your eyes on!", whatever that means. Ominous abrasive synth tones kick off "Stars on Sunday," the band's lone devolution into incoherence on this release. The track appears to be a medley of various bits and pieces of other tracks, connected together by surgical electronic sounds; perhaps it was influenced by the legendary disco medley pop of Dutch group Stars on 45 that was popular at this time. As the track progresses, Ka-Spel howls along with droning keyboards, we briefly revisit the pitch-shifted chanting of "MPNMEP CTPAHA," somebody (or more probably, something) beatboxes for a couple of minutes (!!), and "Phallus Dei" plays saturated in reverb for a short time. The track is several minutes longer in its Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 appearance, but here it is cut short as it steers into an all-new lyric and melody called "Vigil," itself a shapeless track that gives way to overpowering helicopter-like drones and small melodies that fade in and out underneath the din. All in all this sequence of three tracks comes the closest to approximating the ambitious, side-long programming that I discussed above, and even though all three tracks don't really stand on their own, the sequence is extremely interesting and listenable.

The second half of Kleine Krieg begins with a great song, a ballad akin to Chemical Playschool Edition 2's "The Wedding," only much more heartfelt. Apparently Ka-Spel has experienced heartbreak as he sings about becoming accustomed to life without his live-in lover. The musical backdrop shows the full band in magnificent form, especially the drum machine/bass combination and sparkling synths that don't overplay their hand. This is the song that the Dots would re-record 25 years later on a limited 45 to celebrate their silver anniversary. It fades into a recording of an inaudible dialogue between a man and a woman underneath heartbeat pulses. Out of that particular ambience comes "One for the Pearl Moon," an odd song boosted by a jazz boogie bassline played slightly out of step. The lyrics here are apocalyptic and impenetrable, but they show how the romanticism of "Legacy" was much more of an exception to the rule than a norm. The lowest bass drones on a Dots recording thus far carry the song into dark ambience for a moment before the sprightly, overzealous keyboards of "Dolls' House" kick in. The song uses the image of a dollhouse as an analogy for familial drama, as the matriarch of the family eventually sets the house on fire and Ka-Spel ends the song whispering, "Crackle crackle!" in a way that is both sinister and campy. This is the one track that appears in the same version more than once on the vinyl releases discussed so far, as it is also on Ancient Daze; however here it sounds a bit slower and lower with a more apparent melody, so it is hard to tell if it is exactly the same take.

"Brill" is a chaotic collage piece carried over from Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 that sounds out of place here because the Dots had already surpassed it technically. While it is definitely memorable, it uses bits of other LPD recordings, such as "Phallus Dei" and the otherwise unavailable "Boule (Viens Ici!)" to make its noisy point. It is sufficiently disorienting but never really goes anywhere. A clean break separates it from "Down from the Country," a likable melodic song with dubby bass and rhythmic guitar strums that appropriates Neu!'s motorik beat into something much more palatable and grooving. The song is overtaken by extremely high-pitched ascending tones that lead into a new version of "Thursday Night Fever," the song about obsessive jealousy that first appeared on Only Dreaming. The new arrangement is extremely welcome, as it is slower and more deliberate, playing up the song's sinister edge. This advancement is reminiscent of the similar success of "Break Day" and bodes well for the band's future. In the early version, Ka-Spel sings, "You're my girl, I own you!" with unbridled mania; here, he intones it with barbiturated intention, which gives way to more backwards masking. Based on the title "Die With Your Eyes On," which is printed backwards on the record sleeve, this is the coda from "Stoned Obituary" reversed. Kleine Krieg closes with the otherworldly flangey trance of "Opus Dei," a gentle collage of monks chanting over ringing synths.

In 90 minutes, the Dots graduated from their early haphazardness into something more artful and epic. But at 90 minutes, they still needed to learn how to be concise. Thankfully, their next few cassettes would really find the band mastering the art of editing.

GO FORWARD to Premonition ----->
<----- GO BACKWARD to Chemical Playschool

The Legendary Pink Blog: Chemical Playschool

Welcome to Postmodern Accident, and welcome to the ongoing Legendary Pink Blog.

The next entry draws even more upon the earliest history of the band. Formed sometime in 1980, we know they started out with the moniker One Day... and changed their name to the Legendary Pink Dots by September. We also know that some of the earliest Dots songs ("Voices," "Soma Bath," "Phallus Dei") carried over from frontman Edward Ka-Spel's teenage band, Vizzyen Laedyr. And finally we know that band's first cassette release was called Only Dreaming. At the same time, however, apparently the band also developed a sister cassette release that was less song-oriented, instead offering up an hour of trippy electronic noise pieces. While this cassette never saw the light of day in its original incarnation, remnants do exist. In fact, one of them shares its name: "The Chemical Playschool" (originally from Only Dreaming and now found on Ancient Daze).

The concept of Chemical Playschool quickly became something else entirely. From as early as 1981, the Dots had an extreme wealth of material, and rumor has it that they made an early vow to release everything they ever recorded. Thus, over their entire 30 year career, they have edited outtakes and alternate versions of recordings together into new packages, and have labeled these releases Chemical Playschool. These compilation releases ultimately—and perhaps ironically—have become absolutely essential entries in the Dots' canon and the mere invocation of the two words together will now fill your average Dots fan with excitement and enthusiasm over what the band has uncovered and/or resurrected.

As of early 2015, there are now 18 volumes in the series, counting 1989's triple-LP retrospective The Legendary Pink Box as volumes 5 through 7 (as it had a working title of Chemical Playschool: The Box in promotional pieces from 1988) and 2001's Synesthesia as volume 14. (While there is no volume 17 nominally, do note that there are two volume 16s packaged together with volume 18.)

Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2

As with Only Dreaming, 1981's first entry in this series was only available on cassette directly from the band and severely limited, with a wider release finally occurring in the late '80s. The Dots themselves have always belittled this release somewhat, with Edward Ka-Spel describing it as "a simple best-of the first year of the Legendary Pink Dots." In fact, this is true, duplicating much of the material from Only Dreaming and adding numerous tracks that would appear on other releases of the time. Therefore, it's no real surprise that Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 never received an official CD release; in fact, it was relegated to its past incarnation as a set of two 90-minute cassettes until July 2013 when it finally appeared digitally intact for the very first time on the Legendary Pink Dots' Bandcamp site.


Examples of early Chemical Playschool cassettes (above) and insert (below)

Defeated ***

Voices *

Ideal Home

Black Highway ***

Soma Bath ***

Dolls' House **

Louder After Six **

Stand Firm, Damien

Phallus Dei **

Playschool

Dying for the Emperor *

Peace Krime 1 *

Brighter Now *

Peace Krime 2 ***

MPNMEP CTPAHA (aka Primer Strana) *

Apocalypse Then

Professional *

Donna's Blitzed Again *

Brill ***

War Krime (aka Witch Hunt) *

Break Day ***

Break Down (aka Shit, It's Raining)

City Ghosts *

Onward

Legacy ***

One for the Pearl Moon ***

Sensory Deprivation *

Temper Temper *

Amphitheatre Stomp (aka Amphitheatre Shuffle) *

Misfortunes *

Red Castles

Hanging Gardens

Redeemed (aka detaefeD)

Before the End *

Waiting for the Call/You 'n' Me

Amphitheatre 1 (aka Amphitheatre) **

Frosty *

That's My Boy (aka Another Kind of Violence aka Violence) **

The Wedding *

Stars on Sunday ***

Caligula

Moaners/Passover (aka Fin)

* These 16 tracks appear on Chemical Playschool Edition 2 (below).
** These 5 tracks appear on Ancient Daze.
*** These 9 tracks appear on Kleine Krieg.

Some of these tracks have seen the light of day on other archive releases the band has put out, such as the eight that appear on 1996's Prayer for Aradia. The variations in track names noted above are due to the original names often being forgotten or confused between the time of the initial release in 1981 and the later releases that came out in 1988/89.

The one thing I can say about the original cassettes is that they are rather top heavy. The Dots at this point must have noticed that songs like "Defeated," "Voices," and "Black Highway" would go down in history as their earliest classics and thus they proudly sit at the top of the play order. In fact, it's not until the instrumental "Stand Firm, Damien" or the experimental "Peace Krime" tracks that any of this feels like filler; there are seven or eight solid songs in a row. The release as a whole contains early versions of eight of the nine tracks that would eventually appear on the band's debut LP.



[Discography footnote: Dots on the Eyes was another 1981 cassette release by the Dots that I have chosen not to discuss here because it was simply a 30-minute collection of eight tracks, all but one of which would appear on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2. The tracks are: "Onward," "Peace Krime #2," "Dolls' House," "Voices," "Stars on Sunday," "The Wedding," "Professional," and "March." The last track is a bleepy, uh, march, with vocoder that would eventually see re-release on 2004's archive CD Crushed Mementos.]

Chemical Playschool Edition 2

To make matters even more complicated, highlights of Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 were combined onto one cassette with additional outtakes in 1982 under the name Chemical Playschool Edition 2. Only a handful of copies of this cassette existed, but it was released in its entirety on vinyl as part of the 5-LP box set The Legendary Pink Dots from Vinyl-on-Demand in 2007.

Trance

Professional

Frosty

Voices

Donna's Blitzed Again

The Wedding

Sensory Deprivation

Dying for the Emperor

Amphitheatre Stomp (aka Amphitheatre Shuffle)

War Krime (aka Witch Hunt)

Peace Krime #1

Brighter Now

Break Day #2

City Ghosts

Who? Me!

Temper Temper

Strolling Along Another Promenade

Misfortune (aka Misfortunes)

Before the End

MPNMEP CTPAHA

It's Biological

Brighter Now #2

[Attention Discography Geeks! This release was particularly well thought out, because none of these tracks overlap with the tracks that are on Ancient Daze, making it an ideal addition to a growing vinyl collection. "Voices" does appear on both releases, but this one is a later recording. "Break Day #2" is not actually the song "Break Day", but a devolved excerpt. In addition, this has "Frosty" and "Before the End", both of which go back to the original Only Dreaming cassette but did not appear on Ancient Daze.]

Chemical Playschool Edition 2 doesn't really work as an album in its own right, but I don't think any of these early collections are supposed to do anything but showcase the breadth of what the Dots were doing in their early years while filling in the gaps for fans and collectors. In its favor, this one has new remastering and is probably the best these tracks will ever sound. The sequencing can be jarring at times but otherwise offers some nice stretches of entertaining musicianship.

Kicking off the proceedings with "Trance" (unique to this release) is a very strange decision, as the track is five minutes of vocoded speech with a gentle lulling synth line behind it but not much of a song. The piece lives up to its name, but it is impossible to tell what is being said as the vocoding is so strong that the words primarily buzz together. A nice rubbery bass synth enters halfway through, giving the track a cartoonish boingy quality as if it is threatening to stretch apart. It is evident by this piece that the Dots were learning to experiment with construction and subtlety, rather than just throwing a bunch of noises together as they layered one racket on top of another.

The Dots have a reputation for writing unsophisticated synth waltzes in their early days and though we haven't seen much of that yet, "Professional" is perhaps the first example. While some bands default to a generic 4/4 beat, the Dots begin to default to a 3/4 beat here, which gives their sound a much more stereotypically classical European feel. "Professional" is kind of sluggish and still contains some manic keyboard work that agitates rather than enhances the song. The immediate switch to the upbeat super-pop of "Frosty" is jarring, but the song is not unwelcome and it demonstrates Ka-Spel's flair for the macabre underneath a happy facade. Again showcasing the band format, the song includes a pretty backing vocal by April Iliffe, plus evidence of real drums, bass, and even tambourine in the mix. The last time I saw the Dots in concert was 2002, and at a point later in the show when the band seemed to be on the verge of taking requests, someone shouted out, "Frosty!" Ka-Spel's expression was sheer disdain, but the audience broke out into laughter, indicating how everyone recognized the ridiculousness of it.

The encore presentation of "Voices" makes a strong follow up. At this point, the song is their most fully developed, and this re-recording sticks to the structure of the first. The vocal is a bit lower and less manic but otherwise there aren't obvious differences. The instrumental coda that closes the song is actually quite lovely, one of the first times where the band truly gets it right. If the modern indie band Of Montreal were to write a song about witchcraft, it might sound like this. The slight "Donna's Blitzed Again" is an extended instrumental, layers of keyboard washes and a repetitive blip that recalls the earlier experiments from Only Dreaming yet is more languid and considered. There is definitely a drunkenness to it.

"The Wedding" is surprising. Clearly written on a piano, the song is a conventional ballad with Edward singing his heart out. The lyrics are still a little too written rather than felt, but it's a change of pace that shows how willing to perform in different styles the band were when they started. As if to prove my point, next up is "Sensory Deprivation," literally a boogie with funk stylings including wah-wah guitar and double-tracked vocals, plus a series of calls to "Get down!" in the lyrics. The retreat to bleepy amateurishness is disappointing after all that, but "Dying for the Emperor" is a catchy song with a slight East Asian feel about... playing Space Invaders? ("Gotta destroy those aliens, gotta destroy the aliens, it's painful when he's doing well but they keep coming back.") Remember, this was 1981. The song slows down into a vocoded funereal bit that must indicate the game is over, and is followed by two experimental pieces. "Amphitheatre Stomp" follows the chord progression of "Amphitheatre" but is lacking a vocal and has choppy effects added; "War Krime" is a short blast of Ka-Spel lamenting about being burned at the stake.

Opening up the second record, "Peace Krime #1" is an interesting montage of British citizens talking to journalists about the royal family. Amusingly, one woman suggests that Elizabeth should retire and let Charles take over; of course, 30 years have passed and this still hasn't changed. The track closes with Margaret Thatcher's famous declaration that IRA convicts undergoing a hunger strike must continue to suffer because the men committed a crime, and "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political." The ballad "Brighter Now" follows, and it is a full band performance where everyone is playing a little too much, but the melody itself has a slight medieval feel that the Dots would use to better effect later in their career. The guitar-based song "City Ghosts" is almost rock, a straight up hippie number complete with references to paganry and magic mushrooms. "Who? Me!" is a noise piece based on an extended dialogue sample, which isn't particularly interesting, interspersed with shards of synthesizer. "Temper Temper" is the kind of cloying pop song that benefits from amateurish performance and lo-fi production; it would be unbearable if it actually sounded like anything other than a pisstake. It also includes a racist verse about Mexicans who get angry when you mash their sombreros and jumping beans, but it's cartoonish enough not to be altogether offensive.

The final stretch includes three of the band's best early pop experiments and some instrumental filler that is unique to this release. "Strolling Along Another Promenade" is an instrumental keyboard piece with an Eastern European folk feel. "Misfortunes" is another surprisingly conventional pop ballad, though this one has more overt and poppy melodies than any thus far. It would be an ideal track for the Dots to resurrect three decades later. "Before the End" is the band's quintessential early synth waltz, with an easy arrangement, a memorable melody, and such cute lines as, "Before the end, in a crowded store, Miss Demeanor broke the law." The Russian (?) titled "MPNMEP CTPAHA" is another attempt at a modern rock song that only sabotages itself halfway through when Ka-Spel repeats a bratty "Nyet!" one too many times. It ends with hypnotic pitch-shifted chanting. "It's Biological" is a textured and sculpted bleepy track unique to this release, but it is obviously an outtake. Likewise with "Brighter Now #2," an instrumental version of the messy ballad that benefits from a more minimal approach.

After this point, the Legendary Pink Dots began sculpting their collections into bonafide thematic works, so hopefully my analysis will be less about running through track descriptions and more about overall artistic accomplishment. The haphazard placement of all these early tracks really is rather exhausting and has always been one of the most overwhelming aspects of LPD fandom.

GO FORWARD to Kleine Krieg ----->
<----- GO BACKWARD to Ancient Daze

The Legendary Pink Blog: Ancient Daze

Welcome to the freshly repurposed Postmodern Accident (in progress, March 2015...)

About half a decade ago, I opted to convert my failed music-and-musings blog into something more ambitious. After the promising run in the late 1990s of the Cloud-Zero mailing list and corresponding Brainwashed website, the internet felt like it was missing a definitive reference site for both old fans and neophytes of the Legendary Pink Dots who wanted to explore the band's immense and unwieldy catalog, or maybe to simply revel in the vast experimental, electronic, and psychedelic soundscapes that the band have been creating for 35 years. My work at the time developed into 9 separate entries, all extensively analyzing the music and the history of the Dots' early output from 1981-83. But these seeds for an oeuvreblog dedicated to one of my favorite bands, who I felt were underrepresented by the mainstream press and on the verge of being forgotten, eventually fell by the wayside as so many of my ambitious projects do, and the Legendary Pink Blog was therefore never fully realized.

Despite this, the band has been as prolific as ever, and to complicate matters infinitely, they launched their own Bandcamp site in 2012 and began releasing definitive remasters and exclusive releases—both new and archival—at a staggering rate. In a matter of a few short months, my project became outdated, and languished untouched for several years.

I've decided to rectify this by updating my old entries and possibly creating new ones. It starts here, with an album I’ve bought three times to date.

Ancient Daze

Front cover of 2006 CD edition

Violence *

Thursday Night Fever *

O(ri)fice *

The Chemical Playschool *

Voices *

Break Day *

Only Dreaming *

It Rots Your Liver *

Black Highway *

Phallus Dei *

Game *

Guess the Politician *

Dolls' House **

Louder After 6 **

Spaced Out ^#

Amphitheatre **

Candlelight or Fullbeam? ^†

West Side Story (The Forgotten Version) ^†

Odd ^†

* These tracks appear on the 1981 cassette, Only Dreaming
** These tracks appear on the 1981 double cassette, Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2
^# This was previously unreleased until the 1997 CDr, Ancient Daze
^† These were previously unreleased until the 2006 CD, Ancient Daze

For all practical purposes, this is the material that best represents the band’s very first release, a cassette-only thing called Only Dreaming from 1981. The original cassette sequence does not exist intact in digital format but can be recreated using most of this CD and a few stray tracks from others. I actually knew Only Dreaming first, due to an illicit copy that was bootlegged and “remastered” by a friend of mine (who didn’t like the Dots) for another friend of mine (who did, and who turned me onto the band). Of course, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting into the band based solely on this material, but for fans already in the know, it was certainly intriguing... but I digress.

A couple of years into my fandom (around 1997) the bulk of Only Dreaming was cleaned up, burned to CDr, and sold via mail order as Ancient Daze by the Dots themselves to crazy fans like me, who sent a money order to the Netherlands for two copies (one for me, one for aforementioned friend) but didn’t consider the exchange rate and ended up stiffing the band a few bucks. They still sent the order, god bless them.

What arrived were two very informal burns with handwritten tray cards and no labels on the discs themselves, with handmade cover inserts. They looked the same on the outside, but one copy was tracked differently than the other; obviously in 1997 CD burning was still a tricky devil. I think I kept the one that most closely followed the printed tracklist, though I think both were indexed weirdly at points. I have scanned this release for you here.


1997 CDr front cover (above), tray card and disc (below)



Now before I begin describing this music, let me first explain how influential I think this band has been. Indie rock of all shapes and sizes owes something to them. Their DIY ethic for their first several years of existence, releasing homemade cassette releases with handmade sleeves containing crude electronic pop music, is the stuff of legend. There are new genres built around artists like this, and new names from new generations of kids to describe it. Bands like the Mountain Goats and Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti started out this same way. And that doesn't even touch upon the band stylistically, who were arguably the first ever to combine the experimental techniques of Krautrock, particularly of the Neu! and Faust varieties, with slightly cloying pop music manufactured primarily on keyboards and synthesizers and the psychedelic swashes and drones created by Pink Floyd. The Dots basically made heady, progressive, psychedelic synthpop. Who else did this in 1981? Their music began like Dave Gilmour performing on a Depeche Mode record produced by Conny Plank. And by sheer circumstance alone, they were eventually assimilated into the late '80s gothic/industrial club scene but they never really belonged there. Their weird mutant electro-psychedelia predated the Flaming Lips, and neither Animal Collective nor MGMT could exist without them.

The fun thing about listening to Ancient Daze now is that I can imagine this is the first time I've ever heard this music, which must have sounded just absolutely batshit weird, like futuristic sci-fi Doctor Who music interspersed with sing-song and genuine desire to play actual music. It isn't high brow or avant garde in the serious sense, and yet is uncompromisingly uncommercial in its naivete and exuberance. Most importantly, it wasn't digitally edited. Every sound appears where it does because somebody grafted two tapes together, or in the case of "Thursday Night Fever" perhaps the song on the other side of the tape bled through while remastering and the band decided to leave it there. Whatever the case, it is clear from one listening that the band were already pioneers in the field of using cassettes for home recording.

[An aside for those of you obsessing over discography details: Ancient Daze begins with the entirety of Side B of Only Dreaming, minus one song, and then continues with Side A, minus four others. Four additional tracks from the era were added to the end of Ancient Daze's first incarnation in 1997, and the album gained three more when it was remastered and professionally released on standard CD by Beta-lactam Ring Records in 2006. Of the songs from Only Dreaming left off this release, one of each appears on the three archive compilations released on CD in 1996/97 and two have only been released in alternate versions. These songs will undoubtedly be called out in the entries for these other compilations and linked back to here, when I get to them, if I get to them.]

The first song, "Violence" (aka "Another Kind of Violence") is an unsophisticated dirge, and an odd way to start. The songwriting here is so bad that the vocals follow the melody line of the bass synth tones exactly, but this quality is almost unnoticeable when matched with the slow tempo, which just gives the piece a doomy mood. The beat is syncopated to roll along like Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing" and throughout the song is an onslaught of dubby effects. Bandleader and vocalist Edward Ka-Spel's way with lyrics, which hasn't changed in 30 years, is already perfectly in place. He has a way of pacing his delivery so that rhymes fall at odd intervals, allowing some lines to run longer than others yet the words never sound like doggerel. Here's an example: "Think I'll bip round to the bird's house 'cos I've heard that her mum's away. I'll raid the neighbor's garden, present her with a nice bouquet. She'll be so pleased, we'll go upstairs, and up and down on the eiderdown." It's all sort of juvenile, but has a natural British whimsy to it. Ka-Spel is a lyricist from the Lewis Carroll school, which has always worked for me because I have always held both Alice books in the highest regard.

"Thursday Night Fever" follows, and though it doesn't pick up the pace much, the dubs and edits throughout are disorienting. This one is possibly the first psychological Dots song, and it conveys a man's jealous obsession with his lover to the point of stalking in a semi-ironic way that is alternately amusing and scary. When Ka-Spel shrieks in a ridiculously high voice, "You're my girl, I OWN YOU!", you can't help but wonder who he was dating at the time. (This track would evolve spectacularly over the next few years, but I'll get to that later.) Next up is "O(ri)fice," one of the most amateurish songs imaginable and yet its innocence is its charm. There are no overt audio tricks here, just a cute song about the fantasies of an office staff who all want to get away from the doldrums, accompanied by Casio chords. But it's the mind-bending pulses of the following instrumental track, "The Chemical Playschool," which really set this band apart from the beginning, as it showcases the work of main synthesist Phil Knight (aka Phil Harmonix aka The Silverman). It sounds alternately like electrical noise and blood streaming through veins.

"Voices" is the quintessential track here, and features a full band performance, with synth, drum machine, guitar, voice, and all sorts of effects. It is still rudimentary and strange (and contains a lyric about "decaying manpiles") but it is fully realized and does not sound like an experiment. "Break Day," on the other hand, is straight-up synth pop, but it purposely breaks melodic formula whenever it can. It demonstrates sophistication of the pop format for the first time on the release. Two more tracks of beeping/pulsing noise follow, and if you're not paying attention, they become undiscernible. "Only Dreaming" is a minute long, and makes little impression, but "It Rots Your Liver" features Ka-Spel screaming inaudibly in the background (save for "Why? WHY?") and, based on the title, one or more members of the band may have been quite drunk at this point. This track in many ways does conjure up the abrasive sound of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, pioneering acts who were both already quite active at this point.

"Black Highway" is second only to "Voices" in its fully developed feel. The rhythms and sounds all build into something catchy, perhaps the best the Dots could do to create a driving song this early on. The lyrics steal from all sorts of sources, many of them classic '50s rock-and-roll songs from the likes of Jerry Lewis and Little Richard. Cleverly, this creates the illusion that perhaps these songs are playing on the AM radio in the car. "Phallus Dei" and "Guess the Politician" are more examples of Casio-pop recorded with soft-rock presets. The former offers a co-vocal by early bandmember April Iliffe, whose voice sounds typically young and fresh, but also like a folky leftover from the late '60s. The latter includes Ka-Spel singing, "I hate Britain!" which is especially significant because in a few years time he would leave it permanently. ("Game" is another bleepy fragment that only runs about 50 seconds.) All in all, the music of the entire record sounds like an extension of late '60s values dressed up in the DIY punk ethic married with the new technology of the time.

It was not my intention to write a sentence about every song, especially in chronological order, as this kind of review (on Amazon, iTunes, etc.) is always my least favorite to read as they often sound like no consideration was given to the work as a whole. The bottom line is that these pieces all sound very similar to one another, despite the tension created between melodicism and abrasive experimentalism. The Legendary Pink Dots would benefit as they eventually began to work with more elaborate recording equipment and put out market-oriented records, but these early songs do portray a young band playing furiously and uniquely with the tools they have at their disposal.

The final stretch of tracks, three of which did not appear on Only Dreaming but were available on another cassette at the time, tend to showcase the rougher edges of the band's production ability. Both "Dolls' House" and "Louder After 6" are smothered in hyper electronic keyboard noises (which translates into unbearable chirping sounds in the latter, burying any detectable melody). Fortunately, these songs would not languish long in these particular arrangements. "Amphitheatre" benefits by pulling back the instrumental histrionics a bit, and hints at things to come. "Spaced Out" is an instrumental collage of rhythm and white noise dug out of the archives in 1997. The three previously unreleased tracks added in 2006 are hissy rehearsals ranging from piano ballads to industrial jazz; only one ("Odd") contains a Ka-Spel vocal, but it is hard to follow.

The 2006 edition of Ancient Daze can be purchased (or merely listened to) on the Bandcamp site, here.



A sturdy, limited edition vinyl version was released in 2007 by Beta-lactam Ring. The copies are numbered; I have #198 of 200.


The five songs listed below appeared on the original Only Dreaming cassette but do not appear on this release:

"Soma Bath" - the original, shorter version currently appears nowhere else... but the very similar, longer second version appears on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2, Kleine Krieg, and Brighter Now.

"Before the End" - appears on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2, the original version of Premonition, and the 1996 compilation CD, Prayer for Aradia.

"Waiting for the Call/You 'n' Me" - a slightly later version appears on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2, while an earlier version was excavated for the 1997 compilation CD, Stained Glass Soma Fountains.

"Defeated" - appears on the 1997 compilation CD, Stained Glass Soma Fountains.

"Frosty" - appears on Chemical Playschool Volumes 1 & 2 and the 1997 compilation CD, Under Triple Moons.

"Before the End" and "Frosty" also appear on the double-LP Chemical Playschool Edition 2.

GO FORWARD to Chemical Playschool ----->