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
* 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.
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