 Everyone has That Friend. He eats your food, fast. He puts his feet on your couch without thinking. He fucks your daughter/wife/dog with a jackhammer cock, often in one sitting. Needless to say, as a friend, he’s in need of a major wake-up call, one that you can’t bring yourself to deliver. Why? Because he’s That Friend; the dynamic of your relationship is long-established and impossible to break, and the chance that you’ll actually do anything about his exploits is next to nil.
Edward Ka-Spel is, for me, That Artist. Ever since stumbling upon a Legendary Pink Dots album, I’ve been Ka-Spel’s bitch. Not because I want to be, but because I have enabled myself to be after imbibing enough of his work to let the smaller details slide, if not bigger ones too....full text |
Subtle and disturbing, the newest solo album from Legendary Pink Dots vocalist Edward Ka-Spel is focused more on atmosphere than lyricism.
On last year's Dream Logik Part One, Legendary Pink Dots vocalist Edward Ka-Spel was playfully strange, or if you prefer, strangely playful. This year's follow-up is significantly darker, with even the more overtly quirky pieces underscored by a nerve-wracking sensation that keeps you perfectly on edge. By and large more focused on sonic environment than conventional song structure, Dream Logik Part Two opens with the one major exception to that rule: the two-part "As a Bird / A Missing Piece" kicks things off with a continental organ rambling pleasantly over an understated jazzy bass line, then segues into a dark psychedelic pop number quite like the Dots' more accessible work, with Ka-Spel's signature singsong vocals delivered over backward accordion loops. From there, things wander far off the straight path, with occasional mirages of straightforward songwriting emerging from a slow-paced series of loops, found sounds, and bits of processed vocals to confound the listener at every turn. "Darkness O" starts off with static-laced tones, with Ka-Spel's sinister spoken word rendered all the creepier by various processing effects. "The Modest Ambitions of Cedric the Centipede" seems a perfect title for one of Ka-Spel’s more whimsical song-stories, but underneath the bounce and warble of analog synths is an unapologetically morose meditation on entropy, the sounds mirroring the narrator's dissolution as perky twitters give way to random clanks and insect buzzing. "Under the Junction" maintains the tension with nervous loops and undulating vocals that are closer to madness than charming eccentricity, and "Going My Way?" is even more unsettling, Ka-Spel's voice simultaneously sped up and then slowed down, dire omens delivered in a tinny deadpan as dying machines hum and bits of orchestral strings provide occasional moments of harmony that seem almost obscene in context. It's perhaps the most chilling thing on an album already overflowing with disturbing sounds and imagery. "New Fool's Moon / The Closet," another two-part epic, is calm, at least by comparison, its analog mewling and percussive skitters a brief respite from the album's more ominous overtones, with pulsing electronic rhythms and whispered vocals eventually building into a pleasantly hypnotic lull. Then it's back to darkness with "My Wandering Star," all hollow ambience, muffled thuds, and distant screams, though a reprise of "As a Bird" finishes things off on a comparatively cheery note, Ka-Spel's voice finally gentle, the quiet keyboards approaching a major key. Both in his solo material and his work with the Legendary Pink Dots, Ka-Spel has a reputation for quirkiness and even humor that belies his work's darker, more intense overtones. There’s little humor or quirk on Dream Logik Part Two, but it's a stunning accomplishment nonetheless, its grim surrealism enhanced by Jesse Peper's grotesque and compelling album art. Don't be fooled by the fact that so much of Ka-Spel's work is joyously weird; this album is abundantly weird all right, but the prevailing emotion isn't joy. It's dread....full text |
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