Misc Live Performance Reviews (Legendary Pink Dots)

Music From The Empty Quarter Issue 2 of August 1991

The Legendary Pink Dots were once a really excellent live band. Of late
they seem to have gone off the boil, the pressures of constant touring and
numerous line-up changes resulting in a more experimental and hit-and-miss
nature to their performance. For my money the peak of the Dots live spell
came at around the time of the The Tower, when the skills of violinist Pat
Paganini, guitarist Stret Majest and the two founder members Ed Ka-Spel and
Phil Harmonix gelled into something both rhythmically tight and soaringly
proud. The Terminal Kaleidoscope live cassette captures that time best, but
this tape from an Italian concert in 1987 is the next best thing. The power
of the Dots psychick nursery rhymes translated into a live setting is truly
awesome. 'Love Puppets', 'Echo Police', 'Poppy Day' and the glorious
'Silverman' are hard to find fault with. They've never really equalled that
line-up for musical excellence and Live At Centralino captures the
atmosphere of those times perfectly. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Naked

By STRolls: I had (and probably still have) the address of OE Cafe and sent
off for the cassette with payment by IMO. I never heard a thing again.
RATS!

Metro Chicago 98 -grufty jim- www.freq.freeserve.co.uk

There I was, freezing my proverbials off outside the Metro club here in da
windy city. My cigarette was burning ridiculously quickly as the icy north
breezes fanned it and made me all annoyed... but say la vie (as the French
c'est). I was waiting in line to see a line up which included - in order of
appearance - Twilight Circus of Dub (i.e. Legendary Pink Dots' percussion and
bass man), The Edward Ka-Spel Psychedelic Orchestra (i.e. Pink Dots front man
and synth driver) and The Legendary Pink Dots (no surprises there then).

The manic chappie Ryan Moore who makes up the TCOD whirled dervishly round the
stage like... something or other... Oh, I know! A whirling dervish. He
commanded us to "Relax" and played Theremin at us whilst deep bass noises
emanated from the sound system. Then, wrapping feather boas round several
members of the audience down front (including yours truly, the bearded
foreigner) he hit us over the head with a large foam hammer whilst screaming
"Relax dammit!" at the top of his voice. Around us the air was filled with
loops of his voice insisting we "Relax" and strange percussive rhythms which
wouldn't have sounded too out of place in the stone circle at Glastonbury at
about 3am Saturday.

Messrs. Ka-Spel and Silverman then took the stage to rapturous applause and a
distinct jangling of silver jewelry. Not being too familiar with his solo
stuff, I didn't recognise any of the songs; but I bloody well intend to next
time. Laws of acoustics were ignored as someone let slip the dogs of sonic
mayhem - Ka-Spel's vocal contortions as he screamed "The Flesh Parade" over and
over and over were simultaneously intimidating and hypnotic. Striking his
keyboard as though it had done him some grievous wrong, he combined with the
sinister knob-twiddling of The Silverman to produce a soundscape which was
truly unearthly. It suited the lyrics perfectly - it was like someone had taken
the raw in-yer-facedness of Throbbing Gristle, added the disregard for
convention of Faust, and thrown in basic stage-weirdness of Julian Cope, then
wrapped it all up in Sean Hughes with a hangover.

Suddenly, whilst my ear-drums were still vibrating with Ka-Spel's shrieks and
the sonic assaults of a battery of synthesisers and all manner of electronic
gadgetry, it all stopped... and a quiet song of lost love and hopelessness
floated from the stage. Ka-Spel's voice crackling with despair and a cynical
refusal to accept that the world could ever treat him any better. It was a tour
de force already and the main event hadn't even begun - then it did.
Ka'Spel left the stage in a volley of feedback and disturbingly unidentifiable
samples, and returned within minutes. This time he was accompanied by the full
line-up of musical terrorists that is The Legendary Pink Dots - the
flamboyantly be-hatted Nils van Hoernblower had a quite startling collection of
horns to blow; a vast bass-sax that looked like you could happily move in and
raise a family amidst its labyrinthine depths, and a group of progressively
smaller wind instruments which gave the overall impression of being some form
of bizarre musical equivalent of those Russian dolls that live within one
another in an orgy of decreasing returns. The percussionist Moore was back,
this time strapped safely into his bass guitar and never too far from the drum
kit into which he leapt at various moments to fire a volley of unexpected noise
across the auditorium. Guitarist Atwyn von Trippenhof, who stood mostly at the
back and - to be honest - was all but obscured by my location, two feet f
rom the two feet of
Phil Silverman - so I can't really say much about him.

And, of course, Ka'Spel and Silverman... with not a how's-yer-father to be
heard, they launched into the Dots set, and Phuq me! What a set!

...Our one release is in the fiery furnace...

"Hellsville" was the first recognisable track, after a good ten minutes of
discordant noodling on electronics and dark muttering from Ka'Spel. When you
listen to the track on Crushed Velvet Apocalypse you often wonder just how much
studio tweaking is going on between the microphone and your speaker - surely no
human being could make their voice do that! But Ka'Spel does just that: it's
twisted, and it's kind of worrying; but when he screams "Take us quickly...
Take us naaaoooooowwww!" you end up wondering whether he actually is in league
with some sort of demonic hellspawn from the n'th dimension - 'cos it's sure as
Hell not natural to be making that noise with a set of human lungs.

The song ended in an explosion of noise which went on and on and on and on
whilst Edward roared at the audience and Nils stomped up and down making a god
awful racket through two saxes simultaneously - it was orgasmic! - and on it
went... and on... Through "Princess Coldheart," with it's final verse of "It's
touching... So touching," elevated to a pinnacle of irony wrapped in sarcasm
and dripping in cynicism. "Green Gang" was suitably sinister with "Baby-bones
in powder piles, mile after mile," ramming home the political agenda as though
we needed reminding that there's a whole lot of anti-facist, anti-nazi stuff
going on in Ka'Spel's lyric sheet.

About half way through the set, we were greeted to an extended anti-meat eating
discourse as Nils wandered round through the audience wearing a set of Orbital
head-lights and crooning in a rather Lounge manner on an alto-sax. Phil was
twiddling knobs and making strange 50's sci-fi noises whilst Edward spoke about
encountering a planet with people just like us -and upon closer inspection
noticing that lots of these people were eating things that used to be alive.
The soliloquy went on for a while and ended with a neat dig at a famous chain
of fast-food restaurants. It went on, through "Madame Guillotine" and then a
plaintive cry of "Imagine there's no heaven" led us towards the final encore of
"Andromeda Suite" which went on forever, an eternity that ended. Then we all
shuffled out into the cold again where my cigarettes smoked themselves, but it
didn't annoy me this time. I'd just witnessed God on drugs, and Man does he
rock!

The Underworld, London 5th November 1999 www.freq.freeserve.co.uk

With old friend Martijn de Kleer back on guitar and sharing drums with Ryan
Moore (who also sometimes plays bass simultaneously), and The Silverman intent
in his electronic grotto, the Dots get into gear as Edward Ka-Spel arrives
barefoot and canary-yellow-coated. As the show kicks off, it rapidly develops
into an event replete with its own incandescent contributions to Firework
Night, including the irrisistably funky groove of the cynically
post-apocalyptic "As Long As It's Purple And Green" and their boomingly
paranoiac classic "Disturbance". The band's closest record to a hit single,
"Princess Coldheart" is a marvellously moving, enchanted mix of brightly
textured reeds and pipes from Nils van Hoornblower (who thrills the front row
with his up-close, gleefully thunderous tenor saxes, and who goes walkabout
with eyeline headlights), but with Ka-Spel's chilling post-fairytale vocals,
the spine-tingling is both from pleasure and discomfort at the less seemly
aspect of human relationsh
ips. Likewise, when he
mesmerises the crowd during the rolling thunder of "Premonition 13", the
charismatic hold he develops becomes sublimely, disturbingly intense, with one
woman drawn on stage thrown into excited awe as Ka-Spel writhes on the floor,
seizing total control of the venue as the band produce some of the most
stunning music on the planet.

Specially for the 5th November (the half-disturbing night when Britain marks a
Seventeenth-Century attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament with fireworks
and the burning of symbolic traitors on bonfires), the Dots re-interpret the
cycling music-box groove of "Nine Shades To The Circle" with Ka-Spel's
intention to re-ignite history with a match displaced by the sad face of the
clockface of Big Ben. Ka-Spel is a master of these surreal, dreaming parables,
and once again the effect is simultaneously humorous and uncanny. However, the
more optimistic side of the bands output is well represented by the gently
lolloping dubscape of "Close Your Eyes, You Can Be A Space Captain" with its
imploring message "You can be anything you want to be!".

There's also the spaced-out otherworldy prison drama "Zoo" for a truly
alienated, Scheckley-esque anguished buzz, or the soaringly sad "Fate's
Faithful Punchline" with its demand for a noble death, but as ever "Andromeda"
is almost overpowering in its intensity, its suite-arrangement making for one
of the ultimate chord-frenzied, space-trip mindrushes ever to bliss out a
crowd. Cruelly ignored by many, but once heard and witnessed live the Dots are
quite deserving of their ability to win lifelong converts to their
multi-layered blend of genre-defying music on the basis of their utterly
mesmerising sound.

-Antron S. Meister-
www.freq.freeserve.co.uk

Liege 2000 "Erik Gibbels" <erik.gibbels@freeler.nl>

Hello Cloud Zero,

'I'll le neige sur Liege' (it is snowing in Liege) the Belgium folk singer
Jacques Brel once sang. Well, yeserday there was only pink snow and it was
great. The sings were not good though. Bert (the guy that sells the CD's)
was telling me that they played in that club a few years before and that the
sound quality had been very poor. Indeed the club looked very poor, concrete
walls, dirty toilets, beer in plastic cups. But it's the people that make
the club, and Belgium people are very gentle, polite people. And maybe
because the expectations were not high it turned out to be a fantastic
night.
I went with my sister and a friend of her. The band were in a good mood, and
gave a fantastic show. It happened to be Martijn's birthday.

This was about the setlist (as far as I remember):
- new song
- Disturbance
- new song (although it sounded a lot like Dissonance)
- Princess coldheart
- Close your eyes, you can be a space captain
- Zoo
- Fate's faithfull punchline
- Pain Bubbles
- 9 Shades to the shadow
- Premonition 13
- As long as it's purple and green (encore)
- Andromeda suite (encore)

Premonition ended with a beautiful improvisation. The sound quality was not
very good, I could heardly understand Edward which was a pity. In particular
with 9 Shades which was a different story.
Afterwards there was plenty of opportunity to talk to the band members,
ecept with Edward who came briefly to the stage to pack his synth and then
dissapeared again. Ryan saw the opportunity to take over from the DJ and
started playing his own records. Well, he got my sister's friend so much
impressed that he bought a Twilight Circus CD.
Especially Niels was in a very good mood, he had been drinking quite a lot
and the people of the club had to drag him to his bed at about 4 o'clock. I
wonder whether he is in a good shape tonight in Brussels. When his eyes look
small behind his big glasses or when he misses a few notes you know why now.

No news about the forthcoming releases yet.

Best regards,
Erik.

Brussels 20000 "Wandrille" <wminart@infonie.fr>

Dear clouders,

I was in Brussels yesterday to see the Dots for the 5th time. A very good
show, alrthough not as brilliant as the one I saw in Paris last April, but
very good. A great choice of songs. The tracklist was as follows:

1. Lend (aka. In Your Name)
2. Disturbance.
3. Dissonance.
4. Close your eyes, you can be a space captain.
5. Zoo.
6. Princess coldheart.
7. Fate's faithful punchline.
8. Pain bubbles.
9. 9 shades to the circles.
10. Premonition 13.

Encore:
11. As long as it's purple and green.
12. Andromeda suite.

I think they would have liked to play a few minutes more, but Ryan came back
onstage to tell it was too late; I think they were not allowed to play after
11.000 pm.

The show began at 8.50 pm. That let me time to find the club in Brussels,
plug my MD and find Michael, from Portland, who is living in the South East
of Switzerland. Hi Michael, hope you enjoyed your stay in Amsterdam !

After the show, we talked to Niels, who was in a good form despite the
excess of Liege the day before. He told us that the first song is called
Lend and confirmed that this song and Pain Bubbles will be on the next CD
which should be released in about 2 months.

Brian@starvox.net

@ The Cotton Club - Atlanta, Ga
June 8, 2000

It was my first time at the new Cotton Club submerged under the
Tabernacle in Downtown Atlanta. This was my second Legendary Pink
Dots show; the first had beeen one of the best concerts of all time for
myself . So knowing how incredible they are live I was quite pumped up.
Most of the crowd seemed to be experiencing some sensory overload,
so I decided to tap into it as the energy was there for all to absorb.

The lights went out and the stage was lit. A surrealistic dream started to
come alive, kinda like liquid Dali', as Mr. Ka-Spel, Ryan, Niels, and Phil
appeared. The crowd was vibrating to the sounds escaping from the
stage. The horns were screaming bitter sweet sounds to the swaying
masses. The entire set was filled with Edward's chilling vocals and the
bands creative instrumental abilities. Though there was one new
addition to the band this tour and I did not get his name, he played violin
and guitar on the last few songs.

On one of the very last songs performed seemed to be a personal serenade for
one very special blue haired angel named Desire'. At one point Edward held
her face, looking deep into her eyes as the words poured out of his very
being.

It was delicious and I want seconds.