There are a couple of cuts on the album which seem to address the development of digital technologies in the early 1980s. We are also treated to a particularly sinister use of chipmunk vocals, worthy of Joe Meek. The track is an unearthly mash-up of previous material, including one of my favourite early L.P.D. ‘Premonition 1’, which follows, is important namely because it is the first of Ka-Spel’s premonition songs. Johnson‘s bleakly humorous House Mother Normal(1971). One might think of Philip Larkin‘s wedge-shadowed gardens under a cavernous, wind-picked sky, or the banal nursing home horrors of B.S. ‘Before the End’ provides the listener with an interrogation of normality.
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I can imagine a cave of pixelated dwarfs mining away contentedly to this song. This may be an obscure reference… but it recalled for me the soundtrack of the classic British adventure game Simon the Sorcerer (1993). Despite its being but a brief experimental track, I really enjoy ‘Amphitheatre Shuffle’, which includes a gratifying synthesized sound that perfectly hits the sweet spot in my brain.
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Ka-Spel sounds really alone out there, singing in the proverbial amphitheatre, hemmed in by oppressive cheers from an eerily robotic audience. ‘Amphitheatre’ is less listless than the songs preceding it and, indeed, sounds oddly bouncy, despite our vocalist’s talk of million dying, both rich and poor. ‘Amphitheatre’ and ‘Amphitheatre Shuffle’ follow – again, two successive tracks closely linked by name. As ever with Ka-Spel’s lyrics, there is a strong impression of place communicated through the most minimal of brush strokes. So, the album’s second song ‘Splash’, which evokes suburban ennui from the vantage point of an outdoors swimming pool a la Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate (1967) or John Cheever‘s short story ‘ The Swimmer‘, segues into the underwater ‘Submerged’. In some ways Premonition anticipates 1984’s The Tower in as much as there is a sense of narrative progression across some of the tracks. It is a slight, but pleasing experience, that retains the listener’s attention, albeit in spite of the somewhat aimless structure of some of the music. The tracks roll into one another, reprising medleys from previous albums.
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Fulfill the prophecy!Īdam: Good for late night listening, this one. Hopefully, The Legendary Dots Project, like the Residents and Sparks projects before, will provide the keen reader and listener with a giddy entry-point into the Legendary Pink Dots’ musical world. Lyrical phrases, musical motifs, album titles and themes recur across decades, but tonal shifts between albums are slow and subtle. Much of the LPD’s music is an undertaking to help the listener (and perhaps composer) escape his/her own head. Musically, he often follows this template of expansion, with simple melody lines repeating and layering in increased complexity of texture. 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). Original Premonition cover art on the Flowmotion labelĮdward 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.