The Legendary Pink Dots
Asylum

THE REVIEW

Eddie Ka-Spel's Legendary Pink Dots are the classic ensemble with a variable lineup that over time has produced a flood of albums and collections without ever managing to deliver a monumental masterpiece. While they have released a couple of notable albums and have managed to stay afloat in the European avant-garde scene with a rare sense of irony and the bizarre, the Pink Dots have ended up diluting many excellent ideas into many projects, skirting various genres (from krautrock to electronic folk, from psychedelia to progressive) and still remaining a niche name.

"Asylum" - released in 1985 - is one of the clearest manifestations of their abilities and limitations. Perhaps one of their best and most cohesive albums - along with the astonishing "Any Day Now" - despite being rich with dystonic and misleading atmospheres. The use of an extremely varied instrumentation banishes listening boredom and offers creative cues at times sketched, at times seductive, mixing synthesizers with violins, minimal percussion, trombones, and above all vocals in all sorts of genres: soothing, hysterical, mocking, melancholic, and whatever else you can imagine.

The overall result is an art-rock pastiche tinged with sarcasm and esoteric hints (how serious, we don’t know), which in tracks like "Gorgon Zola's Baby" encapsulates all the band's flair starting from the title and then traversing the sinister nursery rhymes of Ka-Spel's lyrics, counterpointed by toy keyboards and noises that seem borrowed from an oneiric amusement park.

Although in later albums the apocalyptic component became more pronounced, with "Asylum" the Pink Dots seemed more interested in compiling a summary of the first phase of their journey, thoroughly refining the inevitable imperfections of the improvisational approach and contaminating a European-centric sound, a child of fathers like Faust, with industrial and technological fumes.

Best tracks: "Echo Police", "The Hill", "Demonism", "I am the Way, the Truth, the Light".