\n
![Pictured: the Legendary Pink Dots albums \"Under Triple Moons,\" \"Prayer for Aradia,\" and \"The Maria Dimension.\" Nope, nothing witchy or magical here, nosiree. Move along, nothing to see here...](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/790\/2017\/10\/kaspel.jpg\")
Okay, wait. Let me catch my breath a moment, and we\u2019ll try again.<\/p>\n
So. There\u2019s this guy, Edward Ka-Spel. He\u2019s something of a poet-songwriter, in a very English, very post-Syd-Barrett kind of way. He co-founded a band called The Legendary Pink Dots in 1980. They started out as a gloomy, gothy-synthy-new-wave kind of band, albeit with some fairly odd lyrics. Some bands start out a little strange, then normalize as their fan base grows. The Dots went entirely in the other direction: their faintly conventional music got odder and odder as time went on, incorporating elements of psychedelia, jazz, industrial, ambient, noise, and general avant-garde weirdness. At the same time, Ka-Spel\u2019s lyrical concerns grew ever more obscure and whimsical, aided and abetted by a distinctive vocal style which lends even the most innocuous phrase an air of surreality, or of menace. This style and subject matter carries over into his solo work and side projects, including The Tear Garden, his aforementioned collaboration with cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n All of this can be a little unsettling to hear for the first time, or the five-hundred-and-first time. It\u2019s even more unsettling when one gets past his odd voice, by turns charming and creepy, only to realize that the chamber-music-meets-synthwave one has been enjoying depicts a scene of pagan ritual from an imaginary Hammer horror film\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWe gather in a strict formation, hold hands in a circle \u2026or that the moody ambient piece he\u2019s intoning is, in fact, a mournful paean to Lilith, the Mother of Monsters\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cAnd somewhere spiteful spirits laughed at her \u2013 the last survivor. \u2026or that the multi-part, multi-genre, avant-garde suite battering one\u2019s ears and sense of musical decorum is titled \u201cPrayer for Aradia.\u201d<\/p>\n At a certain point, Ka-Spel\u2019s imagery begins to come into focus, and his metaphorical language starts making an elliptical kind of sense. His lyrical dreamscape draws in equal, gleeful measure from a variety of esoteric sources\u2014Qabalistic apocrypha, Marian Anglo-Catholicism, the Tarot, the Book of Revelation, modern occultism, and English pagan traditions as filtered through late-1960s folk horror\u2014blended together with observations of daily life, filtered through a psychedelic lens. On the subject of psychedelia, drug references are not uncommon in Ka-Spel\u2019s lyrics, though substance use is neither glorified nor reviled. It is merely observed, without judgment. The end product is an artistic perspective which manages the curious, paradoxical feat of being at once grounded in the quotidian world and suffused with the numinous and magical, the transcendent and the immanent brought together in the rude tangible matter of reality. In Ka-Spel\u2019s artistic world, mythic icons stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the ghosts of our pasts, or the demons of our present, and a harrowing nightmare can be dispelled with a wry aside and a wink to the listener. Here, magic is as obvious as breathing and as elusive as hope, as insidious as despair and as cheerful as a child\u2019s game.<\/p>\n Perhaps most telling is that, whenever I try to explain to someone what it\u2019s like to see the world through fey, enchanted eyes, I find myself sounding more like an Edward Ka-Spel song than is comfortable, for me or for my conversation partner.<\/p>\n Of course, it should be noted that Ka-Spel himself disavows any particular occult leanings in his songs<\/a>, though he\u2019s not offended by such interpretations. He has claimed no particular spiritual leanings for himself, and I certainly won\u2019t ascribe any to him. After all, it\u2019s entirely possible that, like so many artists before him\u2014Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso come to mind, as does David Bowie2<\/a><\/sup>\u2014Ka-Spel is merely inspired by magical and occult imagery: that they provide a symbolic language and some colorful backdrops, but no more.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just a bit curious, is all I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n Until next time, dear ones, stay safe. \u2665<\/p>\n
\nand at twilight we all walk around the stones.
\nSpirits dance, and bodies roll, hallucinations curtsey
\nas the river priestess consecrates the bones.\u201d
\n\u2014\u201dCasting the Runes,\u201d from Any Day Now<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nBecause she\u2019d always been alone, she\u2019d always be alone\u201d
\n\u2014\u201dLilith,\u201d from The Maria Dimension<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n