The Secret Dance of the China Dolls:

The Story of the Legendary Pink Dots

Date: Wed, 10 Jan 96 00:33:53 +0100
From: Henry Schneider 
Subject: xkull
To: LPD List 


Sorry for this long post but I found this web page today and I don't recall
anyone having mentioned it before.  If I've screwed up here I apologize.  If not
check out this URL for the graphics that go along with the text.

Henry Schneider

http://www.users.interport.net/~spidr/7/gold/lpd.html

>                               [edward]
> 
>                 The Secret Dance of the China Dolls:
>                 The Story of the Legendary Pink Dots
> 
>                              GO BACK!!!
> 
> Sixteen years. You're in a small damp room. Three flames from three
> white candles lean toward the window, driven by a steady breeze from
> under the old door. Three sets of tired eyes search for stars on a
> cruel November night. There are none. A pitch black ceiling closing
> in, slowly. Pressing down...and the soundtrack goes on. Seven hours
> now. Three sets of tired hands working, weaving a flawed tapestry in
> an abyss.
> 
> Occasionally the door opens and someone looks in and laughs. It's a
> cynical laugh but no-one is hurt because three sets of tired ears
> are tuned in to the soundtrack. On and on. Eight hours, twenty-three
> hours, seven days, SIXTEEN YEARS. The tapestry stretches across the
> sea thru borders, wraps itself around the planet. The soundtrack
> goes on and on, unceasing. The scream becomes louder....louder...
> 
> This is the Werld of The Legendary Pink Dots, creators of the most
> hallucinogenic and emotional music the universe has ever known. The
> name deriving from a mysterious obsession of a few friends with
> three microscopic drops of pink blood (or was it nail polish?) on an
> olde piano keyboard, the pink zone is a dark Werld of ancient
> secrets within which one finds the cracks and doors to the summoning
> dance of the china dolls, the landing of thee Lyvv angel Lisa, and
> the last lost soul of the thirteenth apocalypse of Some Fine Legacy:
> The Prophet Edward Ka-Spell, the tiny emperor of all premonitions,
> so gallantly screaming.
> 
> Formed in August of 1980 in a dark basement in the east end of
> London, The Legendary Pink Dots began out of the friendship of
> Edward Ka-Spell and Sir Phillip Knight - known only as The Silver
> Man. Beginning as a three piece composed of keyboard, bass, acoustic
> guitar, and the voice of the old Gods, the Pink Dots pioneered a
> darkly magickal psychedelic sound witch has continuously changed and
> evolved, from the ghostly minimal acoustic guitar and analog
> synthesizer callings of 1982's "Brighter Now" to the shining
> technically perfected musical narratives of 1994's "Nine Lives to
> Wonder." Certain influences lurk in the background such as the old
> German electronics of Faust and Can, as well as the lonely echoing
> chants of Syd Barrett and the early Pink Floyd - each giving the
> Prophet Qa'Sepel the diamond keys to a whole new musical genre full
> of brightly bleak tales of Medieval Magick, demonically enshrined
> lost love, and thee command:
> 
>                     SING...SING WHILE YOU MAY!!!
> 
>  [brighter now] It all began with "Brighter Now" (1982). Following
> an encounter as the only audience-members watching an improvising
> noise band at the edge of a field at a London festival in 1979,
> Edward and The Silver Man ascended the stairs to the garden in the
> basement to teach themselves a few simple chords. The album starts
> in the "Red Castle," a lonely chant to a lost maiden addressed only
> as "you" about whom is more is revealed in "The Wedding", in which
> occurs a separation from and within Edward. Then comes "Apocalypse
> Then," "The City Ghosts," the seance in "The Hanging Garden," all to
> quietly end in the lonely calls from the deadly soma bath where we
> all die "In Bliss."
> 
> The early sound continued onto the second LP, 1983's  [curse cover]
> "Curse." To the sparse effects, simple narrative
> lyrical structures, and a darkness deriving from a melancholic self-
> consciousness, the group added electric guitar, and a whole new
> cascade of china-twisted vocal effects. Edward introduced two new
> themes which would become seminal to his tragic Werld: the lady Lisa
> and the ever-proliferating china dolls. The opening-track, "Love
> Puppets," takes Lisa into the void of becoming a widow or perhaps an
> eight-legged wife who kills everyone at Lisa's party with a pretty
> dose of cyanide in thee delicate mint pies. Just when you thought
> they were dead the Enochian familiar shouts, "Arzhklah Olgevezh!"
> while in the dolls house under the rock gazing at the aeroplanes.
> 
> In these first, most personal and mysterious of Pink Dots releases,
> Edward's biomorphic alter-egos are portrayed as utterly alone in a
> dying Werld permeated by the "yous," cold Medusas out to open up the
> gaps in Edward's cracking head. The mid-eighties brought a silent
> change however, as the silent cracks brought a new mambo bouncing
> passion. "The Tower" (1984) and "Asylum" (1985) present a new
> journey of explosive desire and change to the melting pink cloud.
> 
> Thru-out "The Tower", Edward's narrative style shifts for the first
> time from a lonely, drowning "I" to a more descriptive and generally
> distanced narrative, emanating magnacoloured medieval scenarios of
> battling the fiery oppositions within the lost kingdom of the tower
> (a story which continues thru- out a total of 7 Pink Dots songs on 3
> albums). In this werld where "The lightening always dances in every
> brain," "no one has the key to the tower!" Within the tower
> reappears the maiden previously spotted in the Black Castle on the
> first record. The band has here left the candlelit basement and
> begun there terminally kaleidoscopic descent into the fantastikal
> bloody streets of "Poppy Day," where "We shall not grow old" brings
> the christening of the new invisible female priestess Astrid - who
> emerges as Lisa's fantasymate. Thee genesssis of Astrid, as was the
> case with Lisa, and the future slippery notions of Tanith and The
> Four Great Hotels (Noir, Blanc, X and Z), opens up a new crack for
> the psychic confusion in The Prophet E's mind.
> 
> Astrid took the new electric-Baroque Pink Dots back into themselves
> on "Asylum" (1985). On this and more obviously the other undiscussed
> "The Lovers" of the same prolific year Edward fell in love for the
> first time and proclaimed it to the werld on songs such as the
> biting 12" single "Curious Guy." Edward had entered the werld of the
> shining Lady Sunshine, a mysterious temptress who had previously
> appeared as the spectral voice of the dead on "Curse's" "Hiding"
> (known then as ARADIA). The Lady Sunshine brought with her love of
> Lisa thee introduction of the Magnificent CAPTAIN and his naughty
> little sidekick THE MONKEY, perhaps the baby Edward as a crooked
> child. On ghostly tracks such as "Agape", the Lady's new lead vocals
> duel with The Prophet's, making a new experimental AAZZYD sound,
> raping angels as The Triumphantly Laughing Guitars of The Father
> Pastorius (Bob Pistoor/thee Stret Majest Allarme) exchange eyelashes
> with Sunshine's slithering violin solos - and Saint Peter arrives on
> horse, keys all bloody. Yes thee echo police have come with Gorgon
> Zola's naked child afire as the only fifteen flies fall into the
> enchanted femme mirage; the quiet prisoner of "demonism" gently
> caressing herself and screaming "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE
> LIGHT!!!"
> 
>                       THIS COULD BE THE END!!!
> 
> Thee End, on and on till Golden Dawn....Following the eurotranz 12"
> classic "Curious Guy" (1986) and the terrifying "Blacklist" (1987),
> the Pink Dots continued down out furthr, furthr - a mesmerizing
> descent beginning with 1987's "Any Day Now" and continuing on today.
> On thee thirteen minute voyage through "Waiting for the Cloud,"
> Edward has entirely left the white zone of consciousness of one's
> self. All the selves are bundled up carefully, each in its own
> oxygen tent. Lisa was reborn for the fifth time on this magnificent
> record, as Edward's writing style plunged off thee silver cliff into
> free association, losing the restrictive demands of coherent
> story-telling in favor of using words as vicious broken-glass bombs
> to rip up the fresh flesh in the tiny porcelain sky. Father Bob's
> guitar rules with complete power on tracks like the glistening
> witchfinder tale "Casting the Runes."
> 
> "Any Day Now" took the Dots into the Dungeon of melting PULSING
> plastic on the first triad of the most technically beautiful
> releases: "The Golden Age" (1988), "The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse"
> (1990), and "The Maria Dimension" (1991). If the early "Brighter
> Now" had introduced a small and shy "I", then finally that angry
> little monster had put on her armor and mounted a great white
> stallion to take on the brittle werld with Black Roses in the broken
> shadow box. Der Kataaclimiichi and the rest of the band imploded
> inside thee iridescent rainbow of neon gold. A permanent move to
> Holland to take up a hermetic, workaholic residence in the polder-
> country barn of wind-player Niels van Hoornblower. The instrumental
> peak of total D'Archangel glory...
> 
>                         G O B A C K ! ! ! ! !
> 
> The father brought out the wicked sitar, Niels conjured Gilgamesh
> with his army of flute, sexophon and an oval-shaped black thing. It
> can only be said that by this time, The Silver Man floated beneath
> the moon, cross-legged, waiting, US ANGELS AIN"T AFRAID OF WATER ARE
> WE!!!
> 
> MMMMMMMMMMM....Mezhanyne....Maybe this could be...MMMMMMMMMM.. The
> songs during this period construct images impossible to envision -
> blissful sensuality breached in the space between laughing and
> crying at a mad king. From the Green Gang's" hazy ride thru-out the
> ephemeral drunkenness of "Crushed Velvet" to the wild whirlwind
> tingling fright of the body disappearing on "Maria's' "Evolution",
> one can only wonder, weave shadows, and reawaken....this could be
> thee end.
> 
> 1991 brought the tragic death of The Father Pastorius after an
> exhausting bout with cancer. Our hearts shall always be with him.
> One week before the 1991 cross-continental MARIA DIMENSION TOUR
> (Jerusalem, Cairo, Athens, and the legendary evening at thee Club
> Lingerie in decimated Los Angelees) , new guitarist Martin van de
> Cleer stepped into The Father's shoes with amazing elegance and
> accuracy - joining Silver, Edward, Niels and polite Canadian bassist
> Ryan Moore, to form the Pink Dots line up of "Shadoweaver" (1992),
> "Malachai" (1993), and "Nine Lives to Wonder" (1994). Martin, Ryan
> and the arrival of new producer and old friend, Steven Stapleton
> (Nurse With Wound) gave the Dots a secret ticket to push out furthr
> than ever before, colliding in the stroboscope. Yes now you see me
> now you don't. Tonite I'm dressed in black, I mourn thee death of
> colour. Hopeless, I'm crying in my wine thru the happy hour; I count
> the lines that crawl across my face and around my I's. Watch the
> ballerinas fly out on the powder clouds thru six dimensions.
> Express. We never touch, only press but I swear I'll protect you if
> you'd only look into my eyes. choose your masks and raise your armor
> - EYES DOWN FOR CHERADERAMA!!!!
> 
> On the 20 minute terror of "We Bring the Day' (on "Malachai"), Eric
> Satie, Wagner, and a Siamese morph of Martin Denny and Hieronymous
> Bach bus tables for thee olde werld Lucifer who sharpens his
> Stapletonian daggers in the city of needles. yes he has the key to
> heaven. There's no more window on their werld, only a tiny kingdom
> of flies. Lisa is gone. Forever. Separated from Joey the canary's
> last day out on the boards, God if only Madame Guillotine knew that
> the nine shades to the circle were the space in between, lost with
> the ghosts of unborn children in the third room of the plasma twins.
> 
>     TANITH....TANITH.....SOFTLY...SOFTLY....SOFTLY ...Laughing!!!
>       Sing...SING WHILE YOU MAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> I hadn't seen her for years. The shadows in that lonely basement had
> now descended to thee inner garden to dance in the Secret Dance of
> the China Dolls.
> 
> At this point even thee deviant (and we must stick together) can say
> no more with words. As the music is always pushing the tapestry
> furthr and furthr out into the dead black werld to challenge all
> "limits" of acceptable visceral experience, nothing can be compared
> to the Pink Dots live experience - get in thee front row and stare
> into the glass eye and cracked china doll face of a dark army of
> Neon gladiaTors. And never
> 
>                              GO BACK!!!
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> about the author, thee Astrid
> 
> go back to Gold Gilt Hall top page
> 
> N.o.X. home page

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