Legendary Pink Dots show review

Legendary Pink Dots @ the Casbah, SD Thursday, July 6, 2006

Review by Kent Manthie

To make the evening worth going out on this hot, sticky night, Wax Trax alumni, Legendary Pink Dots played a 25th anniversary show at the Casbah, an intimate little club in San Diego, the classic SD indie music haunt. Some might feel claustrophobic in there; to others, like me, it felt like being underwater the whole night, but with cool, ethereal tuneage.
Up first, opening up the night, was Pruitt Igoe, an eclectic juxtaposition of operatic voices, saxophones, bongo drums and their own dancer too. Giving it a lush ambient backdrop was a stack of keyboards and an effects-laden array hooked up to the guitar player. With a mezzo-soprano, belting out melodic arpeggios to just screaming at the top of her lungs, a sort of dare to the audience to stand there and listen. Accompanying her, (Pruitt?) was a big, stocky, dreadlocked dude, also belting out vocals and screams, albeit pretty good. It had all kinds of cacophonous inventions, purposeful, controlled dissonance and it was a nice thing to see, for one, because it’s something new, something that isn’t really done, at least not by many.
So, after an intense finale, something about IED’s and blowing shit up, with sound effects, Pruitt Igoe de-staged and got out of that hot box of a room and had a drink out in the outer corridor.
About 45 minutes later, the lads took to the stage, to great awe from the manic uber-fans in the front row; Edward Ka-Spel began the whole thing with this funny little spiel, albeit in a hypnotic, spell-casting tone, riffing on his scary airport ordeal, having misspoken and been dragged off by the “word police”. It was an ethereal space-jam that belied the mugginess of the evening; a kind of magic breeze was the upshot of the sound waves pouring forth from their amps. There were a few fanatics, so overcome with ecstasy that they clutched their heads with a grimace and tore at their hair, undulating in spasms of rhythmic delight.
The two original members, Ka-Spel and Phil Knight (not the Nike dude), were there, plus the newest member, Erik Drost, a Dutchman who really wowed on the gee-tar. Another newer guy, there since 1990, Niels Van Hoorn, was the Chris Wood of the band, that is, he played the woodwinds, mainly sax and flute and some electronic type of horn-type apparatus that emitted synth sounds. Van Hoorn wowed the crowd with a walk-through of the audience and even out into the outer corridor. With a light mounted in the bell of the sax, he spotlighted various audience members including myself. He also used two saxes, an alto and a soprano, blowing into both reeds at once, giving the two-sax effect, as if there were a horn section. Drost, meanwhile, elevated the music to wild, dizzying heights with awesome space-solos on a Telecaster, but he also picked up a bass occasionally, also a Fender; an acoustic was needed a few times as well.
Great showmen, those Pink Dots, playing to the audience, singing lines directly to the girls in front of the stage; music was moving in and out, up and down, spilling over into the night, finally finishing up after midnight, when it was still swelteringly hot outside. The show had cascaded with the last three tunes and finally waned in a hot minute.
The atmosphere outside was thick, heavy and humid; I could almost swim home. Walking down Kettner Blvd, it’s kind of weird how the streets in Little Italy look like a Hollywood soundstage, like a fabricated set, with a fine misty haze hovering through the air. Everything is deserted, empty, quiet, a deafening silence, eerie and the air is still, unmoving, thick, no wind. It really feels unreal. [http://www.brainwashed.com, to read up on what the guys are up to next] – KM.