I've always been a fan of the Legendary Pink Dots since their inception in 1980 & their subsequent move to Amsterdam a few years later. I have seen them live more than a dozen times. I have posted up various offerings of theirs elsewhere on NSS (trapped in my mania; more pink; more more dots; return of; I put Ka-spel on you; live at cafe du nord; back to round up; lovin' life) along with offerings from various members (Niels Van Horn & Martijn de Kleer), (Ryan Moore - twilight & sunday Dub plate).
Edward Ka-Spel (D'Archangel) & Phil Knight (The Silverman) are the founding & continuous members of LPD. D'Archangel has a prolific solo career & has been involved in numerous side projects over the years. The most enduring of the is The Tear Garden.
The roots of The Tear Garden go back to 1983, before LPD had moved to the Netherlands. cEvin Key was in the early stages of forming Skinny Puppy in Vancover, British Columbia. At that time he had begun a trans-Atlantic correspondence with Edward Ka-Spel.
Three years later Ka-Spel visited Vancouver for a series of three live performances. cEvin was the sound technician for those shows. During the course of that visit, the two recorded The Tear Garden's self-titled debut EP.
In 1987, Ka-Spel opened for Skinny Puppy on their North American tour. The duo used this occasion to hit the studio for two weeks to produce the electronic-psychedelic masterpiece album Tired Eyes Slowly Burning. It was during these sessions that the project's ranks began to expand, with guest appearances by Key's fellow Skinny Puppies Dwayne Goettel & Nivek Ogre.
Four years later, The Tear Garden released their next albums. This time the group had grown well beyond the Key/Ka-Spel partnership to include not only Goettel, but a wide assortment of friends, including most of the Pink Dots (Phil Knight, Martijn de Kleer, & Ryan Moore). This fruitful month-long collaboration spawned two releases: the album The Last Man To Fly & the EP (???) (48+ minutes) Sheila Liked The Rodeo.
Another four years passed, four years fraught with massive changes: both Skinny Puppy & LPD split from their long-time labels; the break-up of SP; the untimely death of SP's Dwayne Goettel; the birth of Ka-Spel's son, Calyxx; the formation of Download; & Key's eventual return to his original label Nettwerk.
In late December 95, in the wake of all this turbulence, The Tear Garden headed into the studio once more. The result was To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide, an album of fragile & powerful beauty that digs even deeper into the psychedelic underground than its predecessors, adding a range of influences from dub bass to country slide guitar, all the while retaining the dark electronic melancholy that has become the project's signature.
Since that time, the group has continued to release fantastic music (six more releases from Crystal Mass to one of my favorites, The Brown Acid Caveat. Their latest release is Volume 2 of Eye Spy (2002).
Presented here for your audio pleasure...
The Tear Garden - Eye Spy with My Little Eye, Sub-Conscious Communications sub 026, 2002.
all decryption code in comments
Perforated Man
A Bitter Pill
The Train to China
Extract from Empathy No. 2
Splatterflick
Black Curtains
The Bomb Bomb Loopapa Tribe Drown Themselves in a Vat of Marmite
All the Stars are Falling
Extract from Empathy No. 3
Dr Chang's Tummy Rub
The Tear Garden - Eye Spy Volume 2, Metropolis MET1084, 2017.
Georgie P / Good Evening Houston (Slight Return)
Good Evening Houston Part 2
Message III
Forbidden Zone
Nothing's Set in Stone (version)
Greener Grass
Demons (The 3AM mix)
The Things That Go Bump in the Night
It's Your Karma
Tears
Performers: Edward Ka-Spel; Frank Verschuuren; Martijn De Kleer; Ryan Moore; The Silverman; & cEvin Key
"Forbidden Zone", "Greener Grass", "Tears" originate from lost TG pieces dating back
to 1987 which were recently finished. "Good Evening Houston is a re-interpretation of a rare bonus track which originally appeared on the Russia only compilation ,"For Those Who Walk With The Gods" (Для Тех, Кто Прогулялся Бы С Богами - 1999) ; "Message III" is
taken from that same collection & has been remastered. Other songs are remastered, having been
collected from various compilations. "Demons" is an alternative/home-made version of a song
from "Crystal Mass". "Nothing's Set in Stone" is an alternative version of a song from Have A Nice Trip (2009).
Original versions appeared on:
1 - Для Тех, Кто Прогулялся Бы С Богами
2 - Unreleased
3 - Для Тех, Кто Прогулялся Бы С Богами
4 - Unreleased
5 - Have A Nice Trip
6 - Unreleased
7 - Crystal Mass
8 - Wild Planet
9 - Unreleased
10 - Unreleased
Enjoy,
NØ