Reviewed by Jim Coursey
Released: 1981 The Legendary Pink Dots Kleine Krieg Genre: Experimental Synth / Darkwave / Psychedelic Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: Brill Down From The Country Note: for an explainer on this notorious Listening Post bugaboo, see my review of their 1982 cassette “Premonition.” Standard early cassette fare from the Pink Dots. As usual with these releases, “Kleine Kreig” features numerous sketches of songs that later would end up on their first three proper albums, “Brighter Now”, “Curse”, and “The Tower”, as well as a few “standards” that would crop up on other cassette releases. Also usual for these releases, they bias towards experimentation over the type of editing and manicuring common on an album release. Unfortunately, “Kleine Kreig” is not one of the better ones. It’s overlong for one, clocking in somewhere around 90 minutes. There are precious few highlights adding value here that aren’t done better on other releases (even cassette ones). Album opener “Defeated / Deflated Black Highway” could be a fine track on the second side of one of these releases, after they’ve built up enough structure to allow for a descent into madness. As it stands, it is so disorienting it probably would not entice anyone to listen further. There are certainly moments of interest to a fan along the way in the variations on common themes, but it takes an hour before I found anything worth highlighting. “Brill” is a collage of synth weirdness, developing out of an especially spritely and demented version of “Doll’s House.” It’s followed by the lo-rent boogie of “Down From The Country” (the only track I recognize as being excerpted on subsequent compilations). This short streak of interest is killed with an incomprehensible rendition of “Thursday Night Boogie.” As a one-time superfan, there were a few of these cassette-only releases I listened to repeatedly. This one would have been listened to once and stashed with the collection.
No comments:
Post a Comment