Twilight Circus Meets Edward Ka-Spel — 800 Saints In A Day
The release brings together sonically shifting & playfully singer songwriter Edward Ka-Spel, and dub/reggae project Twilight Circus( aka Vancouver based Ryan Moore). Both parties are most known for their work with highly influential & respected Anglo-Dutch Experimental rock/ Neo-psychedelic/ Industrial/ ect project The Legendary Pink Dots. Ka-Spel is still very much part & centre of LPD's work, while Moore used to play both bass and drums in the project, but departed some years back.
This collaborative release takes in eight fairly lengthy tracks, and really each of these tracks nicely dart, shift & melt through all manner of sonic territory. Going from more structured song like moments with the distinctively nasally & bizarre imagery littered vocals of Ka-Spel. Onto surreal sound pitted beat-scapes, through to melted & strange mixers of all manner of musical genres. I won’t go into track by track break downs here, as I think that type of really ruins the surprise of this type of thing- that said I’ve now played through the album numerous times, and even now I’m still getting surprised by the shifts with-in the tracks lay-out.
I guess comparison wise you’d say the more quirky & beat based work of Nurse With Wound( like the Who Can I Turn to Stereo album) , but of course you have the added extra of the more song based moments, and the genre mixing too.
I will have to admit in the past finding both Ka-Spel solo work, and The Legendary Pink Dots releases been a little hit & miss. But I must say I enjoyed 800 Saints In A Day from start to finish, and can see myself returning to it again when I’m in the mood for a mix of structured song craft & more lose (yet often) beat propelled surrealism/ genre mixing.