A re-visit to one of my favourite Legendary Pink Dots albums, Asylum Relaspe re-shapes the patients’ mood, and propels its themes with new perspectives. Some tracks are obvious nods to Asylum’s original content, but others are more slippery with context, wiggling out of the woodwork, adding to the fun as Patrick Q Wright’s musical nous excites the eleven tracks therein, his fevered violin playing and voice spinning a dynamic axis to the words that fly out in vivid flashes.
I’ve been happily entrenched in this album’s charms for a while now. Its full-on dust-cloud symphonics pepper as that classical grasp of quiet and loud dynamics eagles a real sense of excitement, incising the scenics with a sizzling sense of expectation that washes over you again and again. That incredible voice of his curling the words, eloquently uncorking the emotion as the production daggers deep, opens up sumptuous details you can just sink right into. The physicality of the gypsy-like dervishes, the twisty tango-esques and the shadowy harmonics that put you right into the music’s flow. Asylum Relapse is a true labour of love, embracing a whole host of extra talents including Edward Ka-Spel on two tracks and Amanda Palmer on another.
The delicate build of “Hill Of Stone” and it’s XTC-like zither flowering on flamenco-flamed heels. The instrumental “Paradise Lost” suddenly bursting into soaring violin and weighty percussives, it’s Stravinsky-like slivers shivering into some lovely introspectives that spew a manic finale. The Brilliant Trees-like sweetness of “Daynight In Paris” exercising a loving restraint, a sense of place curvaceously waving in darting colour and illuminated shade. It’s a moody manoeuvring soundscape that gets under your skin, throws light over society’s many ills. Questions if you accept this “crock-of-shit”, then asks us “how did we lose that space-cadet glow”, or drowns the necessity for guns in rock operatics. A satisfying journey that swims outwards on the lilting Irish flavours of “Requiem”, nestling a King Crimson-like sense of lyrical reflection that laps on your shore well after the track’s demise. As Asylum Relaspe was being pieced together, Patrick was involved in a bijou US tour of Amanda Palmer and& Edward Ka-Spel’s I Can Spin A Rainbow LP, and the extra disc here is a personal behind the scenes documentary to that tour. A witty, insightful and often comical expose comprising tantalising flashes of concert footage, chats with fans and much more, it makes for compelling viewing as they finally get to visit Woodstock (fifty years too late), and mess with a museum of fully-functional tech at Tear Garden HQ.For Pink Dots fans and the uninitiated alike, this is an absolute must.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
