The Legendary Pink Dots - A Perfect Mystery

Twenty years into one of the strangest and most prolific careers in underground music, the Legendary Pink Dots did something they had never really done before: they wrote in the room together. Instead of assembling songs from fragments the members brought in separately, the band built A Perfect Mystery collectively in the studio, and the result is one of the warmest, most direct records in a discography that runs to well over a hundred titles.

Edward Ka-Spel's voice remains the compass, half preacher and half fortune teller, while the Silverman's keyboards and filters supply the weather. "Lent," "When Lenny Meets Lorca," and "Death of a King" move between pulsing, up-tempo pieces and moodier passages laced with spooky keyboards and Niels van Hoornblower's effects-drenched saxophone. Martijn de Kleer's guitar and violin push several tracks toward something close to folk rock before the electronics pull them back under. Contemporary reviewers described the album as goth cabaret and folk rock filtered through '70s jazz-rock, dense and highly textured without ever tipping into indulgence.

It also marks the close of a chapter. Bassist and drummer Ryan Moore left after these sessions to concentrate on his Twilight Circus project, and Frank Verschuuren departed as well, making A Perfect Mystery the last document of this particular lineup at full strength.

Released in 2000 on Caciocavallo, the Soleilmoon imprint that has carried the Dots for decades, this CD edition collects all ten album tracks. A strong entry point for anyone circling the band's catalog and wondering where to jump in.