The Legendary Pink Dots - Shadow Weaver

By 1992 the Legendary Pink Dots had been at it for over a decade, and Shadow Weaver is the record where the lineup finally clicked into something close to a proper band. Ryan Moore on bass, Martijn de Kleer on guitar, Niels van Hoornblower on horns, all of it wrapped around Edward Ka-Spel's voice and the Silverman's keyboards. The result is one of the most fully realized albums in a catalog that runs to well over a hundred titles, and the one longtime listeners tend to hand to newcomers first.

The mood is exactly what the title promises. "Zero Zero" opens the album with a slow seven-minute build that sets the tone for everything after, and "Ghosts of Unborn Children," "City of Needles," and "Twilight Hour" work the same territory: patient, richly textured psychedelia with saxophone and violin curling through the electronics while Ka-Spel narrates from somewhere just off to the side. It is goth without leather, prog without showing off, and it stays hypnotic across the full hour.

Shadow Weaver was recorded alongside its companion album Malachai, released later the same year as the second half of the pair, and together they mark the peak of the Dots' early nineties run. Four decades into their career, this era still stands as the high-water mark for a band that has never once brushed against the mainstream and has been better for it.

This Soleilmoon CD edition runs the full sixty minutes and includes "Prague Spring" and "Leper Colony," two tracks that never made the vinyl. The most complete way to hear the album.