Edward Ka-spel/Getty Images
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
Ever since he started playing in the early 1980s, Englishman Edward Ka-Spel, the founder of the amazing band The Legendary Pink Dots, has always been a musical maverick. The music of The Legendary Pink Dots was too playful and whimsical for the fans of classic darkside (like Coil or Current 93), which was close to his heart. It was deemed too mystical and convoluted for fans of new wave and pop music as well. But strangely enough, in recent years, his songs have taken on a new meaning. Unlike the music of these other bands, fans usually play The Legendary Pink Dots’s songs on loop. This is especially noteworthy considering that Edward Ka-Spel continues to write prolifically, releasing several phenomenal new records during the pandemic, and his discography, including cassette releases and various collaborations, is incalculable. Ka-Spel turned seventy in January 2024, and his creations always exude a wonderful sense of a kind of caveman operetta set in strange times.
The song ‘Our Lady in Madras’, from the 1988 album Khataclimici China Doll, is a strange quasi-Indian hallucination in which tandoori and chapati serve as the setting for a kind of supreme court whose functions are performed by the purifying flames of a fiery furnace.