Description
PRE-ORDER ITEM — EXPECTED TO ARRIVE BY SEPTEMBER 25, 2025, BUT DELAYS ARE POSSIBLE. Any regular in-stock items ordered at the same time (in the same shopping cart) will be held aside and sent with your pre-ordered goods as one shipment. Orders with multiple pre-orders will be sent as one order, when everything in the order is in stock. If you want the order to ship immediately, or want your pre-ordered items to be sent out as soon as they arrive here, rather than in a group, you must order them separately. PAYMENT WILL BE TAKEN WHEN YOU COMPLETE CHECKOUT.
Recorded during lockdown and previously only available as a CDr self-released in an edition of 99 in 2022, The Sympathy Portal collects four tracks (one of which is divided into three parts) that make full use of Edward Ka-Spel’s command of melodies, cosmic churn, subtle field recordings, percolated vocals, hypno-rhythms, tempered noise, broken clocks, atmospheric keyboards, uncoiling springs and carefully hewn dynamics. Coupled to often despairing or melancholic lyrics, the album ultimately forms a fantastic addition to a body of work from this hardworking artist best known for leading The Legendary Pink Dots (and apparently barely able to rest when not engaged in commitments to that band).
Here is what Edward says about The Sympathy Portal: “[The album] was created as 2020 drifted into 2021 with the world in the grip of a pandemic. We studied charts on TV, horrified by statistics, temporarily free from a lockdown but well aware that we’d be back in our cubicles soon enough. It was hard to be positive in such an environment and this album reflects much of the fear and tension of the time. But the last song, ‘Angel Trail ( Slight Return)’, was intended to offer some genuine hope, having been revived for the release after first appearing in a different form on The Legendary Pink Dots’ 9 Lives to Wonder back in 1994.”
The album pays testament to a troubled and troubling time that now, a mere few years on, strangely appears like the grand entrance to a series of heavily dark periods we are still desperate to crawl from. It could be argued that the angel trail Edward so eloquently refers to is something that needs to be found more than ever and that, thankfully, his music helps to illuminate despites its mostly distressed overtones.
Away from the confines of a now hard-to-find and long sold out CDr, Lumberton Trading Company brings this album back as a vinyl release limited to 300 copies and is scheduled to appear in August or September 2025.
