The Tear Garden :: Astral Elevator (Artoffact)

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When The Tear Garden released their first single “A Return” late this summer, it was clear they were back in full force. The song’s ecstatic promise and lush synthesis between cEvin Key’s pulsing rhythms and Edward Ka-Spel’s visionary lyrics signaled the long-awaited return of their singular experimental magic.

The Tear Garden ascend again

When The Tear Garden dropped their first single for their new album towards the end of summer, I knew that they were back, that they had made a return. That first single, “A Return” encapsulated such a sense of promise and ecstasy that I was filled with joy upon listening to it the first three times straight in a row. And for each time I’ve returned to the song, the joy has been returned. Throbbing bass and rhythms from the world of cEvin Key and mysterious lyrics from the prophet Ka-Spel target all the right points in my brain in their unique electronic synthesis and experimental artistry. They are back, and I didn’t how much I needed them back, until the other singles trickled out, until this entire album was delivered like the gift that it is.

From the time I step into the door of the elevator, the upward ascent is on, and I’m traveling into a dreamtime continuum, a central shaft inside a high rise condominium that takes me straight up into the stars. You don’t have to go to mars in a spaceship. You can go in your astral body, in your dream body, traveling along the vehicle of the imagination. Ka-Spel is our trusted spirit guide, and Key is our techno-tribal shaman in residence who keeps us electronically enhanced and entranced. This is why you want to listen to this album with the lights turned down low, or all the way off, with the speakers of your stereo up loud enough, so that the volume will pierce your body like a tattoo gun and make it vibrate. All the while, the interplay of words and music is a tether so your mind can float up along this astral elevator, to a place beyond the Maria dimension, to the new worlds existing on the planes and floors above.

As much as Ka-Spel’s iconoclastic lyricism creates a palace of high weirdness on the malleable astral plane, he also mirrors to us our collective psychosis, the way our lives are caught up in AI slop and the darkness that lurks in our digital dreams. There are good neighborhoods we travel through on this journey in the astral plane, but also some places with a bit of danger, zones you wouldn’t want to be hanging around in once the sun goes down. This journey, like many out of body experiences, takes you to luscious temples of creative repose, as well as gloom filled corridors where demons lurk. The angel may be in the detail, and its bright power will be needed during the exorcism to come. The second song, “Going Up” contains many of these premonitions and foreshadow weavings of apparitions that will later reappear. The song may also be a knowing nod to the Coil song of the same name, from their last official album. Even if not, what they both celebrate is a voyage beyond the confines of the body.

“A Return” worth waiting for ::

To speak of Key’s contributions, Astral Elevator is just as unstoppable as many of his solo albums or the Download album Effector. Once the music is rolling, it captures you, and it is pretty much impossible to turn away. There is no need for the pause, rewind, or fast forward buttons. Certainly, there is no turning this record off to listen to something else as people are now trained to do, via music streaming services and the algorithms of ADHD. The music here is so much better than Adderall. And it comes in a dose strong enough to keep you concentrated.

Ka-spel is no slouch at the metronomic synthesis of electronic sounds either, and his hands are all over the knobs and dials here too. It’s a fascinating question to think about who was doing what in the studio. In the end it doesn’t matter because the perfect unity that they achieve. What could be better than listening to two best friends, both masters at their art, playing together, laying down tracks, and having a blast? Randall Frazier and Dre Robinson join them as guest musicians adds some extra oomph. The late and much missed Dwayne Goettel also makes his appearance in this outing, presumably in the form of samples or material from the archives of the past being worked into the present. The old is in the new.

“Lady Fate” slows down the upward acceleration just a notch. When the heavy guitar chord thunders in, it sublimates everything for a moment, before the ladder lines of pinged resonators glitch out in sequential bliss as they continue their steady braided climb. It doesn’t take long before it all gets transfigured into freak-out brap territory for the remainder of the song, a little foreshadowing of the goth infused psychedelicism that follows on further floors up.

Key and Ka-Spel reunite magically ::

An interlude of strange dialogue appears on the tripped out “Square Root.” A very old and cantankerous couple, one of whom may be an artificial lifeform, are chatting as such couples do, then start talking about the square root of the number two. What follows is a nebulous digression into crazy space. This is the perfect subject to ponder for any students of Pythagoras who happen to be listening. Skittering numbers overlap the shuffling textures beneath the voices in a numerical odyssey showcasing the fact that music really is math. Maybe this is the kind of question that can stump our would-be overlords of AI-America and cause their computers to crash. The irrationality of square roots might be enough to trip up these digital dividers and stop the process of cultural fugue. Some of the voices seem synthetic, synthesized. Is anyone really talking to anyone? Or are these not really voices at all, but just the recordings of voices? Whatever the answer to these questions may be, the song makes me contemplate eternal numbers and their relation to reality. (This connection to music and math must be one of the reasons songs are sometimes referred to as numbers.)

Towards the end of this track, a sample blurts out saying, “I’m coming down!” Perhaps from the astral elevator. Perhaps from the bad trip that was taken by The Tear Garden during their last foray in the reality studio, 2017’s Brown Acid Caveat. I need to call upon the power of the saints as the room melts and overwhelming anxiety churns.

The convulsive tribal rhythms on “It Just Ain’t So” remind us that Key started off his career as a drummer. His ability to pound out furious beats and rhythms, and his mastery of music technology, has been the basis for an outstanding life in music. Every bit of magic he is able to conjure up can be heard as being built off the sensibility of his mastery of rhythm. The beat on this track is just as janky and gnarled as anything whipped up on the drum machines for Skinny Puppy, and reminds me of one of my favorite Download songs “Sigesang” from the album Furnace. It’s got an aggressive energy, but Ka-Spel’s narration with his delectable lisp isn’t aggressive. It acts instead as a tricksterish counterpoint as he asks us if we “can trust in anything you see” or hear, or smell, or taste or touch. These days even this song might be a deep fake. Perhaps neither Key nor Ka-Spel played anything on this song at all. Perhaps it manifested itself from inside a quantum-computers that dwell somewhere deep inside the hallway of the gods. Yet, despites its electronic basis, this song has so much humanity and creativity woven into its architecture, that I know it can’t be fake. I am listening to it after all. That is the reality of my experience. But it brings into question how we are able to discern between the generations of machines, and what is brought out of the human imagination. Artists lend their soul to their creations and soul is on full display here. I’m cheering along with the rest of the sampled crowd that is woven into the song by the time this number is over.

Back from beyond, brighter than ever ::

The duo of songs “In the Name Of” and “Exorcism” see Ka-Spel once again going into full blown storytelling mode, in this case a gothic tale about a nun named Sister Sadie. I’m reminded of classic Legendary Pink Dots songs like “Casting the Runes” and the many other ballads he has sung which are full of esoteric mystery. This one is haunting and holy. The “Exorcism” afterwards is a short instrumental piece that clears the air of hostile and malignant energies and spirits. What sound like EVP recordings and weird voice loops get banished into the outer aether where they will harm us not. Praise be to Sister Sadie and the iron rod she uses in the name of love.

Evil spirits banished, my movement up to the next floor can now continue. I journey into liquid lysergic crystalline emanations of transcendent electronic consciousness. A shimmering lead, on “Toten Tanz” whose last beats lead into “War Crier” which features glitched out blasts of bit crushing. Humans can only seem to be at peace for short periods of time. The memories of our atrocities are quickly forgotten in the endless scroll, but those crushed bits might just be a reminder of our doom, as souls go over the rails of a digital high-rise tower.

As if in hubristic answer to the war cry, the next song “Swallow the Leader,” starts out with brass horns and dubbed out delay. It’s terroristic tale all too reminiscent of todays daily headlines. Again, I hear the echoes of favorite songs from the past. This time it is “The Hill” from the Legendary Pink Dots album, Asylum. Both deal with cruel killers, but one is an underdog and the other is a tyrant in a computerized world that makes his presence even nastier and more narcissistic than it would have been on the ample steroids of traditional media.

Perfect for melancholy commiseration ::

Like the opening number, “A Developing World” is another banger. Wherever they have industrial night at the clubs, its sure to become a floor stomper and another fan favorite like “In Search of My Rose” from To Be And Angel Blind or “Romulus and Venus” from the Last Man to Fly. The lyrics here are a bit depressing, even as it is completely danceable. Perfect for melancholy commiseration with fellow misfits.

“Always Take the Highway” features luscious oscillator sweeps and noise explosions, while “Chow Mein” is one that the vegetarians among the listenership will be able to hear without feeling any guilt. (Ka-Spel himself being one of these.)

As with the last pieces previous outings from The Tear Garden (and plenty of Skinny Puppy, Download, and Legendary Pink Dots records) the final number is an extended trip. This brap sounds less cyberactive, and a bit less abrasive than some of the episodes that happened out on the grounds of the chemical playschool. It is a hallucinatory exorcise in drone, a carrier wave taking me to even higher planes above.

The final culmination of Astral Elevator as a whole is a masterful exposition on the kind of magic that can happen when two longtime friends get together to have fun and make something together. It’s such a joy to hear them deep at work inside their playground. An absolute masterpiece among all the bright and glittering gems across both Key and and Ka-Spel’s substantial and essential discographies. I’m reminded once again why I always find a reason to make a frequent return to their work.

Astral Elevator is available on Artoffact. [Bandcamp]