The Shark introduces artists whose prolificness, talent, creativity, and trajectory stand out among the rest, reason why he call them "Gods in Music."

This is a guide to the massive discography of The Legendary Pink Dots and his enigmatic founder Edward Ka-Spel, which spans for over 400+ recordings with a unique and distinctive dark and apocalyptic music style.

The Shark ranks the tip of the iceberg of his colossal library (100,00+ songs) while unveiling top-notch and under-the-radar recommendations.

With Understanding Comes Appreciation In the years following his death in 1945, Anton Webern’s works became the Rosetta Stone of post-war Serial composers. One of his big champions was conductor Robert Craft, under whose direction Columbia Masterworks recorded Webern’s complete works between 1954 and 1956. Marni Nixon of Hollywood “ghost singer” fame brings pinpointed agility and spot-on intonation to the songs, supported by Schoenberg scholar Leonard Stein’s brilliant handli

With Understanding Comes Appreciation While the big bang of progressive rock was only a few years old, it is astonishing how so many bands diversified their sounds and perfected them in such a short span of time. While King Crimson went more in the direction of jazz influenced rock with avant-garde composing techniques, Pink Floyd went the space rock direction, Jethro Tull into the progressive arenas of folk and others like Genesis opting for a more vocally led theatrical sty

With Understanding Comes Appreciation Once upon a time there was the story of the greatest irony of all-time in music, known as The Velvet Underground. A bohemian group of avant-garde artists and thinkers that no one calculated at the time, really no one. Over time, they went from being a group of enlightened artists to one of the most important and influential bands in the history of music, not by a simple change of heart or by a click, they always had it in them but nobody

With Understanding Comes Appreciation Composed for nine instruments (2x pianos, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, tam-tam and xylophone), Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion certainly packs a punch. Written in 1937 and premiered in 1938 by Bartók and his second wife Ditta on piano and percussionists Fritz Schiesser and Philipp Rühig, the sonata was received very well by critics and audiences. The piece received its US premiere in 1940, with Di

With Understanding Comes Appreciation From start to end, this album is an absolute killer. Every single second is just excellent, the listener cannot lose his attention on the music. Last one with Robert Wyatt, Third is by far Soft Machine's best offering. With four pieces of approximately 20 minutes each, mainly instrumental, the musicians push back the frontiers of space modal jazz-rock and avant-garde far beyond. Hard to believe this is the same band who released their fi

With Understanding Comes Appreciation The composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said of one passage, "That page is sixty years old, but it's never been topped for sophisticated handling of primitive rhythms...", and of the work as a whole, "...it's also got the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name." Oks, first things first specially for the sake of new comers. The Rite of Spr

With Understanding Comes Appreciation What is sound? Think about all the different possible sounds heard throughout the day. Cars passing by, the chattering of people talking, keys jingling in your pocket, music playing in the grocery store, the microwave humming, the list goes on and on. Whether we are aware of them or not, we are constantly hearing sounds happening all around us. Now, let’s change gears for just a moment as I pose another question. What is time? Time is an

With Understanding Comes Appreciation Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a journey! It's the sound of a man's spiritual journey condensed into a half-hour of free jazz majesty, and it makes me feel a near-religious presence every time I hear it. And this is coming from a guy whose relationship with spiritual matters mean very little if anything. Everything about it is perfect. There are few albums that transcend genres, but A Love Supreme is without a single doubt one of those. I

With Understanding Comes Appreciation Mr. Edgard Varèse 188 Sullivan St. New York, New York Dear Sir: Perhaps you might remember me from my stupid phone call last January, if not, my name again is Frank Zappa Jr. I am 16 years old... that might explain partly my disturbing you last winter. The reason for my letter at this time is that I am visiting relatives in Baltimore and as long as I am on the East Coast I hope I can get to see you. It might seem strange but ever since I

With understanding comes appreciation First things first since no many people are familiarized with the Dots. The Legendary Pink Dots are an influential, staggeringly prolific group led by enigmatic frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Emerging from the early-'80s post-punk underground and sometimes categorized as industrial due to associations with bands like Skinny Puppy, the group's music is nearly impossible to pin down, drawing from Krautrock, ambient, folk, synth pop, and numerous

With Understanding Comes Appreciation While it is focused on rarefied, intellectualized, long-form composition in an era when abstraction and complexity really meant something in the rock milieu, these diverse pieces have a direct emotional power, linger and replay themselves in the mind long after their most recent hearing. This is a sophisticated and beautifully crafted recording. This is probably one of the most, if not the most, accessible and digestible Rock-in-Oppositio

With Understanding Comes Appreciation The first time I listened to Tom Waits, which was randomly from a radio station btw, I thought that I had missed a song or an album made by one of my fav artists of all-time; the peerless, a blues belter straight out of the school of Howlin' Wolf, a cat who breathed and bathed in the free jazz of Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman, a painter and sculptor by nature, a rock and roll titan as leader and frontman; the one and only Captain Beefhe

With Understanding Comes Appreciation Some of the words that arguably describe better this gem might be elegant, sophisticated, intimate, melancholic, spiritual, playful, desert, warm, and mysterious, which also sports majestically chamber jazz, avant-garde classical music, klezmer and modern composition. For a man who's arguably got 90% of his reputation (at this point, in 1996) through making noisy, abrasive, inaccessible, and chaotic music, this masterpiece is quite the op

With Understanding Comes Appreciation “Fast and bulbous! That's right, The Mascara Snake, fast and bulbous! Also, a tin teardrop! Bulbous also tapered? That's right” —Pena, Track 15. I wanted to start with this quote, because it is a classic dialog among fans, which shows a sort of camaraderie and a “sense of belonging” when you start exchanging this apparently “nonsense," specially with another unknown fan. Knowing the latter, somehow says that you are “special” and “belong”