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May 02, 2017 Amanda Palmer By Charles Steinberg

Amanda Palmer has collaborated with Legendary Pink Dots founder Edward Ka-Spel on her new album I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW, which arrives this Friday, May 5th. Under the Radar has the exclusive album stream. I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW is the first full-length collaboration between Palmer and Ka-Spel, founding member of visionary Anglo-Dutch psychedelicists The Legendary Pink Dots. This was an exciting project for Palmer, marking the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to work with one of her artistic heroes who has inspired her most. Palmer has been an avowed fan of Ka-Spel and The Legendary Pink Dots since discovering their psycho-theatrical, multi-textural work in her teens.

I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW, engineered and mixed by Ka-Spel on his own laptop using Ableton, “is a truly collaborative effort, ‘a spiritual experience,’” says Palmer, in which both artists’ stories, song fragments, poems, and lyrics became wholly meshed with loops, melancholy piano playing, melodic beds, and strange rhythms. “We merged our songwriting heads and poetic worlds to make a new universe,” Palmer says. “We would sit in Imogen’s house drinking cups of tea, bemoaning the state of the upcoming election, binge drinking in the UK, the refugee crisis, our internet addictions, frightening news we had read, our relationships…and then we’d compost all of the ingredients of our fears and conversations into song form.”

The two musicians first met in 1992 when Palmer, then 16, attended a Legendary Pink Dots show in her hometown of Boston. In 1995, having found that the Pink Dots were looking for lodging with fans to save money on the road, Palmer hosted five members of the band and crew at her childhood home. Ten years later, Palmer’s internationally acclaimed punk cabaret duo, The Dresden Dolls, had achieved enough success that they were able to invite the Dots to support them on a German tour, and it was then that Palmer and Ka-Spel vowed to carve out time to collaborate on an original recording. You can check out the glorious fruits of their collaboration, recorded in Imogen Heap’s home studio in Essex, England, here, before the album release.

The tour for the ambitious and fantastic I CAN SPIN A RAINBOW will see Palmer and Ka-Spel joined on stage as they are on the album by violinist/longtime Legendary Pink Dots contributor Patrick Q. Wright. For complete details and ticket information, visit amandapalmer.net/shows.

Amanda Palmer & Edward Ka-Spel Tour Dates:

May

17 - Boston, MA - Middle East
20 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
21 - Brooklyn, NY - Rough Trade NYC
23 - San Francisco, CA - DNA Lounge
24 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour
31 - Warsaw, PO - Proxima

June

1 - Munich, DE - Muffathalle
2 - Leipzig, DE - Wave & Gotik Treffen
4 - Prague, CZ - Palác Akropolis
5 - Hamburg, DE - Fabrik
9 - Antwerp, BE - Trix Club
10 - Amsterdam, NL - Melkweg
11 - Paris, FR - Cigale
13 - London, UK - Heaven
16 - Vienna, AT - Porgy & Bess

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