Tired Eyes Slowly Burning (Tear Garden)

Alan Ezust

This CD was the first recording I heard that featured Ka-Spel on vocals.
I remember thinking that his voice was very disturbing, sarcastic, and
disgusted (not disgusting; he sounds as if HE is going to throw up in the
middle of the song)...

I wasn't immediately amazed by this album. I rented it from a rental
store, taped it, and I only really knew the first song, Deja Vu, and the
repeating phrases "the same, it's always quite the same" kinda got on my
nerves, so I forgot about the tape for a year or so, when I heard my first
LPD album, and thought, "gee, this voice sounds very familiar. Is it the
same guy from Tear Garden??"

Anyway, I became infatuated with the Dots style after hearing Golden Age
and Any Day Now, so I started listening more deeply to Tear Garden,
realizing then that it was quite probable that most of the substance in
this release was totally lost on me.

So one night I sat down with my head next to my speakers and closed my
eyes and listened to this album all the way through.

What a trip! This music transports you to another universe, and there is
*so much* to listen to; the sounds are layered on top of each other
masterfully, but the vocals add so much more to the song as well.

There are so many very quiet sounds in this song which you'd never notice
otherwise, which when you listen to them by themselves, you don't
immediately know why they fit in, but if you "stand back" and listen to
the big picture, you realize that the atmosphere is so filled with these
sounds that it is part of the mood as well.

Just try following one part, either a precussion, or a tape loop, or a
repeated chord, in ANY of the songs, and notice how it slightly changes,
or how it *doesn't*, when everything else does.

Anyway, Tired Eyes Slowly Burning is one of the most exquisite CD's I have
in my collection, one I will treasure forever. It is original, it is
thought-provoking, it is beautiful, haunting, and emotional. In other
words, buy it. And listen to it closely at least once, so you can truly
appreciate it. If you just play it in the background, you'll miss the
ferry-boat!

At first, I found the Ogre part in the middle of You, Me and Rainbows
quite annoying and it broke the mood of the song, but now I realize that
the song is almost like an epic movie, with tranquil and chaotic parts.
The raw energy in this part of the song is overpowering. And I thought I
might add, this is probably the best thing Skinny Puppy has ever done, and
it is far too short.

oo ee oo is a gorgeous song, very sad and brooding. It ends too soon
though! I'd like to hear it go on for another 5 minutes after the final
synth chord, into something sounding like "This Could Be The End" on
Asylum.

Valium: Play it loud, with lots of bass. It will shake your entire being!
The song is so wonderfully demented.

Even My Thorny Throrny Crown, a song I only recently came to appreciate,
has some incredible sounds and melodies. Listen to it with earphones
sometime, and you'll know what I mean.

For years, I was hoping that there would be another Tear Garden release
that had the same kind of influences and painted the same kind of moods.
Alas, this has never happened, but I will never get tired of this one.

Alex Bastedo

Nettwerk Records NTL30019

A first album from the ongoing Tear Garden collaboration between Cevin
Key of Skinny Puppy and Edward Ka-Spel of Legendary Pink Dots that,
although may be not as good as thier eponymous debut 12 inch, and
certainly not as cohesive as either's main concern, still contains enough
bite for followers of both groups.

Key's electronic patterns and textures, more minimal and therefore less
intense than his usual Puppy fare, give Ka-Spel's forever personal lyrical
preoccupations space to breathe and create their usual eerie effect.
Could this be the new psychedelia?

Reviewer: Alex Bastedo
From Underground Magazine Issue 12 of March 1989.

By Steve Rolls: My copy of the vinyl album (it's a mail-order Canadian
pressing) came with a Nettwork Productions catalogue insert (Issue 8) from
November 1987. Wonder how many of the album's had them in? I got my copy
of the album from Barooni, a mail-order shop in Utrecht, whose address
Edward gave me in a letter in late 1987. I had the album, along with the
12" single, quite a while before this review was published in the UK
press. Oddly enough, although the album and 12" both came in the same
mail package, the 12" was the Play It Again Sam European pressing and not
Nettwork like the album.

Michal Jakub Lysek <lysek@maths.ox.ac.uk>

As for my own point of view the best Tear Garden is "Tired
Eyes Slowly Burning/Tear Garden". It's not only one of the best record
with Ka-Spel on it, but one of the best records EVER!!! It starts from
"Deja Vu" which always takes me into harbour, where I feel cold cause do
not have a coat. Deja Vu puts me into trans. With all its repetitive elements
(the same, the same, it's always quite the same), all these parts which
starts and stops just to start again. And the text...
The next one song is "Room With The View". It starts from great loop, and
then we have repetitive electronic effects accented with very deeply
sounded drum. On this base Ka-Spel sings one of the most important (for
me of course) lyrics. And how it swims when he sings "I see I see from
my room I see from my room with the view"!!!
And the next one - my favourite TG song - "Coma". Background seems to
start and stop for a second than start again and again and again... Ed
sings one of the most beautiful love songs I've ever heard, and what
melody he uses to sing it!!! (By the way, for me it's unimaginable how he
can sing such kinds of lyrics with such a beautiful melody for such a
strange background. I mean, how he composes those melodies? And I do not
only mean this one song, but LPD/TG/EKS/and so on at all.) And this
short, but how beautiful solo on keyboards. Just few sounds, but just
collected the way they should have been...
The next one which title I don't remember now is great one, but IMO
the worst on TESB. But as I said before, it's still great...
And so we have "You And Me And Rainbows parts 1-6". It's just hard to
write something wise about this one. The way it is constructed, the way
the melody plays with lyrics... YAMAR is journey. It will take You far
far away...
The last one on TESB is OO EE OO. And it's different from anything else
on this record, but it fits well as the end. On background You have just
one big soundstain cuted by others sharp sounds from time to time. And Ed
singing "(we'll) paint the sky with shades of orange cause that's how I
like sunsets - OO EE OO". And than You have only deep dark soundstain which
unfortunately doesn't last forever...
But of course that's not the end of the record. Now we've got Tear Garden EP:
The first one song is "Centre Bullet". Have You ever tried to listen to
it during the night inside industrial estate. Try and You'll SEE how all
those sounds reflect from buildings while everyone sleep.
"Ophelia" is almost a pop song (except long ending). It's long, but You
don't feel it. And how beautifully Ka-Spel rises his voice up and up and
up...
"Tear Garden" is build on repetitive, untrivial percussion and few sounds
from keyboard. All together with Ka-Spel voice constructed one of the
saddest song I've ever heard.
And the last one: "My Throny, Throny Crown" which is strange and that's
all I can say about it...
TESB is very original record. I mean, the way it is recorded and
constructed. And all those electronic effects which comes to Your ears in
the moments You don't suppose, all those percussions and drums and echoes...
You can hear something like this on Travelogue by Darkstar (I mean LPD
songs), but it's not the same...
Tired Eyes Slowly Burning isn't colaboration between cEvin and Edward. It
is not Skinny Puppy mixed with Legendary Pink Dots. You can hear some
elements of this and that, but TESB is Universe itself...