Since Edward Ka-Spel and cEvin Key first merged their creative worlds in the late 1980s—bridging the surreal poetics of the Legendary Pink Dots with the dystopian electronics of Skinny Puppy—their collaboration has always thrived on the outer limits of both realms. Astral Elevator reinforces their hold on that liminal space where mysticism and melody blur into something strange and beautiful.
“Lady Fate” with its spacious and droning melodies rekindles the psychedelic beauty, melancholy, and paranoia of the Tear Garden’s defining masterpiece, 1992’s The Last Man To Fly. Later, “Square Root” emerges like a spectral echo from 1987’s Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, subtly recalling the supreme weirdness of “My Thorny Thorny Crown.” Its interplay of a high, brittle vocal winding around a low, counting voice vaguely personifies a ritualistic dialogue between innocence and gravity—an auditory tether to the project’s origins, rendered here with the clarity that comes from decades of stylish evolution.
Astral Elevator, eschews the impenetrable darkness of 1996’s To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide and 2000’s Crystal Mass. Here, the group—rounded out by Randall Frazier and Dre Robinson—reaches for a shimmering new plane where memory and revelation become one, and the music drifts like a transmission from some unknown realm that lies just beyond the edge of consciousness.
“War Crier” unravels around a skeletal rhythm, layered with shimmering synths that pulse like a dim heartbeat. Ka-Spel’s voice hovers in the mix like a transmission from a lost frequency—detached yet intimate. “Toten Tanz” channels the darker undertones of Key’s industrial roots, twisting through metallic percussion and vaporous drones, while “Exorcism” leans into rhythmic dissonance; its tension underscored by cascading synths that crackle like static in the ether.
“Swallow the Leader” balances that darkness with warped melodies, unfolding like a carnival waltz in zero gravity. “Chow Mein” delivers the record’s sharpest dose of surrealism, pairing grotesque humor with a hypnotic, playful groove. “Unreal” lands as one of the album’s most striking statements—a reflective confrontation with modern disconnection, holding a mirror to the hollowing effects of AI on human intuition, creativity, and trust in perception. It’s both prophetic and deeply personal, as its synthetic textures frame a lament for authenticity in an increasingly artificial world.
“It Just Ain’t So” and “Always Take the Highway” tap into a lighter strain of the chaotic pulse that propelled “Inquisition” from Skinny Puppy’s Last Rights.
By the time “Undiluted Bliss” fades into focus, the record resolves its internal tension—weightless yet grounded, alien yet profoundly human. Ka-Spel, Key, and Co. refine their own musical vocabulary. The result is a work of hallucinatory grace, and an ascent that is entirely of this moment, yielding a worthy successor to the Tear Garden’s most luminous works.
Press play below to watch Randall Frazier’s video for “In The Name Of” and Cory Gorski’s “A Return.”
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