The Tear Garden -- Crystal Mass, Nettwerk Records, 2000. [Last Sigh Magazine]

Track Listing

1. Lament
2. The Double Spades Effect
3. Desert Island Disk
4. Hopeful
5. Castaway
6. Her Majesty's Trusted Food Taster
7. Feathered Friends
8. To Mourn The Death Of Colour
9. Six Of One

    The Tear Garden began as a side project of The Legendary Pink Dots front man Edward Ka-Spel and Cevin Key, of Skinny Puppy and Download. The roster of the band has expanded and contracted over the years to include such artists as Mark Spybey (of DVOA and Download), Dwayne Goettel and Nivek Ogre (both of Skinny Puppy) as well as eventually incorporating the rest of The Legendary Pink Dots line up. Crystal Mass is their sixth studio release, not counting one anthology collection released in Europe in 1993.
    This album is sort of a re-emergence to what The Tear garden was before their last album, to be an angel blind, the crippled soul divide, which was a very dark and melancholy and had an almost jazzy, film noir feel to it, yet Crystal Mass seems to go beyond the earlier work. This new album is a much more upbeat and optimistic endeavor. The sound is over all a higher dose of psychedelic then has been found in the last few albums, and it's a little more atmospheric then previous too. The lyrics are as to be expected of anything done by Ka-Spel, he really seems to be able to turn his songs into a sort of story, all be it a very surreal story, and this album is no exception.
    In my opinion, this is almost an evolution from An Angel Blind -- it's almost as if the band has shed an old skin and emerged anew with a new style and grace that one hopes will continue to wow and inspire us well into the future.

-- Jed Hartgrove