Edward Ka-Spel, Motion Kapture

CD version. Alien Subspace is the first album that Edward Ka-Spel, singer and co-founder of The Legendary Pink Dots, made with Motion Kapture. The Italian duo is Stefano Rossello and Filippo Corradin. Rustblade released it in November 2019. Ka-Spel brings voice, stories and noises, while the duo builds long synthesizer and guitar spaces around him, rooted in seventies kosmische music and progressive rock.

The instrumental parts were recorded in three Italian rooms: O.M. Studio in Agna near Padua, Suonare Sergio in Bologna and Furnace Studio in Legnago near Verona, with pre-production by Aux Jack. Rossello plays guitar and Mellotron, plus a rack of synthesizers that runs from a Juno 106 and an SH-101 to a DX7 and a Virus, with a Space Echo for tape delay. Corradin plays bass, Minimoog, a Prophet 08 and several modular units. Ka-Spel is credited with voice, effects and noises. Justin Bennett, known for his work with Skinny Puppy and kETvECTOR, produced, mixed and mastered the album at Studio 23 in Bologna, and Rossello designed the artwork.

The eight pieces last a little over 42 minutes. The record opens with Currency, seven minutes long, and the title piece Subspace sits at its centre. One Half Door is another seven-minute stretch, and A Happy Grey Circle closes the album at over six minutes. Between them, Delicate Affair, Why We Live and No Configuration stay under five minutes each. In all of them Ka-Spel's spoken and sung narration rides on bass, Mellotron and layered analogue and digital synthesizers. The label names Tangerine Dream, space rock, Area and Coil among the reference points.

The album was announced while The Legendary Pink Dots were playing the last dates of the first leg of their 40th anniversary tour. ReGen Magazine described Ka-Spel lending “evocative vocals and transcendent noise effects” to the duo's “progressive ambient and psychedelic textures”. The partnership continued with Anagramma on Rustblade in 2022, while Motion Kapture kept releasing their own instrumental work on the same label.

This is the CD edition, a single disc in eight tracks, released by Rustblade (catalogue RBL073CD) in 2019 and pressed in Italy. The bonus track found on the digital release is not on this disc.