It’s very weird that this band has a real cult-status in the USA, Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe, but that in what might be called their home country The Netherlands they never get to play the larger festivals. Maybe it’s because they don’t fit in one genre of music, but they always create technically and emotionally beautiful songs, filled with passion, harmony, hard labour and most importantly, their strife for making perfect music.

It would be almost insulting to compare The Legendary Pink Dots with other bands, but if you love Einstürzende Neubauten, you might love the LPD as well. It’s not that strange that the Legendary Pink Dots have their own unique sound and have such a variety in styles they play, because they use many different instruments on each album they make.

Hanz Myre plays the saxophone and he also produced this album, bass guitarist Perch Pylchardd does percussion as well, while The Silverman uses keyboards and samples. Patrick Q. Wright does some programming, plays the violin and mandoline and manages to play with a rhythm-box as well, I (=Graham Whitehead) can handle a keyboard and piano and takes care of the backing vocals. Furthermore, Stret Majest plays acoustic and electric guitar and the singer and frontman Edward Kaspel can get along with electronix as well.

Island Of Jewels was originally released in 1986, and it’s now re-released by SPV Poland, together with quite a few other LPD releases from that period.

The style of this album is hard to define; sometimes very minimal, at other moments it sounds experimental and avant-garde, but also with some beautiful emotional songs that go straight to your heart, mainly because of the hypnotising voice of Edward Kaspel, who has been one of the few constant members of this band.

A song like “ Our Lady In Darkness” starts out with a quiet piano, some smooth bass guitar and the calm voice of Mr. Kaspel, ending up-tempo mainly because of a mandoline joining in halfway this very pleasant song. Highlights of this album are the emotional and sometimes autobiographical sounding songs “Jewel On An Island”, “The Shock Of Contact” and “The Guardians Of Eden”, which are very intimate and give this album warmth and maturity.

All songs are technically well produced and performed, which is an achievement on its own with all the instruments they use. This is also the strength of this album, because the instruments are used in a very harmonious way and you never get bored listening to it, because of the unexpected twists and improvisation with the different instruments.

This is for real music lovers!