It's Raining in Heaven

A slightly curious release, this is actually the retitled American version of an Italian-issued album, Greetings 9, from 1989, along with a bonus track that surfaced on a re-release of Greetings 9 two years later. Discographical oddities aside, It's Raining in Heaven is a nice little bit of music for the hardcore LPD fan, consisting for the most part of live recordings from 1988-era concerts. Given how the band really seems to come to life in concert — a pity no recording can really capture the sense of disorienting swells of sound that Ka-Spel and cohorts cook up on a regular basis — it's always nice to hear some further examples of the same. Ka-Spel's occasional spoken introductions amp up the mood even more; they are wry, threatening, and calm all at once. The first three tracks are from a French date, starting with an excellent "Puppets Apocalypse," with Ka-Spel sounding a little more sedate and moody than usual, then shifting into a beautifully fraught "Poppy Day," haunting and just vicious enough. The next three, from a show in Holland, include the distorted electronic crumble and stuttering punch of "Only When I Laugh," sudden synth stabs adding to the creeping chaos of Ka-Spel's chopped-up singing, and the music-box-gone-horribly wrong "Lyriex," featuring some of the weirdest random samples one might ever hear this side of early Faust. The final track, "Premonition 11," is actually a fusion of two separate recordings, the first part being the original song from 1982 (appearing as a vinyl single), the second a later extension. The end result is one of the band's murkiest, most mysterious numbers, with the low-key bass synth crawl of the start setting a strange bed for Ka-Spel's slow and steady delivery before shifting into an electric guitar-led extended zoneout and a final vocal/sax jaunt.