While not creating strictly-formulated concept albums, the Legendary Pink Dots frontman does tend to take an idea or a mood and run with it throughout a release. This is very much apparent on Fragments of Illumina, which has a sense of wholeness and completeness despite the radically different approaches in its songs. Legendary Pink Dots albums, at their worst, can sound like horrible messes: a cacaphony of ideas, genres and quirks that refuse to harmonize. When Ka-Spel records a solo release, however, it's understood that it will be--at the very least--coherent from the beginning to the end. The highlights are two tracks called "The End Of Everything," the first of which tells a classic Ka-Spel fairytale (life, afterlife, drolly humorous disappointment) and will have Peggy Lee cocking whatever remains of her eyebrows. The second part sounds like a spaceship trying to take off from the BBC roof during the 1970's...but in a good way, for those who like that sort of thing. "Yet Another Fragment" is a gorgeous, delicate, extended moment of flangey ambience, a welcome follow-up to the (surprise!) stuttering head-banging of "Sticks and Stones." The first track on the CD, "My Space," is--sadly--the one sour note for me; a song whose lyrics are jarringly out-of-sync with the rhythm...I skip it, but it's unfortunate that it opens an otherwise exceptional CD. Regardless, it's a testament to Ka-Spel's skill that all these musical styles--effect-heavy ambiance, poetry, analog boopiness, obnoxious guitar sampling--can fit together on one album without sounding discordant, and that all of them are done so well. - Muffy St. Bernard - Brainwashed