| REVIEWS
BRAINWASHED
Written by John Kealy
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Words like armageddon and visionary get tossed about around David
Tibet (for good reason) but with this latest album, these words
seem too small and meek. As hinted on Black Ships Ate the Sky and
the split EP with Om, David Tibet has embraced a blistering rock
aesthetic for his apocalyptic visions. Sounding as psychedelic as
Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre or The Inmost Light trilogy, there
is also a heaviness here not heard since the noisy tape loops of
Current 93's embryonic period. Tibet sings of Aleph (an Adam-like
character), murder, and destruction as a huge cast of musicians
and vocalists create a backdrop worthy of his vision.
Tibet’s mythology grows more and more esoteric with each album,
a blend of his own internal imagery and biblical terror (stemming
from his ongoing obsession with scripture and study of Coptic in
order to get closer to the source). “Almost in the beginning
was the murderer” states the child’s voice at the beginning
of the album. From here on in, everything explodes as one of the
best line ups yet for Current 93 let rip. Alex Neilson’s drumming
sounds like thunderclaps at the end of the universe as layers and
layers of guitars, feedback and distorted vocals tear through reality.
During “On Docetic Mountain,” fragments of the familiar
folk strains haunt the works of Current 93 swim through the surging
pulse, creating a thick and disorientating experience which brings
to mind Thee Silver Mt. Zion at their most raucous. Bill Breeze’s
viola and John Contreras’ cello sound almost regal amidst
the grinding fuzz that the rest of the group are pouring out. Later
on, the rock swamps everything; guitar solos that can only be described
as shambolic, face melting blasts of white heat cut through a doom-laden
riff on “Not Because the Fox Barks.” There is a first
time for everything in life and playing air guitar along to Current
93 is one of them.
With no particular focus beyond a general feeling and Tibet’s
vision(s), Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain sticks out like a monolith
in Current 93’s canon. Fears that this album would be a disparate
work breaking under the weight of Tibet’s many collaborators
were completely unfounded. Andrew W.K. and Sasha Grey may be famous
for things quite different to Current 93 (as every single article
or Internet discussion related to this album seems to dwell on)
but they sound as home here as any Current 93 regular. Grey’s
detached vocals on “As Real As Rainbows” are a world
away from her usual performances (researching for reviews can be
a very tough job) and she provides a sober and melancholy ending
for such a vivid and energetic album.
Aside from some of the electronics and effects dotted throughout
Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain and the knowledge that it is just
out this week, it would be difficult to place this album in time.
It could easily be one of those obscure gems that was on the Nurse
With Wound list; in fact it sounds almost like the perfect lost
treasure from rock’s past. “26 April 2007” has
a desert rock vibe but instead of the The Eagles and images of the
great plains of America, the music instead conjures up visions of
dusty vistas in northern Africa with wanderers trying to find their
way back to Eden.
James Joyce once said: "It took me ten years to write Ulysses,
and it should take you ten years to read it." While I am not
going so far to say (yet) that this album is of the same magnitude
as Ulysses the principle holds true here as Tibet and his colleagues
have put two years of hard work into making this album the monument
it is. Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles have worked their wizardry
in post-production to create the layers of sound that form the base
of Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, the level of detail buried in
the mix is astounding. With each listen there are further revelations,
a warped David Tibet as backing vocalist here and a loop of noise
there. I imagine that it will be some time before I have exhausted
all of the album's secrets.
With an album as epic as this, it is virtually impossible to sum
it up succinctly. It is awesome in that from the opening moments
to the dying seconds, I am taken aback by the intensity and conviction.
As a listener, Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain drains and exhausts;
that Tibet can pull so much emotion from his soul and still function
is nothing short of astonishing.
DROWNED IN SOUND
Their reputation precedes them, and trepidation often greets
them. Current 93, the sonic child of David Tibet and a permanently
open door of musical collaborators, has existed for the best part
of 30 years at the abrasive fringes of several genres – noise,
industrial, psychedelia for three – without ever being defined
by a single one. Perhaps the biggest turning point in the C93 career
arc came in the late Eighties, when Tibet became entranced by English
folk music (most importantly, Shirley Collins) and used this as
a launchpad to link threads of sonic ritualism attempted by few,
if anyone, previously. The apogee of this splicing, often dubbed
‘apocalyptic folk’, arrived with 2006 album Black Ships
Ate The Sky – by some length Tibet’s greatest critical
success. It’s conceivable that Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain,
an often captivating album evidently borne of a unique vision, might
surpass it.
As usual with Current 93, there are a healthy scattering of guests.
Some names here could legitimately be deemed well-known by people
who aren’t underground music dorks – one is Andrew WK,
if he still satisfies this criteria, another is venerable American
songstress Rickie Lee Jones and the third, Sasha Grey, is one of
those ‘indie porn’ figures who apparently fronts her
own noise band. Jolly good. As usual, it’s a cheerful mixture
of those vital to the outcome – the near-everpresent Steven
‘Nurse With Wound’ Stapleton, and avant-drummer to the
big avant-guns, Alex Neilson – and pals who Tibet was content
to let moan away on backing vox.
Aleph... is not relentlessly abrasive, by any means: ’26 April
2007’ opens with clean, chiming electric guitars that could
be straight off a Nineties post-rock album. Moreover, the folkisms
ring through with as much clarity as Black Ships..., maybe more
so. The backbone of ‘Poppyskins’, near enough the whole
of ‘UrShadow’ and the concluding coda of ‘Aleph
Is The Butterfly Net’ broadcasts airy, courtly folk guitar
that – minus explicit credits – one assumes to be the
work of James Blackshaw, British 12-string guitarist who’s
had praise stacked on praise of late for his work in this field.
And yet some of the riffs here are huge like canyon walls, believe.
Straight from the off (‘Invocation Of Almost’) it’s
a riot of wrenching fuzz guitar, gleefully upfront phasing, the
endlessly brilliant drumming of Alex Neilson coming on like a distant
thunderstorm trying to play along to a Grand Funk live album, with
Tibet’s intense intonations and invocations spooling atop
the gnarlout: "Asteroth is blushing, cursing, smiling…"
Tibet, following a split EP with Om a couple of years back, continues
to forge links between scenes and genres that even a decade ago
would have seemed distant. ‘Not Because The Fox Barks’
explores that strain of slow, clanging, rust-ravaged basement rawk
guitar which calls to mind all sorts of private-press Seventies
longhairs, and late Eighties/early Nineties bands like Slint and
Bitch Magnet who were taking their hardcore beginnings and making
them intricate and creepy. Again, not names you’d necessarily
expect to find in a C93 review, but this is pretty much the background
of Matt Sweeney, guitarist here and former member of Nineties indie
cultists Chavez (and, latterly, Zwan).
The temptation to look at Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain in terms
of its ‘accessibility’ relative to Current 93’s
back catalogue ought to be staved off, for the most part, by the
understanding that this is a faintly comedic narcissism of small
differences. It’s another in a long line of esoteric outpourings
and knotted mystic visions – with a crypto-Biblical slant
betraying Tibet’s reputed Christianity; the album’s
opening lyrics runs “Almost in the beginning… there
was a murderer!” – from a man who has never been obliged
to compromise his artistic vision in over 25 years. It will reach
an established and deeply dedicated fanbase, of this Tibet can rest
assured – if, however, there’s scope for a new and curious
morass to chance upon this music, it’s likely because of the
swollen popularity of figures ranging from Sunn 0))) to former labelmates
recording artists Antony & The Johnsons, rather than anything
Current 93 are aiming for themselves. Hard to begrudge a climate
where people like these can vacuum up fans like those without having
to change anything they do.
PITCHFORK
Four tracks into Aleph at
Hallucinatory Mountain, David Tibet finally relaxes his draconian,
dramatic voice: "My teeth are possessed by demons and devils/
And I was by myself but not myself," he offers calmly through
a patter of circular jazz drumming and a stout bass throb. For Tibet,
who's spent many of the last 30 years pushing against reductive
self-definition in Current 93, these two lines might be as close
to an artist's statement as we'll ever get. Tibet has long written
from the troubled threshold between his mind and God, juxtaposing
images of himself as a heretic and an acolyte while sorting through
interpretations of Christianity, mysticism, the occult, and the
inane. In Tibet's gnostic vision, none of us-- God included-- is
perfect or beyond reproach, so Current 93's oeuvre serves as a tool
for self-flagellation and self-assessment. On his 1992 masterpiece,
Thunder Perfect Mind, Tibet suggested that, "In the dark, you
must look in your heart." With Aleph, Tibet-- a devout Christian
who reads the Bible in Greek and occasionally writes and sings in
the ancient Coptic language-- recognizes his troubles in another
moment of solitary desolation. This time, he's asking for help.
Behooving a sinner, Tibet's rarely been alone for his most personal
explorations: From Antony Hegarty and Ben Chasny to sound artist
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Nurse with Wound's Steven Stapleton,
he's amassed a revolving army to provide sounds worthy of such intimate
and existential conflicts. Aleph is a charging, rock'n'roll appraisal
of Tibet's central concern-- living with respect to himself and
to God-- supported by one of the best casts yet. Stapleton, improvisational
drummer Alex Neilson, Chavez's Matt Sweeney, and harpist Baby Dee
return, along with Andrew W.K., Rickie Lee Jones, guitarists James
Blackshaw and Keith Wood, and the artistically ambitious porn star
Sasha Grey. Carefully orchestrated beneath Tibet's uncanny voice,
they create not only Current 93's most rock-oriented album to date
but also a fine, fitting crown for Tibet's prolific decade. A surprisingly
tuneful, consistently compelling mix of industrial stomp and folk
grace, Aleph offers both a career-spanning capitulation for newcomers
and a bold push forward for zealots.
As with most of Current 93's albums, specifically 2006's sprawling,
apocalyptic dream-state manifesto, Black Ships Ate the Sky, Aleph
is a concept album of connected scenes and themes. At its center
stands an exploration of the archetypes we often reduce into binaries--
good and evil, dark and light, God and Satan. Aleph, the murderer,
and Adam, Eden's original innocent, personify the warring factions
of Tibet's mind. Instead of opposites, he makes them equals, where
the existence of one implies the other: "Almost in the beginning
was the murderer," two children chant by way of introduction,
Tibet reverting to his decades-old trope of letting the most innocent
of babes reveal the most difficult of truths. Purity doesn't last
long, and anything less would be unbearable, the album posits. For
instance, during its triumph, "Not Because the Fox Barks",
Aleph has given into goodness and is "creating starlings with
brightness." Bored and brooding, he hates it. Tibet understands:
"This is Terminal Eden/ A killer of dreams/ Of hopes/ Of galaxies."
Aleph rages again against Adam.
Aleph's music synthesizes many of Current 93's directions over the
last three decades into a potent, relatively lean 54 minutes. In
the early 1980s, Tibet emerged from a stint in Psychic TV with a
handful of audacious industrial albums, in particular 1984's Dogs
Blood Rising. Though certainly not formless, Rising bent barbaric
howls and noise floods into long tracks that treated traditional
song structure and quiet as anathema. In the late 80s, inspired
by a nascent interest in English folk, Tibet shifted to vaguely
song-oriented music written largely for acoustic instruments. Aside
from various electronic pieces (see the excellent Faust and I Have
a Special Plan for This World) and several heavy exceptions, Tibet's
long kept his intensity but foregone the early cacophony. But Aleph
unites those extremes imaginatively, plating rather pretty arrangements
with slabs of distortion. Serrated drones slowly overrun the 12-string
Blackshaw array that opens "Poppyskins", while blades
of cello knife through the lumbering metal of "On Docetic Mountain".
Drummer Neilson bridges both aesthetics, pushing the songs forward
but complicating with nuance. It's arguably the most populist music
Tibet's ever made.
Unfortunately, no amount of explanation or influence can move many
beyond the hurdles of Tibet's chilling voice or his earnest quest
for religious revelation. And, sure, Tibet can sound like the Devil
himself, and any lyricist that's as wont to reference Reese Witherspoon
or Tupperware as he is to recite scripture or quote in Coptic is
bound to frustrate the majority. Perhaps the rising stars of writers
like the Hold Steady's Craig Finn or Destroyer's Dan Bejar-- both
wild-voiced poets who compose in hypertext, connecting ideas across
multiple releases while incorporating rapacious literary minds--
have expanded our collective interest in singers who sound like
no one else and write with something bigger in mind than the next
hook. If so, David Tibet's got approximately 50 records waiting
in his back catalog, with the latest-- the excellent Aleph at Hallucinatory
Mountain-- suggesting he's still a long way from the Omega. Grayson
Currin, July 7, 2009
RECORD COLLECTOR
Along with Nurse With Wound,
Current 93 have enchanted, infuriated and sonically entertained
in equal measure, as mainman David Tibet weaves his preoccupations
and obsessions into compelling cobwebs over music that oozes, trickles,
grinds, sears and permeates like a thick but not unpleasant odour.
Three years after Black Ships Ate The Sky, Current 93 return with
an album that’s the equal to that widescreen blockbuster.
Opening track Invocation Of Almost features grinding guitars that
support Tibet on his metaphysical pronouncements; Poppyskins melds
acoustic guitar tingles with minimal percussion and harsh guitar
mixed to a murmur that serves as a pillow for Tibet’s vocals.
Urshadow is another meditative track that, because of its musical
restraint, gives the melancholy lyrics a perfect frame. Better still
is 26 April 2007, opening with a subtle guitar hook before the pliant
bass line allows Tibet to unfurl his thoughts like a Lovecraftian
narrator, complete with great references to the likes of “crowns
with cats heads on them”. A wonderful track, it ends with
a spooky dog howl no doubt warning of the approach of Cthulhu. After
nearly 30 years at the coalface, Tibet still mines a very rich seam.
JUDAS KISS
Written by Lee Powell
There are a small number of bands out there that have comfortably
transcended the status of being just another musical group. And
of this small number, even fewer are truly worthy of this accolade.
Yet I’m sure there are very few people out there who have
been seduced by the compositions of David Tibet’s legendary
Current 93 who would disagree that they are wholeheartedly a group
which is deserving of such highly esteemed status. So with the release
of their latest album, Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain, it will
come as no surprise that there is something of a gigantic wave of
excitement and speculation surrounding it, especially as it follows
in such close proximity to their last, critically acclaimed masterpiece
Black Ships Ate The Sky.
There has been a slight taster or precursor to this album, if you
will, in the form of their studio and live Birth Canal Blues EPs
(both of which are reviewed here: studio, live) which showcased
a more rock infused flavour to the band’s sound. Now although
this has crept into some of their earlier work (Horsey and Lucifer
Over London are a couple of examples), on this occasion it touched
comfortably on the more avant-garde recesses of the doom and drone
genres which have become the domain of Stephen O’Malley’s
Sunn O))), Boris, Om, and Neurosis, along with touches of psychedelic
rock and elements of the bombastically intense post-rock delivered
by the likes of Japan’s Mono. So the idea that this shift
in musical direction may become more prevalent on this new album
seemed a safe assumption, and the opening seconds of ‘Invocation
Of Almost’, with its ferocious explosion of fuzzed guitars,
immediately proves this to be the case.
Introducing the album, the opening line, ‘Almost in the beginning
was the murder’ is set against a fragile vortex of electronic
textures and thunderous guitars that build slowly before exploding
into a mindblowing cacophony of guitars, percussion and Tibet’s
wonderfully delivered vocals, which intertwine with one another
throughout the nine minutes of the opening track ‘Invocation
Of Almost’. With epic proportions that come cross like a warped
mixture of doom metal and the psychedelic, this is a wonderfully
engulfing track filled with an intense passion and emotive power.
Complex juxtaposing elements of instruments take on an occasional
free-form or improvised feel, whilst all the time keeping one foot
firmly rooted within the heavier recesses of dark, impulsive, guitar-driven
music, framing Tibet’s vocals which are delivered with the
passion of the most dedicated of preachers. These two elements of
vocals and instruments work incredibly well and do nothing but complement
one another perfectly. As an introduction to ‘Aleph..’
it’s a powerfully evocative track that frames the intensity
and passion of the album brilliantly as well as showcasing the talents
of the supergroup-like collective that makes up this assemblage
of Current 93, which on this occasion comprises of William Breeze,
John Contreras, Ossian Brown (Coil / Cyclobe), Baby Dee, rock god
Andrew W.K (yes, him of ‘Party Hard’ fame), Nurse With
Wound’s Steve Stapleton and Andrew Liles, Andria Degens of
Panteleimon, Kith Wood of Hush Arbors and Bonnie “Prince”
Billy collaborator Matt Sweeny amongst others, with each musician
adding their own layer of sound to this wondrously structured album.
‘Poppyskins’, the album’s second track follows,
and displays one of the other dimensions, sound-wise, of the album.
The atmosphere and pace of the track is much more subdued than its
predecessor, with Tibet’s vocal delivery being a lot more
settled and controlled. Here, he’s joined by a layered accompaniment
of cello and viola that is set against a backwash of off’kilter
percussion and a distant swirl of guitars that produces a heady
density which pushes the track along at a slow, meditative pace.
It seems as if it could erupt at any second into a harsh barrage
of noise, yet it never does. Instead, it pensively holds the listener
spellbound whilst Tibet delivers his vocal commentary.
And so the album progresses, with track after track ebbing and flowing
between complex washes of guitars, percussions and waves of electronic
drones and the more pensive, folky, ambient-esque compositions which
have a more chilled-out, head-swimming atmosphere, like that of
a drug-induced haze. Often, the style changes numerous times in
one track, making the structure and delivery of each one a complex
affair, giving the appearance of an album in a constant state of
flux and progression, with its development taking on an improvised
jazz type of feel. In fact, it’s almost impossible to try
and pinpoint a sound, genre or tag which fits even one track here,
as this constant progression in sound never stays in one place for
long enough.
This is exemplified perfectly by the likes of ten minute-plus opus
‘Not Because the Fox Barks’, which starts with Tibet’s
voice accompanied by washes of dark electronic sound-sculptures
and the hauntingly mournful strings of the viola, which are abruptly
dominated by a pounding bass strum which sends the tranquil aura
created spiralling into the distance. The bass sound increases in
pace and tempo before erupting into a ferocious explosion of guitars
and pounding drums. The atmosphere is pitch-black, immensely powerful
and intensely threatening. The guitars build to booming proportions
which are matched only by Tibet’s vocals, which push themselves
to the forefront of this sonic attack and maintain an edge of fragile
balance during the proceedings. And then, before your senses and
ears are completely shredded, the track rapidly deconstructs itself,
until Tibet’s vocals are joined solely by a bittersweet piano
and string accompaniment which slowly carries this track into the
next, the wonderfully moving ‘UrShadow’ which is perhaps
the most folk-oriented piece on the album. However, as you’d
expect when you’ve got this far into an album of this nature,
it’s not quite that straightforward, and once again the structure
and delivery morph through a variety of cut-up sounds, so it becomes
something distantly removed from its origins.
The album’s final track ‘As Real As Rainbows’
is the most subdued track here, containing heavily accented female
vocals which I believe are those of Sasha Grey, who may be better
known to some of you as a very nubile and world famous adult movie
star. She is accompanied by piano and organ, leading the listener
delicately by the hand to the closure of what is one of the most
surprising, impressive and stirring albums to have been recorded.
And then, with the whispered line, ‘Beloved by the seas,’
it’s over.
Silence. The swirling swim of nothingness after almost an hour of
breathtaking music and head-bobbing guitar and percussions is deafening.
The only option is to sit and ponder what you’ve just heard.
And then press play again. And again and again.
Current 93’s music has always proven to be immensely fluid
in its delivery and has been a vehicle which Tibet has steered on
a path of his own choice. Its sound has always been on a constant
flux of evolution, and although this more avant-rock may seem a
million miles away from the canon of folk-tinged work that Current
93 have released in the past, one only has to explore a small cross-section
of their work, even over recent years, to realise that it’s
never been so clear-cut as to sit comfortably within one genre or
another. And looking back ever further along the timeline of Current’s
history, listening to the progression made from the likes of Dawn
and its complex soundscapes and the hauntingly fragile Imperium
to the apocalyptically esoteric folk of Swastikas For Noddy , it’s
possible to see how the evolutionary path of Tibet’s musical
vision has progressed. Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain is another
change in direction which, although it is deeply rooted in the lineage
of its historic predecessors, also shows another side of Tibet’s
multifaceted work, whilst delivering a diversely different sound
to what has become normally associated with Current 93’s output.
So much so that those of you who haven’t yet indulged in the
Birth Canal Blues EPs may find this new direction a little bewildering
and a tad less welcoming than you may have imagined. However, if
you’ve been fortunate enough to explore the luxuriously complex
and difficult post-metal that formed Faking Gold And Murder by Aethenor,
which featured the distinctive vocal talents of Tibet throughout,
then you may have a fair idea as to the direction, flow and output
that Aleph… produces.
That said, even those who have stringently followed Tibet’s
career and the ever-evolving parameters of Current 93’s output
may well find both Faking Gold… and to a lesser extent Aleph
At Hallucinatory Mountain somewhat less accessible and immediately
inviting than a lot of the band’s other material. So much
so that it’s not until you’ve worked at the album, persevered
with it, wallowed in its depths, then been seduced by its complex
and evolving nature that it really starts to bed into your soul.
However, once it does this, there’s no moving it, and with
each and every listen the intensity and profound nature of the album
grows almost tenfold.
It’s safe to say that with Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain
Current 93 have safely entered into another phase of their life-cycle
which is, perhaps, even more remarkable than anything else which
may have come before it. And with a band that has such an expansive
and impressive history as theirs, that’s really saying something.
So take your time with this album, experience it. Let the atmosphere
and mood that emanate from its biblical tomes touch your very being
and you will adore it like no other, as it truly is as remarkable
as this. If this is the shape of Current 93 to come, I can guarantee
that it won’t be too long before legions of old and newly
converted fans are breaking down their temple doors for a chance
to worship at their feet.
Stunning.
And yet I still can’t help think about the infamous Monty
Python line from the Life of Brian: ‘He’s not the messiah,
he’s a very naughty boy,’ and smile just a little, although
with such a roaring, captivating and emotive album, you may have
to question this.
God Bless David Tibet
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