|
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
|
