Christus Christus (The Shells Have Cracked) / Falling In The Fields Of Rape
From Broken Cross, Locusts / Raio No Terrasu (Jesus Wept) / St Peter’s Keys All Bloody
The brain child of David Tibet, one time music biz hack**, and Psychic TV member, Current 93 (along with Steven Stapleton’s Nurse With Wound) really pushed forward the barriers for moody industrial music.
Stapleton from Nurse With Wound has been a constant member of Tibet’s Current 93 from the origins of the Current 93 collective taking shape. Other notable members include Steve Ignorant of Crass featured here on the track ‘Falling In The Fields Of Rape’, Dougie Pearce of Death In June, Rose McDowell of Strawberry Switchblade, Nick Cave, Michael Cashmore, Marc Almond and even Bjork from K.U.K.L.
This was the second vinyl LP, the first LP ‘Nature Unveiled’ released on the same label will be uploaded at some other time in the future.
The tracks on this LP are magnificent, but slightly jarring in places, deliberately of course. Also like most early Current 93 the lyrics / poetry seem to be slightly on the Anti-Christ vibe.
David Tibet is now (strangely enough) a born again Catholic, and his record label, Durtro Records has released the two finest pieces of vinyl in my opinion for 2006 and 2007 respectively, in the majestic double LP’s ‘Black Ships Ate The Sky’ and ‘The Inmost Light’.
Both these vinyl records (or CD’s if you are younger than me) are available from the Southern Studios or Amazon websites and are totally recommended.
** A little known fact is David Tibet coined the phrase (now a world wide genre) ‘Anarcho Punk’ in a review of a Flux Of Pink Indians and K.U.K.L gig in 1984 for the old weekly music paper, Sounds.
crow
June 11, 2008 at 1:34 pmgreat record! although i think the sublime nature unveiled surpasses it..N U has on board as everybody probably knows already the awesome Anne Anxiety at full power… the first ‘live’ performance of Current 93 (as Dogs Blood Order) at the infamous Equinox Event is here thanks to those lovely people at Club Moral http://clubmoralstocklist.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2007-06-08T13_32_32-07_00 also here is AKE ( Min Kent, John Gosling, Matt Cope)
later to become Zoskia
-full details of this legendary noise event is included in David Keenan’s excellent book ‘England’s Hidden Reverse’ well worth tracking down http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0946719403-0 regrettably I wasnt there…
alistairliv
June 11, 2008 at 4:34 pmDavid Tibet now a Catholic? I wonder what Kenneth Grant thinks about that… I could be mis-remembering, but fairly sure Mr. G.P. Orridge told me David Tibet was a member of Grant’s Typhonian OTO. (Not to be confused with the Caliphate OTO). But that was in 1984.
Perhaps it was the Gnostic mass that did it.
Nic
June 11, 2008 at 4:36 pmI think it was Baudelaire who posited the idea that the only available avenues for the lapsed Catholic were suicide or a return to the bosom of the Mother Church…
Huysmans took the latter path, and it would seem that Tibet has too…
😉
Still a great record though…
Lion
August 22, 2010 at 7:44 am“What permeates life completely, I believe, is The Inmost Light,” Tibet concludes. “The secret glory, this is whatever you want to call it, the presence of Christ in everything. It is there and if we don’t find it before we die then we’re doomed. We must find it, we must, it’s the only thing we’re made for, to try and get even just a glimpse of the glory that lies behind everything that’s hidden from us. The world seems to be disappointing and full of suffering, because we just can’t see what’s shining behind it all. And it’s the only thing which is important. Although there is that incredible transcendence at the same time – although that is a reason for great joy and a feeling that there is something, there is more than just this -”
( c/f Wire interview with Tibet. )
Lion
August 22, 2010 at 7:53 amTibet : “There’s a line …that I found in one of C. S Lewis’s books, I think The Abolition Of Man – … it’s “Terrify not man lest God terrify thee” and I’m not talking about people who have been cruel to others but of course that was talking about people who have treated other people in such away that they have terrified them in their life.”
“Reading that filled me with the most terrible fear that, you know how other people can make your life horrific but if God himself or herself decides when you die to make your life terrible, to terrify you in his way as you’ve terrified other people to the worst of your capabilities…Then Christ have mercy”
Tibet c/f Flux Europa interview.
alistairliv
August 22, 2010 at 8:55 amIs it really that surprising that David Tibet has become a gnostic / mystical christian? There is a strong gnostic thread (or current) in western/European occultism and at the root is a religious sensibility and -despite Pete Carroll’s attempts to create a ‘science of magic’- there is no atheistic occultism. If there was it would be part of science and no longer ‘occult’ or otherwise mysterious.
Lion
August 22, 2010 at 10:52 amAgreed with Alistair — it is not surprising at all. From reading interviews, I think Tibet ( perhaps ) scared *himself* by some of his occult meanderings, and possibly, like a JK Huysmans character, or like some of the Symbolist painters , he returned to the purity of mysticism to rid himself of unwanted associations and mistaken paths.
Secondly, he grew up in Malaysia, in an area in which he would have been surrounded by mystical tradition — Mosques, temples and churches abound in that area, side by side. Maybe that was a bedrock influence for him? He mentions it a lot in interviews.