Current 93 — The Inmost Light
Each part is presented on a disk each, with sadly no extras or out takes to pull in long term fans. The first and last disks only lasting around 20 minutes a piece, which leaves plenty of space for extras, but sadly either there weren’t any- which I find hard to believe or Tibet decided to present it as just the original trilogy which I guess is fair enough.
The first disk takes in Where the Long Shadows Fall which was originally released in 1995 as an ep. It consists of a nineteen minute track built around a stuck 1920’s female singing voice & choir loops. As well as bass wonderings that drift into glistening & sad flourishers of guitar. With Tibet and John Balance layered up series of repeated phrases and poetic text. The atmosphere builds and recedes with looped sampled choir voices, bells and other sound matter. It’s an interesting track, though it does tend to become a little tired by it’s end, only of real interest to those who already enjoy Tibet’s work, newcomers will find it too uneventful and slightly pretentious .
The second disk features the full length album from 1996 All The Pretty Little Horses, which is often sited along with Thunder Perfect Mind as one of Tibets most consistent and approachable album. It’s easy to see why as there are lots of tuneful stand alone tracks here like the melancholy & tuneful acoustic guitar picking of the two versions of the title track that bookend the album. Or the poppy and musically bright guitar, piano and string swooning wonder of The Bloodbells Chime. The tuneful piano wonder and growing sinister tones of The Frolic, which like much of the album layers in children’s voices, speaking random words and repeating phrases, With a growing sense of sound dread built beautiful by Steve Stapleton. If you take the album as a whole it’s a very dense and disorientating piece of work, both musically and word wise the text high with disturbing child based imagery, animals, various gods and decay. The less approachable droning and atmospheric moments here are darkly psychedelic, often jarring and alarming; the often simply strummed songs are built up and often made forest like dense with voices, children’s and otherwise, and all manner of sound craft by Steve Stapleton. Making very much an album that can be taken both lyrical and musically on many different levels.
Lastly we have on the third disk that features another ep entitled The Starres Are Marching Sadly Home from 1996. It’s another long form sound/ spoken word piece lasting just over twenty minutes, merging in Tibet’s voice and other voices including rich haunted female singing . With creaking ship, wind sounds and ghostly /swirling ambient tones that pick up traces of the first of the first ep’s backing here & there. The whole thing feels very grim and ghostly and lost in time. Making an unnerving end to the trilogy, that’s also much more involving and rewarding than the first ep.
So all in all well worth picking up if you don’t already have it, but for long term fans there’s only the package to attract them- which though is nice enough could have been better. One of the main bugbears being the gold text on the often dark and mixed backgrounds of the inlay booklet, which makes it rather difficult to read at times.