Current 93 — The Moons At Your Door
The Moons at Your Door is in fact the sister part to an anthology of "supernatural writings" of the same title by authors such as M.R. James, Count Stenbock, H.R. Wakefield, and of course Thomas Ligotti previously published on Tibet's Ghost Story Press over the preceding twenty years. However, unlike Tibet's previous long form horror inspired music the two tracks that make up the record do not seem to follow any particular text and instead deploy isolated fragments of speech that seem designed to heighten the general sense of unease and occasionally just make you jump.
The opening title track begins slowly with field recordings of birds and waves lapping against the shore which the record sleeve tells us were made by Tibet himself in his hometown of Hastings. I found this quite a nice touch considering so much of his inspiration has been gleaned Eastwards of late, as if the closure of Sing Omega has left him reflective of more everyday influences closer to home. Apart from some low metallic sweeps hovering just above the field recordings nothing much really happens until a crackly female voice appears quietly in the right channel drawing the ear towards it. Just as you do though a loud door slam and a distorted voice booming "Look up there! Look up there! The moon is at your door!". It's a bit of a cheap trick really but signals the end of our trip to Hastings. After another door slam we're in Venice during a rain storm, this time recorded by Andrew Liles whose hand lies heavily on this production. It's undoubtedly a mysterious and strange set of recordings as the sounds of people scampering across shingle pass from left to right and a sub-base drone suddenly bubbles up accompanied by what sounds like a wooden clacker and that voice again intoning "We are sent to choke you!". Ultimately though it lacks the slow burning dread and unheimlich quality that made In Foreign Town...,and I Have a Special Plan...so interesting.
The second piece - endowed with the wonderful title There is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man begins with more clackers and listed vocalist Alan Taylor (who?) reciting variations on the track's title while angry machine noises swirl around. More skittish than the first part the composition here ranges from quick noisy jump cuts between drones, disembodied phrases and more machine sounds. While the first part hinted at some form of narrative here the idea seems to be to build wave after wave of disorientation punctuated with sudden audio shocks. But without the anchoring support of a text and the complete absence of Tibet's voice you'd be forgiven for forgetting this was a Current 93 record at all. The track finishes on a unsubtle note with an extended blast of tinnitus inducing digital skree, made especially irksome by the advice on the record insert to "hear loud".
This is far from Current 93's finest hour and while the record does undoubtedly maintain a strange and at times creepy quality it is also somewhat unstructured bordering on crude. Where Steve Stapleton and Christoph Heemann's layered drones provided the perfect accompaniment to Tibet's reading of Thomas Ligotti on the previous "horror soundtracks", here Liles and Tibet's production is more cheap thrills and is at times almost unlistenable. As has become de rigueur Tibet's gnomic, minimal paintings adorn the record to great effect but despite the wealth of inspiration the companion volume of horror writings could have provided the audio supplement is decidedly less than the sum of its parts.