Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Current 93 - The Moons At Your Door [The Spheres Nineteen - 2015]

Current 93's previous album I am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel was a watershed in more ways than one. Critically it drew a line under the project of publishing David Tibet's mass of prose poetry which finally appeared that year in a collection titled Sing Omega. With that line drawn and his entire written corpus condensed into a single volume one might be forgiven for wondering whether the great mystagog of the East Sussex coast was about to retire to his books and study of ancient languages. Thankfully Current 93 have returned with this splendidly packaged oddity that revives the horror inspired spirit that produced late 90s records like In a Foreign Town in a Foreign Land and I have a Special Plan for This World.

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.

Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5

Duncan Simpson
Latest Reviews

Current 93 - The Moons At Your Door
Current 93's previous album I am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel was a watershed in more ways than one. Critically it drew a line under the pr...
190424   Zachary James Watkins - Affir...
180424   Ulvtharm - 7 Uthras
180424   The Bad Shepherd - The Bad Sh...
180424   Impulse - Impulse( Blu Ray)
170424   Jan Jelinek - Social Engine...
170424   Carlos “Zíngaro”, Guilherme R...
160424   The Borderlands - The Borderl...
160424   Rien - The New Source Recording
160424   Worship - Thoughts
150424   Lion-Girl - Lion-Girl(Blu Ray)
Latest Articles

The Music of Clay Ruby & Burial H...
Over the last couple of decades Wisconsin native, Clay Ruby has been creating some of the world’s finest dark electronic music under the Burial Hex mon...
280324   The Music of Clay Ruby & Buri...
290224   Sutcliffe No More - Normal Ev...
100124   Occlusion - The Operation Is...
181223   Best Of 2023 - Music, Sound &...
051223   Powerhouse Films - Of Magic, ...
181023   IO - Of Sound, Of Art, Of Exp...
210923   Lucky Cerruti - Of Not so Fri...
290823   The Residents - The Trouble W...
110723   Yotzeret Sheydim Interview - ...
250523   TenHornedBeast - Into The Dee...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2023. Twenty two years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom