Birth Canal Blues
Details
2008 April CD CA Durtro Jnana DURTRO JNANA 93
in jewel case
Track Listing
  1. I Looked To The South Side Of The Door (6:56) [copticcat002]
  2. She Took Us To The Places Where The Sun Sets (4:31) [copticcat002]
  3. The Nylon Lion Attacks As Kingdom (4:30) [copticcat002]
  4. Suddenly The Living Are Dying (3:06) [copticcat002]
Sleeve Notes
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Birth Canal Blues

Tearing
ⲀⲖⲈⲪ as ⲀⲆⲀⲘ
from as Mountain: Sketches for Wroclaw/Moscow/Berlin/Turin/Bourges/Tilburg/London

ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Baby Dee, Andrew Liles, David Tibet

Keyboards: Baby Dee
Mixes: Andrew Liles
Whistlings: Rob Sands
Voices: David Tibet

All songs written by
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93

Front cover back cover as
Anonymous Coptic Papyrical Beauty as 2008
Catching clouds photographed by
David Tibet at Nag Hammadi and Luxor as 2008
Live photograph of approximate Current 93 as 2007 by
Professor Barbara Emmel

What good will it be for a man
if he gains the whole world,
yet forfeits his soul?

(METTHEW 16-26)
Notes
This page contains coptic characters which may not render correctly if a suitable font has not been installed locally.
Bandcamp
Reviews
As the world of Current 93 is in the midst of rumblings announcing the forthcoming album Anok Pe: Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, this new CDEP was released at recent shows, both a stopgap and a preview of future iterations. The good news for those who weren't bowled over by Black Ships Ate the Sky is that Birth Canal Blues is quite different indeed, and represents a new direction for David Tibet and company.

One of the most immediately noticeable changes is the stripped back personnel that comprises Current 93 for this release. Instead of the huge and unwieldy collective of musicians used on Black Ships, this EP recalls Soft Black Stars or Sleep Has His House in its limited instrumental palette and group; this time out it's only Baby Dee on keyboards, Tibet on vocals and Andrew Liles inhabiting the usual Steven Stapleton role, producing and mixing. Hearing someone other than Maja Elliott tickling the ivories for Current 93 is an interesting change: Baby Dee's style is less impressionistic, more traditionally melodic, tracing beautifully symmetrical piano figures informed by popular music or church playing. In some sense this is appropriate, as Tibet's lyrics become increasingly focused upon Biblical prophecy. In another sense, it seems utterly at odds with the apocalyptic visions being related, creating an unorthodox hybrid of gentle pop and ferocious, unhinged teleological visions.

Andrew Liles' production contributes to this unorthodox quality, splitting Tibet's vocals between the left and right channels, and placing them slightly out of sync for the first track, "I Looked to the South Side of the Door." The lyrics are typical for Current 93, and yet longtime fans will notice a certain evolution in Tibet's text. Gone are the extremely personal confessions, replaced instead by vaguer and more cryptic prophetic visions: "Adam stands on docetic mountain/The woman's face is full of stars/And in the words of The Book/And with the lips of The Book/And the trumpet and the seal/And the candlestick that lights up your bed with seeds and flowers/And the lion on your rug that's roaring like a lamb/On the rack and on it's back/I call the martyrs on wheels/To this piss-poor mess/With the blood spreading like flies/Under the table and the gable breathing like curtains of eyes/That shift uneasily." Tibet's vocals are punctuated with mimetic sound sculptures, the sound of trains arriving and animal noises.

"She Took Us to the Places Where the Sun Sets" is something else entirely, with a dramatic multitracked piano part that forms the bed for Tibet's vocals, which are mutated to sound like the monstrously distorted, satanic, wintry howls of a Nordic black metal vocalist, affected with delay that bounces between the stereo channels. As such, it is pretty much impossible to hear what Tibet is saying, but no matter, as the track is deadly and effective, chilling the bone like precious little Current 93 music in recent memory. When, at the very end of the track, Tibet screams quite audibly: "I will murder you!" I felt like I was back in the days of Dogs Blood Rising or Imperium, when Current 93 was unproblematically a gothic/industrial project, still quite capable of scaring the shit out of me. "The Nylon Lion Attacks as Kingdom" uses another outré vocal distortion, one which makes Tibet's vocals sound more tortured and morbid than usual.

"Suddenly the Living Are Dying" ends the EP on a lighter note, reminiscent of something from Soft Black Stars, but with a bit more psychedelic fuckery, especially as the track fades out into piercing crescendos of atonal electronic drone, and the apocalyptic galloping of horse hooves, climaxing in an explosion of Merzbow-esque noise. The generic appellation of "apocalyptic folk" for the music of Current 93 has rarely seemed more appropriate than here.

Jonathan Dean

30 June 2008
Birth Canal Blues
Details
2008 November CD CA Durtro Jnana COPTIC CAT 001
US Edition
Green CD image
Track Listing
  1. I Looked To The South Side Of The Door (6:56) [copticcat002]
  2. She Took Us To The Places Where The Sun Sets (4:31) [copticcat002]
  3. The Nylon Lion Attacks As Kingdom (4:30) [copticcat002]
  4. Suddenly The Living Are Dying (3:06) [copticcat002]
Sleeve Notes
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Birth Canal Blues

Tearing
ⲀⲖⲈⲪ as ⲀⲆⲀⲘ
from as Mountain: Sketches for Wroclaw/Moscow/Berlin/Turin/Bourges/Tilburg/London

ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Baby Dee, Andrew Liles, David Tibet

Keyboards: Baby Dee
Mixes: Andrew Liles
Whistlings: Rob Sands
Voices: David Tibet

All songs written by
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93

Front cover back cover as
Anonymous Coptic Papyrical Beauty as 2008
Catching clouds photographed by
David Tibet at Nag Hammadi and Luxor as 2008
Live photograph of approximate Current 93 as 2007 by
Professor Barbara Emmel

What good will it be for a man
if he gains the whole world,
yet forfeits his soul?

(METTHEW 16-26)
Notes
This page contains coptic characters which may not render correctly if a suitable font has not been installed locally.

The cover has been slightly altered. The original mail-order-only edition had Arabic text on the front of the booklet and English text on the back of the booklet. The North American version has English text on the front and Arabic text on the back.
Birth Canal Blues
Details
2008 November CD UK Durtro Jnana COPTIC CAT 001
UK/EU Edition
Red CD image
Track Listing
  1. I Looked To The South Side Of The Door (6:56) [copticcat002]
  2. She Took Us To The Places Where The Sun Sets (4:31) [copticcat002]
  3. The Nylon Lion Attacks As Kingdom (4:30) [copticcat002]
  4. Suddenly The Living Are Dying (3:06) [copticcat002]
Sleeve Notes
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Birth Canal Blues

Tearing
ⲀⲖⲈⲪ as ⲀⲆⲀⲘ
from as Mountain: Sketches for Wroclaw/Moscow/Berlin/Turin/Bourges/Tilburg/London

ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93: Baby Dee, Andrew Liles, David Tibet

Keyboards: Baby Dee
Mixes: Andrew Liles
Whistlings: Rob Sands
Voices: David Tibet

All songs written by
ⲀⲚⲞⲔ ⲠⲈ
as Current 93

Front cover back cover as
Anonymous Coptic Papyrical Beauty as 2008
Catching clouds photographed by
David Tibet at Nag Hammadi and Luxor as 2008
Live photograph of approximate Current 93 as 2007 by
Professor Barbara Emmel

What good will it be for a man
if he gains the whole world,
yet forfeits his soul?

(METTHEW 16-26)
Notes
This page contains coptic characters which may not render correctly if a suitable font has not been installed locally.

The cover has been slightly altered. The original mail-order-only edition had Arabic text on the front of the booklet and English text on the back of the booklet. The UK/EU version has English text on the front and French on the back.