Current 93 "The Great in the Small" Durtro 053CD 2000 (61:14)
(61:14)
The story, in short, goes like this: during David Tibet's life threatening illness last year he was told in a dream that he must put together all of his recordings onto one album as a sort of document of his life's work just prior to his death. Thus, "The Great in the Small" literally does just that as Tibet and Steven Stapleton pile up every single track from 1983's "LaSth Al" through 2000's "Faust" including all compilation, alternative mix and Tibet/Stapleton tracks. That's well over 60 singles, EPs and albums all playing simultaneously as a single 61 minute track, so I'm sure you can imagine the chaos to be found here. There's a constant wall of noise throughout but many recognizable bits of vocals and sound rise up out of the tangled mass. At times the mix becomes nicely subdued, due more to a stripping down of the elements than acclimation. To accompany the audio collage on the disc, the digipack is a visual collage of all the Current 93 covers, mostly by Tibet and Stapleton/Babs Santini, especially impressive on the beautiful amber vinyl edition of the album. All in all, "The Great in the Small" is a curiosity, an oddity, an idea come to fruition, something that had to be done. Though it's not likely the sort of thing I'll spin very often. It just makes me want to play all my other Current 93 releases, only one at time. One such album is "Bright Yellow Moon" which was also inspired by Tibet's near death experience ...
Where did I get this cd? - mail order via Riouxs Records.