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This release ties up some loose ends, collecting the studio material from a few elusive Current 93 releases: Looney Runes, Lucifer Over London, Tamlin and Misery Farm. It's a welcome release for those who didn't spring for these limited-edition EPs back when they were released, or for people who are just now getting up to speed with Current 93. What immediately sets SixSixSix: SickSickSick apart from other Current 93 compilations of previously existing material is the superior quality of the music.Durtro
Specifically, the songs from 1994's Lucifer Over London and Tamlin EPs, are among the best that Current 93 has produced. The epic song "Hitler as Kalki (SDM)" from Thunder Perfect Mind was the first time Tibet collaborated with Nick Salomon of The Bevis Frond, an oft-overlooked cult British brand responsible for psych-rock masterpieces like Triptych and New River Head. Nick Salomon's mindbending electric guitar soloing lent a heaviness and majesty to Tibet's crepuscular musings that is without equal in the Current 93 catalog. David Tibet's oft-expressed affection for 70's progressive and heavy metal acts like Uriah Heep and Judas Priest was finally given an outlet, to startlingly powerful effect.
On the title track of Lucifer Over London, Salomon again contributes psych guitar, this time aping the famous riff from Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," spinning it out into a hypnotic, cyclical refrain, as Tibet unfolds one of his more chilling visions of Apocalypse. The material on Lucifer and Tamlin, (along with the Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre LP, which was recorded during these same sessions), seems to represent a pinnacle for Tibet's lyrics, effortlessly weaving deliriously rendered Gnostic symbolism with precise poetic imagery: "All tiny blue pain/As the Mother Blood emerges/Then the Mother Grief/And the Blue Gates of Death/Open armwide/Open teethwide." "Sad Go-Round" is a Groundhogs song from the album Solid, Tibet and Solomon using the achingly beautiful minor-chord guitar loop to accentuate the circular motion of the lyrics.
Tamlin's B-side "How the Great Satanic Glory Faded," also features a stunning performance by Salomon on guitar. Recorded over the phone line, Tiny Tim introduces the track by relating his vision of the devil as "a beautiful angel...telling the world's biggest lie," Tibet launches into a densely lyrical paean to the double-gendered form of Lucifer. "Tamlin" is a long-form traditional ballad from the British Isles, relating the story of a noblewoman impregnated by a wood sprite. The music is another gorgeous medieval setting by Michael Cashmore, and Tibet's menacing whisper is flanged and multiplied to chilling effect.
The material from 1990's Looney Runes has not held up terribly well, a collaboration with Steven Stapleton that results in a raucous industrial tune filled with perversely mutated nursery rhymes and wacky cartoon sound effects. "The Seven Bows Are Revealed At the End of Time..." is Tibet in prophet mode again, unveiling a hallucinogenic William Blake-style endtime scenario that wears thin after the first few listens. Finally, "Misery Farm" is pure novelty: a music hall sing-along with barnyard animal noises. It's quite amusing, but it feels strange coming at the end of so much deeply wrought poetry. 
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- Sex With Sun Ra (Part 1 - Saturnalia)
- All The Pretty Little Horses
- Black Antlers (Where's Your Child?)
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Here's another gem of miniature electro acoustics from Bowindo, the Italian label that, within only a few years of activity, has become a bright beacon on the Mediterranean front, producing a modest string of thoroughly uncompromising releases, all of which will be featured on the Brain in coming weeks.Bowindo
Bowindo 03 is an uneven split dominated by two tracks from Alessandro Bosetti who will be better known for his challenging sax-playing as a contemporary of John Butcher and Bhob Rainey, working in a similar strained style of ultra-dry landscaping and small, human-scaled tensions. His first piece, the 18-min. "Sardinia and Japan are Islands," however, does not offer the sun-kissed change of pace that its title might suggest. Though expansive, even "breezy" sounds such as wind chimes and bird calls do find their way into the mix, Bosetti's islands could be just as easily represented using ink dots on a blank page. The piece is a bizarre trip over chemical waters, adrift on sharp pure tones and the odd analog crackle with enough extended silences to keep the mood cool and detached. No saxophone will enter at all, the only organic sounds limited to faraway thumping (barrels afloat, knocking?), the ghostly chimes, and some abrasive voice sampling, a section of which includes a text listing island names.
While there doesn't seem to be much of an internal logic behind this work, its drift is quite effective in creating feelings of discomfort that seem vaguely oceanic, a paralyzed-at-sea, Ancient Mariner-type vibe for sure. An interesting comparison could be Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste, music that works towards a similar effect but through different means. Bosetti's other contribution, the 22 min. "Kitchen Piece," likewise is not the sort of embracive or heartwarming creation expected from, say, Yoko Ono if she'd chosen the cooking area as a setting for one of her many "pieces." Sourced using sounds from an in-kitchen improv by labelmates Guiseppe Ielasi and Renato Rinaldi, the track is, at first, a monster of crudely cut-up noise sounding like average dish-clatter folded over-and-over on top of itself. Just as brutal are the quick stops and starts of Bosetti's cuts, the interjections more damaging each time, allowed little release in the piece's long and slow descent towards the chorus of layered pure tones and murky static that forms its conclusion.
The third and final track belongs to German experimental dramatist Antje Vowinckel, and, at barely half the length of the other two, it feels a bit unnecessary, though certain comparisons exist, especially in the stunted, silence-ful pacing carrying over from Bosetti's works. Hers, however, suffers from a sound palette that feels too varied for its own good, allowing only cryptic referencing to be made and causing the certain bold, even humorous inclusions (like sped-up martial arts grunting) to clash broadly with any kind of mood emerging elsewhere. The Bosetti pieces, however, were not such easy sells either, and the fact that they feel as strong after several listens gives hope that this disc might prove more well-rounded upon future consideration.
samples:
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