19 June 2009

Dear everyone:

Firstly, our profound thanks to all of those who came to see Current 93 at the Leipzig Wave-Gotik-Treffen. We headlined the Saturday night and played to around 7000 people, and receiving an absolutely overwhelming reception. I must say that I, and all those who were playing with me, thought this was our best concert to date. Thanks too to all those who arranged it, and to those friends of ours who came with us and were so helpful, especially Maude Swift, Andria Degens, Davide Pepe, Chris Campion, Masumi Kobayashi, Mariam Blachny and especially to our European booking agents and tour managers, Fabrizio Palumbo and Giulio Di Mauro, as well as to Corneius Brach and Thomas Goernert, the artistic directors who invited us. The concert was professionally filmed by Davide Pepe and Giulio Di Mauro with 2 cameras and recorded onto a 24-track machine; we are hoping to release an official DVD of it at some point. We had a lovely and inspiring time, and hope to visit Leipzig again some day soon.

Below follow some observations and updates. Another update will be following next week.

David starts writing the new Current 93 album

I have now commenced work on the new C93 album as well as another album. There will be some special events occurring connected to these albums and also to mark my 50th birthday on March 5, 2010. More news later.

C93 play shows in Turin (22 September) and Rome (18 October)

Turin

C93 play Turin on 22 September, 2009, with special guest James Blackshaw. This is part of a 2-day festival; also playing on 23 September are NWW and Blind Cave Salamander, who will perform "Soliloquy for Lilith" and Larsen who perform with z'ev performing "In V. Tro". Tickets are €10 per night, as well as a reduced €15 ticket for both nights, and are now on sale at www.mitosettembremusica.it/en/.

Full details are as follows:

22 September 2009 at Il Sacro Attraverso L'ordinario, Torino, Italy
www.mutamento.org c/o MiTo www.mitosettembremusica.it

Current 93 + James Blackshaw

TICKETS: www.mitosettembremusica.it/en/biglietti/box-office.html

23 September /2009 at Il Sacro Attraverso L'ordinario, Torino, Italy
www.mutamento.org c/o MiTo www.mitosettembremusica.it

Larsen & z'ev "In V.tro" + Nurse With Wound & Blind Cave Salamander: "Soliloquy for Lilith",

TICKETS: www.mitosettembremusica.it/en/biglietti/box-office.html

Rome

C93 play Rome on 18 October, 2009 at the POST ROMANTIC EMPIRE FINAL FESTIVAL, which takes place over the days of 17 and 18 October at the Init. Club, Via Della Stazione Tuscolana 133, Rome.

Also appearing are Pantaleimon, Andrew W.K., Baby Dee, Hush Arbours, Andrew Liles, Othon Mataragas, Mouse on Mars, Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo, Ernesto Tomasini and many other artists. The final line-up is announced on 15 July.

The promotional flyer states:

"PRE FINAL FEST is the ultimate experience of the Post Romantic Empire, and its last manifestation. A black and pink psychic marathon that will last more than 27 hours continuously. PRE FINAL FEST is going to be a unique celebration and not just a music programme: artists and friends are invited to share the joy and the sadness of a happy ending. XXth century is not finished yet: use and abuse your emotions and join the Empire!"

Regarding tickets:

1. The price of the tickets will be increased monthly. They will cost €35 until 20 June, then €45 until 20 July, then €60 until 20 September and finally €65 until 5 October.
2. Tickets availability on presale is limited to 500.
3. Tickets bought in advance will allow one to enjoy the whole PRE FINAL FEST programme.
4. If 500 tickets are sold out on presale there will be no tickets at the door. If it is not sold out there will be tickets for single parts of the fest (Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night).

For online presale please contact: prefinalfest@gmail.com. Tickets can be bought with Paypal or Postepay (debit card). For those who need other ways of payment please contact PRE at: giulio@postromantic.com or call +39 3280388313. Presale in Rome can be found at: TRANSMISSION record store, Via dei Salentini 27, Roma.

For more details, go to www.postromantic.com, www.initroma.com and www.myspace.com/deadlounge

The test pressing edition of ‘Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain’ with signed print

I expect to get the prints on the 20 June. I will commence sending out the test pressings themselves this week.

Vinyl edition of ‘Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain’

Unfortunately there were problems with the posters of subscribers' images for the vinyl; these have consequently been reprinted and we have received samples which have been approved. We now expect to get the vinyl in mid-July and will add it to the shop when they arrive.

Reviews of ‘Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain’

Metal Ireland • The Big Takeover

Metal Hammer:

Having carved out one of the most enlightening, richly detailed journeys ever to emerge from the British underground for the past 25 years, Current 93 appeared to reach a pinnacle with 2006's Black Ships Ate the Sky. A work of sublime, still beauty, its tapestry of visions cast a scintillating, apocalyptic glow with the finest of tools. Following David Tibet's collaborations with OM and Skitliv, this equally mystical and mesmerising follow-up has taken on a more explicitly dark tone. A doom and drone-tinged twilight pilgrimage, it's shot through with Tibet's wide-eyed, reedy rasp, whose stricken narratives are a shamanic, symbol-laden ascent into boundless acres of imagination and revelation. (8) Jonathan Selzer

The Wire:

In the three years since the release of Black Ships Ate the Sky, David Tibet has overseen the unlikely transformation from a studio-bound project into a barnstorming live outfit. While still not exactly a group—the lineup depends on who is available from his loyal entourage of devotees and colourful fellow travellers—C93 has developed a cohesive musical identity and a surging energy that one assumes stem from the imperatives and attractions of live performance. As a singer and performer, Tibet has discovered new reserves of intensity and, occasionally, a kind of derangement that previously tended to lurk only in the crevices of his music.

Aleph reflects these developments, taking its cure less from the acoustic music that has comprised the bulk of his work and drawing heavily on the drone Metal of Sunn 0))), Earth and, especially, OM. That's not to say that it's Tibet's metal album—though in places it comes close. It's more that Metal is the latest in a long line of enthusiasms (literary, spiritual and musical) that he's often employed to alchemise a new direction in his work. It's the way that he's able to soak up the influence and transform it that makes Aleph such a bracing and hypnotic release. Its opening track ‘Invocation of Almost’ is immensely powerful, built around a looping organ figure that lights the way—just—through a blackened landscape of power chords, fuzz bass, keening spirals of feedback and lurching drums. For my money, it's the best C93 piece since 1996's 'The Frolic'. That the remainder of the album, with its switchback lurches between grinding guitar attack and becalmed pools of acoustic ambience, never quite manages to scale the same heights is testament to the first track's power rather than a criticism of what follows, which is uniformly convincing, fierce and frequently exquisite.

Tibet's epic text flows more freely over the music than his more Spartan recent work has allowed, a unique hybrid of personal mysticism, esoteric learning and dream imagery, complete with paradoxes, absurdities and nonsequiturs that add a crucial humanising element. In the end, it's his urgent recitation that captivates—more than ever here he sounds like his late friend and sometime collaborator John Balance of Coil, raving, raging, howling at the moon one moment and laughing at it the next. And now that it's become clear that these really are the End Times, Tibet's eschatological pronouncements have never seemed timelier.

Keith Moliné

CDs, vinyl and books can no longer be signed by David Tibet

Unless it specifically states in the news/update or in the store that an item is signed by David, it is no longer possible for him to sign items. This is because all of our stock is now held at a location in central London and sent out from there. We don't have access to the store.

’Under the Rain and Teeth of Gods‘: yet another update on my lyric book

I have to submit my analytical edition and translation of the Sahidic Coptic text, "The Enthronement of Michael", on 20 June. This will be the final part of my MA in Coptic Studies, before I start my PhD in 2010.

As soon as I have finished my MA, I will then concentrate, as mentioned in a recent update, on finishing this book. I will almost definitely be changing the title. I have decided against going to India to finish the book, but will stay in England working on it. Thanks once again to all of you who have pre-ordered and pre-paid for this volume; I am touched and humbled by your tolerance and patience for all the delays. Thank you.

Nick Blinko: ‘The Haunted Head’

I went to lunch last week with Nick and Henry Boxer, our mutual friend and Nick's agent. We have made some final decisions about our publication of Nick's strange and dreamlike novel, and we will be putting this book up on Durtro very soon for advance orders.

However, before we post a definitive statement about the volume, I just wanted to write a brief description of the book. The hard-back edition will be a limited edition, with blocked covers and spine, pictorial end-papers with Nick's work on them, and a book-ribbon. The novel itself is 200 pages long. Each copy will come with a 1-track CD featuring a newly-recorded and previously unreleased Rudimentary Peni song.

Nick wrote out the book twice, in his obsessively beautiful handwriting. One of these copies was written in an A4 pad, and the other version over approximately 350 one-sided white postcards measuring 3 1/2" × 5 1/2" (90 × 147mm). Three random examples are shown. Each copy of the book comes with one of these original postcards with text from the novel. This of course means that the book is limited to the number of manuscript cards. Once the cards are finished, the edition is ended.

At the same time, we will be adding a collection of identically-sized postcards of Nick's artwork onto the Durtro shop, at various prices which will depend on the size and complexity of the image on the postcard.

Nick Blinko's text drawings have been included in several museum shows and touring exhibitions in the UK and France, whilst others are housed in the permanent collections of the following museums: The Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne and the Outsider Collection & Archive, London.

Fuller details very soon.

David Tibet appears as vocalist on the new Nurse With Wound album, ‘The Surveillance Lounge’

I am delighted and honoured to be one of the vocalists (credited with "voices, big muff and hawtrey") on the exceptional new NWW album, "The Surveillance Lounge". There is also a special edition, "The Memory Surface Box" containing 3 CDs in a plastic case. This album is out now on Dirter Records and available from them at www.dirter.co.uk.

Below follows the press blurb from Dirter:

We are delighted to announce the release of the brand new Nurse With Wound CD, this is a worldwide exclusive to United Dirter.

NURSE WITH WOUND - "THE SURVEILLANCE LOUNGE - THE MEMORY SURFACE EDITION" BOX

"The Memory Surface" is a 3xCD set in polypropylene box featuring the new Nurse With Wound album "The Surveillance Lounge" plus 2 extra CDs. The content on the two extra discs are in part studio out-takes, historical documents, the sequential evolution of an album and a primitive version of "The Surveillance Lounge".

In 2007 NWW were invited, by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation via In Famous, to perform a live soundtrack at La Cite de la Musique in Paris to the 1992 Murnau film, "Der brennende Acker". The new sounds that were generated and musical parts recorded for the film became rudimentary building blocks for "The Surveillance Lounge".

Nurse With Wound never fail to surprise and just when you maybe thought you could second guess how this might sound, they completely shift the direction. In contrast to the last release "Huffin' Rag Blues", this release focuses on the darker side of Nurse With Wound. Whilst keeping a fresh contemporary feel, it nods towards some of the older, more sinister material. Current 93's David Tibet is featured on the disc along with the mainstays of Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles.

The CD comes housed in a beautiful special 6 panel digipak with a spot varnish.

Nurse With Wound reissues on United Jnana and Andrew Liles/Diana Rogerson releases on Dirter now available

Now available from Jnana Records is the new reissue of the Nurse With Wound CD, ‘Spiral Insana’. US $ 14.99 plus postage and packing.

The tracklisting is identical to the 1997 World Serpent issue. This reissue is in a 4-panel digipak which restores the original vinyl artwork.

United Jnana are pleased to announce the next installment in our ongoing Nurse With Wound reissue series, 'Alice the Goon'.

Originally released in a limited vinyl edition in 1995, it was expanded for its CD debut in 2000. This version replicates the 2000 reissue with a 4 panel digipak.

Tracks: (I Don't Want to Have) Easy Listening Nightmares (9:28) • Prelude to Alice the Goon (12:51) • Untitled (7:24)

Now available from Jnana Records. US $ 14.99 plus postage and packing.

The first album from Diana Rogerson and Andrew Liles, "No Birds Do Sing", is now available from Dirter at www.dirter.co.uk.

The press blurb from Dirter reads:

Everyone's belle de jour Diana Rogerson and Andrew Liles got together to create what we regard as one of the most considered and well conceived albums Liles has been part of. 'No Birds do Sing' can only be described as a hallucinogenic voyage of disconcerting mysticism and cosmic pandemonium and is a recording he's very proud of.

Nick Blinko artwork exhibited at ‘Entartete Kunts’ exhibition in Portland, Oregon, USA

Dennis Dread's third annual underground art exhibition, ENTARTETE KUNTS, returns to Portland, Oregon this month from June 4—June 30, 2009. The official Artist Reception takes place on Friday June 19th at The Life Gallery in downtown Portland, Oregon. Doors open at 7pm with local beer on tap and musical accompaniment into the Witching Hour. ENTARTETE KUNTS explores the intersection of imagery/sound and celebrates the incendiary art of metal and punk without a trace of irony. "Entartete Kunts" is a bastardization of the German term “degenerate art” and a snide reference to the 1937 Nazi purging of all art deemed objectionable by "Der Führer". An unfortunate pun but strangely appropriate for this gathering of unrepentant iconoclasts who stand boldly outside in every way. Entartete Kunts is in fact a very special exhibition that assembles some of the most devoted artists from around the world for a rare glimpse into a thriving and still largely renegade culture:

• Nick Blinko (Rudimentary Peni)
• Arik Roper (High On Fire, Sleep)
• Rob Miller (Amebix)
• S. Clay Wilson (Zap, The Accused)
• Away (Voivod)
• Necrolord (Dissection, Emperor)
• Lino Reca (Villains, Hemlock)
• E. Danielsson (Watain)
• Chanel Adair (Lebenden Toten)
• and many more!

Thanks to you all for your support and kindness, as ever.

David+++