Black Ships Ate the Sky

Current 93 | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 23, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Durtro / Jnana
• ASIN: B000F5GO1E
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244,067 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Import vinyl LP pressing of the 2006 album from the experimental collective headed by David Tibet (the band's only constant member). Along with Coil and Nurse With Wound, Current 93 have managed to stay ahead of any musical trends by remaining outside of them. Durtro. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what's this about apocalypse?, May 24, 2006

By 

Irony Value "Irony Value" (BAYOU) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Black Ships Ate the Sky (Audio CD)

At long last, here it is: The Revelation of Saint David Michael Tibet the Divine.

Having long shown us glimpses of the End of Days, David Tibet seems to have decided to do it as a Cecil B. deMille production this time out. And it WORKS. This is a truly classic Current 93 album. The all-singing, all-dancing cast of impressive guests are all in place : Antony, Marc Almond (Soft Cell), Cosey Fanni Tutti & Chris Carter (Throbbing Gristle), Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Palace), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), Shirley Collins--what, no Devendra Banhart?--along with a backbone of stawarts like Steven Stapleton and Michael Cashmore. It's certainly as good as or better than anything released since "All the Pretty Little Horses," and it seems likely to join that album and "Thunder Perfect Mind" as the three albums that define C93's "apocalyptic folk" music period.

If you haven't heard Current 93, you're in for a real head-scratching time. Most vocals by Tibet aren't so much sung as declared in a somewhat haranguing tone, as if by some sort of lunatic street prophet. At times Tibet seems to be channeling something, and at times it produces silly lyrics: "counting chickens through my fingers" indeed! Much of his inspiration seems to come from Revelation and the Gnostic Gospels, but don't expect "Songs of Praise." This is "Christian Rock" to strip the paint off your soul. Plus most Christian Rock is pretty short on inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

That having been said, listeners with an open mind, a sense of humor, and a willingness to listen to a whole album of challenging, pretty music about the end of the world will not be disappointed. This is a perfectly excellent starting point for a neophyte (or would that be "initiate"?); long-time fans probably picked up the ultra-limited subscriber edition. I would also recommend picking up "Judas as Black Moth," a specially priced 2CD Best Of, which anyone curious as to what this group are up to should buy. I doubt it will offer answers; Tibet seems more content to provoke new questions.

Buy it. Listen to it. if you don't like it, listen to it again. If you still don't like it, buy some Maroon Five or something, I guess.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars in the running to be the greatest Current 93 record, June 4, 2006

By 

Aquarius Records (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Ships Ate the Sky (Audio CD)

Current 93's David Tibet is an apocalyptic poet in the truest definition, as his work hinges upon his obsessive desire to transcribe and translate the revelations, visions, nightmares, and dreams that have come to him over the past two decades. The apocalyptic genres of art have come to define the possibilities of how the world as we know it might come to an end (e.g. astrophysical disasters, nuclear war, zombies, fire-ants, etc.); however, in the earliest manifestations of apocalyptic art, it was simply the chronicling of revelations given from the heavens to man below. Throughout his numerous recordings in Current 93, Tibet has embodied the whole apocalyptic tradition, all the while strengthening his admittedly heretical belief in a Patripassianist Christ, who suffers beyond the crucifixion of Jesus throughout the aeons until his second coming (this is but a brief synopsis of Tibet's complicated, Gnostic, and poetic theology).

Black Ships Ate The Sky has been in the works for almost four years, with Tibet's great friend and long-time collaborator Steven Stapleton proclaiming this to be a fantastic recording. Lo and behold, Black Ships Ate The Sky _is_ a magnificent album, returning to the somber acid folk stylings haunted by the shadows and smoke last heard on the earlier masterpieces Thunder Perfect Mind and Earth Covers Earth. As on all of the Current 93 albums, Tibet surrounds himself with an impressive battery of musicians that reads like a who's who of alt-folk-avant-rock greats: Will Oldham, Ben Chasny, Antony (as in .. And The Johnsons), Shirley Collins, Cosey Fanni Tutti, William Basinski, Al Cisneros (from Om), and the aforementioned Steven Stapleton. Black Ships Ate The Sky is thematically based upon Tibet's vision aptly described in the title as it relates to a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley called "Idumae" which repeats itself seven times (eight if you count "Black Ships Were Sinking Into Idumae" sung by Cosey Fanni Tutti), as sung by Tibet's numerous guest vocalists.

As strong as many of the versions of "Idumae" are, Tibet and his peculiar voice are central to Black Ships. He's impassioned throughout, occasionally possessed with an infernal rage as on the second version of the title track, and elsewhere adopting a gentle delicacy. The music swirls around simple guitar arrangements, laced with Chasny's acidic guitar leads and Stapleton's sidereal productions... and it's stunningly good together. Time will tell if this will be the greatest Current 93 record Tibet has produced (as many have already claimed); but it's clearly in the running.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars trite, August 14, 2011

By 

A Dinosaur-Shaped Car "Homosexual Porn" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Ships Ate the Sky (Audio CD)

That's a word that gets tossed around very casually, I know, but I considered it carefully and deemed it perfect for Current 93.

Post-industrial bands are idiosyncratic, that's just something one has to live with. If you hate the personality of the artist, you'll hate the music. I can jive with the majority of Stapleton's stuff; with Pearce, I can take the bad with the good; with David Tibet, I just can't find anything to enjoy.

Tibet's hushed, melodramatic gestures of yearning and enchantment are like that zero calorie fake sugar stuff--sweet in a very wrong way, and it ends up tasting "like chemicals", for the lack of a better way of putting it. It's all like: "Look! Over theeere... Hark! A butterfly this way flutters, ooooh! But beware! For its wings are wings of poison most viiiile!" The suffering gnostic neo-Jesus posturing is escapist, pretentious (another generic word I carefully considered) mumbo-jumbo, and unlike with mid-period Swans, I feel no pathos in any other angles of interpretation.

So there ya go, you don't lose any artsy cred if you can't swallow Current 93. "Warped lullabies," blah blah blah... This is boring stuff that romanticizes the medieval for lack of ability to understand the modern world. Given the band's gothic fixation with the archaic, cryptic and rustic, it would be appropriate if history remembered them as lightweight also-rans.