Customer Reviews

Black Ships Ate the Sky

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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.

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.

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.

Musically the most beautiful Current 93 album since 'Thunder Perfect Mind', in lyrical atmosphere 'Black Ships' is closer to 'Lucifer Over London'. I once stayed in an outer northern suburb of London, not far from St. Albans, and 'Black Ships' does indeed invoke memories of evening descending over that vast, murky, contaminated city. You almost feel the presence of Dick Whittington, sitting with his cat on Highgate Hill, waiting for black ships to tear apart the sky, as hallucinatory figures of nursery rhyme and legend dance through Mr. Tibet's imagination.

The lyrics are a constant flow of shifting images, and at one point it even sounds like Tibet is getting political for perhaps the first time ("this frenzy at home that you call World War III, and I called it bulls***...there are liars who I know they are liars...the big pot boils with centuries of conspiracy, and cabbages and kings who have had their cake and ate it...")

This change from his usual demeanor makes a far more convincing attack on corruption than that of some always-angry punk band...but the feeling of impending apocalypse predominates, as usual.

This is my first Current 93 cd after I had found out about them from various mentions over the months by other sites about music. I really like the style of this music, it is very stripped down and 'apocolyptic'. The guest spots are cool even though I don't know who the guests are. It is a great alternative to the style of music most "people" like. I usually listen to porcupine tree, bfmv, bass communion, smashing pumpkins, skinny puppy, tool, etc.

I only found out about Current 93 a few months ago, so I'm still learning about David Tibet and his amazing music. Being on this never-ending quest to find out about differant music, I've recently had been interested in industrial music from the 1970's and early 1980's. I saw Ministry play live last year and that's kinda what started me thinking of this genre of music. So, I started checking out bands that I had heard of, but never really heard actual music by, such as Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy, and Einstürzende Neubauten. Through looking up info on these bands, one band's name kept popping up as being related to these bands, Current 93. I had never even heard of this band before. So, I started looking up info and loved what I read and heard. This lead to me buying my first Current 93 CD, "Black Ships Ate the Sky". My first impression of it was, "What in the world...." But, that was the reaction I was hoping to have to it, so this wasn't a bad thing at all. About two weeks after buying it, I had listened to it a few times and it was really starting to grow on me. Then, I ended up taking a car trip that lasted nearly 10 hours each way. Long story short, the trip turned out to be a disaster, so on the way home, I was driving through a very lonely, desolate, out-of-the-way area and decided that "Black Ships..." would be the perfect music for the way I felt and the things that were around me. The songs and amazing lyrics began to make perfect sense to me. I felt as though I was at the end of the world and this CD was the perfect soundtrack. Beyond the fact that the lyrics are so well-written, with their apocalyptic themes, the music itself is absolutly beautiful. David Tibet's way of sorta talking through the lyrics fits the emotions and the feelings the beautiful music evoke. The sound of the guitar on such songs as "Sunset", "Then Kill Ceaser" and "Bind Your Tortoise Mouth" is nothing short of amazing. The thing that hits me the hardest about this album though is the opening track, "Idumæa", featuring Marc Almond on vocals. When I read his name on the CD, my first thought was, "The 'Tainted Love' guy?" On this track though, you'll forget that he ever even sang that because he gives, in my opinion, one of the best vocal performances I've ever heard!

I cannot recommend this CD enough. It is truly a work of art. It may take a few listens to get used to and figure out what's going on. But, you have to listen to it with an open mind and an open heart. Once you do, get ready to be taken on the ride of your life! Easily one of the best CDs I've bought in a very long time...and coming from someone that works with music and is around it all the time, that's saying quite a lot, because I tend to have a bit of a "Been there, heard that before" additude towards most music. "Black Ships Ate the Sky" is just an amazing and breathtaking album!

I wanted to love this album, but it has too many things working against it:

- At 75 minutes, it's too long. When trying to listen to the whole thing start to finish with headphones, I got burnt out.
- The lyrics are so cryptic, pedantic, stream-of-consciousness and seemingly random as to be impossible to "get", no matter how sincerely one tries. Even being sympathetic to David Tibet's religious convictions and as open-minded as I could possibly be, I found very little to relate to here, besides the beautiful hymn "Idumea" (composed in the 18th century, not by Tibet), which mercifully enough comprises half the album. Tibet himself said in interviews that it's all so self-referential he doesn't understand why anyone else would be interested, and well, he was right.
- The artwork isn't exactly brilliant. I know it's very much in the eye of the beholder, but Tibet can certainly do better than these second-grade-caliber crayon doodles.
- The booklet is cheaply made and basically falls apart after the first read-through. Frustrating, to say the least.

I was blown away by a couple of tracks like Marc Almond's performance of "Idumea" and the loud, thrashing climax "Black Ships Ate the Sky", but couldn't help but be disappointed by the album as a whole. Too many of the tracks inspired by the black ship dream take one simplistic, short, and not even necessarily catchy acoustic guitar melody, stretch it out for a few minutes, and are topped off by those crazy, indecipherable lyrics, so the result is something flat and cold and distant, not at all beautiful. You pretty much have to skip some tracks or be stoned or be David Tibet to really like this album.

Years in the making! Guest artists galore! The apocalypse!

It ends up being a great Current 93 album. Stands there with Thunder Perfect Mind as a brilliant gem from the mind of David Tibet.

I'd been waiting for this to be released and it's everything I expected and more. Everything is completely perfect. I think that if I had to pick a favourite moment on it it would have to be on "Black Ships Were Sinking Into Idumaea" where David sings 'Lazarus, Lazarus!' and then starts to sing in Greek/Coptic and the whole album just turns into it's own world...

It's worth every penny and more!

Black Ships Ate the Sky is the latest release from Current 93 (David Tibet, Michael Cashmore, Steven Stapleton, and Others). Black Ships Ate the Sky Is an amazing collection of songs featuring several guest performances by such names as Marc Almond, Bonnie Prince Billy, Baby Dee, Antony, Clodagh Simonds, Pantaleimon, Shirley Collins, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Ben Chasney. This is a great album with many great songs. I cannot stop listening to "Bind Your Tortoise Mouth".