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Current 93 released a new LP, played the UK w/ Nurse With Wound, doing stuff in California in 2019

October 17, 2018

Current 93, the long-running and prolific “Hallucinatory Patripassianist rock group” led by David Tibet, just released their first album in three years, The Light is Leaving Us All. Tibet’s brew of neofolk, goth, renaissance styles, noise, industrial and more remains heady and obsessed with the occult and end times, and the record “possibly probably certainly perhaps” features appearances by Alasdair Roberts, Aloma Ruiz Boada, Andrew Liles, Ben Chasny, Michael J. York, Ossian Brown, Reinier van Houdt, Rita Knuistingh Neven, and Thomas Ligott. You can stream the whole thing below.

The Light is Leaving Us All‘s release was celebrated with a rare Current 93 live performance at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire on October 13 that also featured longtime C93 associates and “SisterGroup” Nurse With Wound. (Tibet has played in NWW whose leader Steven Stapleton has played in C93.) You can check out video from both their sets below.

Nurse With Wound reissued 1982’s Homotopy to Marie earlier this year, a “Best New Reissue” according to Pitchfork who wrote:

Nurse With Wound’s history is clearly tied to surrealists and experimentalists of the past; the list of influences included on [earlier album] Chance Meeting has become a sacred text of noise music. But this essential reissue demonstrates how Stapleton’s legacy persists into the present—and not just in the foundational mark his albums left on noise acts as different as Whitehouse, Wolf Eyes, and Death Grips.

Marie’s patchwork construction, pieced together through multiple studio sessions, is echoed in labors of love such as Talk Talk’s Laughing Stockand even Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (a comparison that sounds less crazy when you consider that producer Jim O’Rourke both worked on the latter album and collaborated with Nurse With Wound). Nurse With Wound described their work early on as “sound sculpture” rather than as music, a term that has since stuck to Oneohtrix Point Never. And the ghostly power that Stapleton conjures through manipulating voices on tape, Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland summoned with the obscure internet videos they sampled as Hype Williams.

Current 93’s 2014’s LP, I Am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel, featured Antony Hegarty, Nick Cave, John Zorn and more. C93 were supposed to tour the U.S. in 2011 but it never happened. Perhaps they’ll make it here this time around (they would have been perfect — new album to promote included – for Days of Darkness’ 2018 edition happening in Baltimore later this month). Meanwhile, there is a November show scheduled in Switzerland, and David will be displaying his art at a gallery in California in March, “planned surprises” included:

Jacqueline Bunge and I are excited to announce, “Invocation of Almost: The Art of David Tibet,” opening March 9th, 2019 at the Begovich Gallery in Fullerton California. This exhibition is free to the public. The opening reception will be from 5-8pm, with a talk beforehand at 4pm.

This exhibition will encompass a great deal of David Tibet’s artwork, old and new, as well as a variety of Current 93 ephemera. In addition, there will be 2D and 3D installations never before seen, as well as an entirely new musical score created specifically for this exhibition. There are further surprises planned for this event, so please join us on 3/9/19, along with David Tibet, for the opening celebration of his visionary masterpieces.

An extensive full color hardback book of the exhibition (along with a limited special edition) will be produced with text and essays by Thomas Ligotti, Nick Cave, Anohni, Shirley Collins, Nick Blinko, Henry Boxer, Norbert Kox, Michel Faber, Daniel Wojcik and possibly more.

Although we have a limited amount remaining, please send me a personal message if you would like the save the date cards, shown in the photo of David, sent to you by mail (free of charge). If you have any questions regarding the details of this exhibition please email Jacqueline Bunge at: [email protected]

Maybe there’ll be a U.S. show scheduled around that.