Current 93 - Thunder Perfect Mind (16 tracks) +Album Reviews

The best of the best

Dave Lang | Coburg, VIC Australia | 08/30/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Current 93 are admittedly an aquired taste. I myself do not like a good third of their material, but when they're on, they're on, and this is about as ON as they've ever gotten. Taking a huge musical swing with '88's "Earth Covers Earth" (also a C93 high point), where inwhich they dropped their creepy industrial tag only to steep themselves in a kind of strange, mystical folk netherworld inspired by the likes of the Incredible String Band, Comus and Shirley/Dolly Collins, the band was well traversed in the given genre by 1992 to make their masterpiece. This is it. Featuring the usual suspects of Balance/Wood/Stapleton/McDowall, etc., as well as the likes of Nick Saloman (that's Bevis Frond to you, sir), David Tibet has successfully created a simply mesmerising collection of songs that play on all the best aspects of his talents: the ability to tell creepy stories with a melodic, enchanting, yet often melancholy backdrop by his cohorts. "A Sadness Song" is probably the best song he's ever done, and the 10+ minute track, "Hitler as Kalki", contains some stunning psych guitar work from Mr. Saloman. "Thunder Perfect Mind" contains next to none of the insane ranting nor vapid pretensions that marr certain other C93 releases, and all that talk of them being "gothic masters" (and I loathe "gothic" music) is pure baloney: this is pure psychedelia the way it should be: a head trip without the drugs, just the sounds."

An album of fragile, crystalline perfection

Dave Lang | 03/11/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Current 93 are, in my opinion, the best band working, possibly ever. David Tibet takes the excessively prolific aesthetic of Psychic TV several steps further. Not only does he release a ton of music, but he releases a ton of GOOD music, which is more difficult. Really, I can't think of a band with more truly great albums than Current 93. That said, Thunder Perfect Mind stands out even in Tibet's catalogue. Stated simply this is perfect music. When I first heard this, I knew I was hearing the music I had been searching years for. Everything on this album is right, lyrics, arrangements, performance, vocal deliveries, everything. It also marks a sort of end of an era for Current 93, being the last recording to feature longtime contributors Douglas P and Rose McDowall (although Rose has continued to perform live with Tibet) and the first to feature Michael Cashmore, who has had much to do with the band's sound since. It also marks a sort of end to Tibet's more epic songwriting styles, soon to be replaced by much more personal material. When it came out, Thunder Perfect Mind seemed to represent an unreachable peak for Current 93. Then came "Of Ruine," and the peak was reached once again. Brilliant."

Subjectivity and the Word

Luis Santiago Baptista | Lisboa, Portugal | 10/10/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Thunder Perfect Mind" is a gnostic poem of rare beauty. We only know it because it remained hidden until it was discovered in Egypt in 1945, escaping the repression of the early church in the second century of our age. The ideas of Gnosticism were considered dangerous because they defied the instuticionalised rules of the church proposing a more personal relation to God. What does this have to do with this magnificent album of Current 93? In this record David Tibet follows a somehow similar operation inherent to Gnosticism entering a more personal path culminating a extraordinary discography influenced by a fascination with religion around the texts of Christianism, Budhism, Paganism, etc (Imperium, Swastikas for Noddy, Earth Covers Earth, etc). This fascination is to continue for the brilliant albuns to follow, but with an increasing personal touch (Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre, All the Pretty Little Horses, Soft Black Stars, Sleep as His House). "Thunder Perfect Mind" is the key album of this transition, where both paths, the historic and the personal, start to collide and mix. There is nothing like it. The strangeness of the musical atmosphere throw us in the sphere of transcendence through imanence, where the terrestrial dialectic opositions disseminates in an all inclusive world. This album doesn't simply illustrate the Sacred Word. And it doesn't only gives you an individual expression, a personal interpretation. We, along with Mr Tibet and friends, confront ourselves with the incommensurability of Being. That is why this music is so powerful and cannot be easily described. It just opens the world through truly creative work. This is the poetic dimension of music, that cannot be understood as ligth entertainment for a capitalist society. There is melancholy ("sadness song"), schizophrenie ("Hitler as Kalky", "All the stars are dead now"), dreadness ("Thunder Perfect Mind"), pure beauty ("Mary waits in silence"), and so on. If you are interested in something that unveils our profound human nature this is one place to start musically digging..."

What an Album.

IcemanJ | Ohio, USA | 02/07/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Containing nothing more than a frightened, innocent looking cat on the cover, I think this album contains some of the best simple, dark, sad folk songs and a few strange, experimental ones. I should probably be saying things like "this is Current 93's highest point of their career," or "their best album by far", but I don't know for sure since the only other one I have so far is "All the Pretty Little Horses" - I'm having a little trouble obtaining more of their albums. This album is very diverse and solid, with 16 tracks, 78 minutes of music, and 15 people contributing things, complete with pictures of all of them. Instrumentation Includes: *takes a deep breath* 6 vocalists, 5 guitarists, 2 bassists, corrugations (samples), "smokes," percussion, hand percussion, violin, tin whistle, clarinet, recorder, harp, electric dulcimer, cello, and bells.It starts off with a very short instrumental, which sounds so medieval-like, but in a very warm, countryside kind of way... then it goes into "The Descent of Long Satan and Babylon," a fairly short and basic song. Next comes "A Sadness Song," one of my favorites. The acoustic melody is just so dark, calm, and satisfying, and after a while, the recorder is added to the song, along with female backing vocals adding more color and atmosphere. "A Song for Douglas After He's Dead" is complete with a pleasant medieval-sounding harp; this song really sounds like something you'd hear while exploring a castle in England in the 1500's. "In the heart of the wood and what I found there" starts off with the same melody as the first track, and turns out to be one of the best songs (I say that a lot though) that gradually picks up tempo and has a great flowing acoustic melody. "A Silence Song" is maybe my favorite song on the album, starting off very calmly, with one of the best cascading and soft acoustic melodies, along with cello, forming a very dark, lonely, and calm atmosphere, isolating the listener from reality. It's truly one of the most epic and inspiring songs I've ever heard, but in a subtle way, not lengthy or melodramatic by any means. "A Lament for My Suzanne" has more of those super light and fluffy vocals by Rose McDowell, and consists mainly of harp, no guitar. Harp should be used instead of guitar more often - it's very pleasant, yet melancholy. "Riverdeadbank" is one of the calmest songs; it has unique low-pitched female vocals and a very restrained violin loop in the background."All the Stars are Dead Now" begins some slightly strange and experimental songs. It starts off with a breif "big-band" type intro, with trumpets and everything, which is even more bizarre juxtaposed to the song before it. Most of the song has very bizarre sounding electronically distorted echoes on Tibet's voice, and he must say the word "dead" about 200 times, along with very strange, unsettling lyrics. The constant, repetitive acoustic guitar melody is very good, and when the recorder comes into the song though, it is so good. "Rosy Star Tears from Heaven" has more of the same vocals, but much more obvious, and almost frightening. Halfway through the song, you can hear the strange, raspy voice transform into a soft female voice, and they go through the same series of lyrics. This then transforms into "When the May Rain Comes" with a very nice intro that sounds good because its kind of "back to normal" after two strange songs. This sounds almost like a children's or fairytale song, with slightly southern-US sounding guitar work. "Thunder Perfect Mind I" & II are more on the experimental side, comparatively ambient and frightening, and pretty interesting. "Hitler as Kalki" is 16 and a half minutes long, and not one of my favorites, although it's not too bad. It starts off very slowly, and in my opinion, is quite tiresome in its entirety. The album concludes with "A Sad Sadness Song," sort of a reprise of track 4, changing aspects of it to make it sound the most depressing possible. The guitars are more distant and blurred together; the recorder melody is extremely distant and barely audible, and the vocals are handled by the same female on "Riverdeadbank" with the same style: very hopeless, low-pitched, lonely, and echoed. "A Sad Sadness Song" Indeed - the perfect way to close the album.This is by far one of my favorite Folk-Noir CDs so far (Probably third right now, who knows, I may consider it my favorite someday), it definitely is one of those albums that has a distinct sound that just cannot be found anywhere else, and can never be outdone by themselves or anyone else."

Dear God what an album!

Michael J Harper | Covina, CA United States | 02/04/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The tree of Current 93 take us through so many great talents and bands that it is best understood through the mind that they make, this particular mind being the "Thunder Perfect Mind." C93's other albums before it take us through another genre entirely of evil nightmare scapes and noise often called "experimantal noise" and "avant garde" music sharing the likes of "NON" and "Nurse With Wound"(two artists that also share thier part playing with C93) After this album the other albums continue the same basic structure of acoustic beauty and electronic strangeness riddled with pagan poetry. Gothic fans seem to most easily find Current 93 opening their minds to a religious and historical picture of music that invokes a desire to embrace a folk soundThis album is made mostly of beautiful 12 and 6 string acoustic arrangements that take us from our present time into a history of the lapseing brotherhood of religion and belief. A chorus of awesome and well read lyrics and David Tibets unmistakeable voice and the sampling imagery of Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) integrating remarkable scapes make this album maddening with artistic beauty. Try "All the Stars are Dead Now" and "Hitler as Kalki" to further warp your image of music into something so beyond pop yet as beautiful as your own existenialist view can fathom, further still..."

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