Current 93 & HÖH
Island

THE REVIEW

In 1990, after a previous isolated collaboration, the artistic experience of David Tibet and his entourage (Current 93) was enriched with an actual album written and made with the Icelandic musician HOH (Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson). An electronic alchemist of great visionary talent who, sharing common esoteric and literary interests, utilized the numerous elements orbiting around Tibet to produce a true masterpiece.
Island is an intense, magical work, full of that charm which only certain arcane cultural references can offer. Built with the help of much electronics, but embellished with acoustic sounds and male and female voices, it features eight tracks that in a sense develop a part of the path already taken by Current 93 and various alternate and occasional ensembles that have emerged from it.
After the compelling, almost tribal rhythmic opener Falling, which benefits from Bjork's vocal contribution - at the time very close to becoming an international icon, but still unknown to the general public - the tracklist offers us the splendid The Dream Of A Shadow Of Smoke, perhaps the most evident example of HOH’s talent. A vivid descriptiveness, an atmosphere out of space and time that leaves one enchanted, blending nearly ethnic rhythms and recitative voices with the inspirations of a poetic (and prophetic) text from the 1600s, with a title that alludes to a story by Le Fanu. A long and complex track that culminates with a highly effective choral part and then resumes the initial melodies.
And then other pearls of great fascination where Tibet’s shrill and unmistakable voice merges with the crepuscular and nocturnal electronic mosaics that paint spectral scenarios. Passing Horse, the poignant Anyway People Die, and To Blackened Earth stand out among them.
The album also features a version of Fields Of Rape, a famous song already performed by Death in June on their 1985 album Nada!; here revisited in a softer and more emotional key. A sort of sign of continuity with the vast production that emerged from the Tibet entourage and the so-called Church of Noddy’s Apocalypse, given that the song itself is further related to the lyrics of Falling Back Into Fields of Rape penned by Tibet himself.
The year 1990 is, however, far from the mephistophelian beginnings of the English group, by then committed to introspection and the acoustic essentiality of so-called apocalyptic folk after a handful of truly experimental and extreme albums. HOH met David Tibet when Current 93 already reinterpreted the history of esotericism and surrealism, the work of Crowley and Lautréamont with a less hagiographic and also more ironic, as well as poetic, approach. Island is the result of great maturation and brings to the forefront the compromise between external research and content, in a manner surely different from the EP Crowleymass that HOH had recorded with Tibet a few months earlier with a mocking spirit and a sound that winked at the dancefloor.