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Rating: While nurturing an unconditional love for the band led by David Tibet, I have wisely avoided, over the years, impulsively purchasing every record release by Current 93. As we well know, Tibet certainly hasn't been ungenerous in publishing everything that crossed his mind; however, I'm particularly fond of the double live album “All Dolled Up Like Christ”, if for no other reason than that it was unexpectedly revealed to me at a stall in the used market of my miserable city. Not exactly an everyday occurrence.
And “All Dolled Up Like Christ” is truly a good product, among the best live albums released by Current 93 in its vast discography: not only does it manage to capture the magic, the atmosphere, the spiritual, dare I say religious, fervor, which are palpable during those sorts of collective rites that are live performances by Current 93, but it also comes to represent an exhaustive compendium of a specific phase of their career, serving as an ideal best of for anyone approaching Tibet and his companions for the first time.
The album immortalizes the two phantasmagorical nights (Halloween night and the following one) that Current performed at the Orensanz Foundation in New York back in 1996, and essentially has the merit of capturing the band at the peak of its folk splendor. And it is no coincidence that the most significant albums of that fortunate artistic season are plundered, namely “Thunder Perfect Mind,” “Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre,” and “All the Pretty Little Horses,” which have remained among the most beautiful albums ever produced by Current 93 and the entire genre over the years.
During these two nights, accompanying the good Tibet, are the musicians who most distinguished that superb artistic phase: I mention Michael Cashmore (guitar), Rose McDowall (vocals), Joolie Wood (violin), and Karl Blake (bass) among the most emblematic names. In short: a setlist full of immortal classics (which today it is prohibitive to hope for), the best possible lineup, a creatively speaking unrepeatable period: what more could one ask for? The sounds are not perfect, it's true, but they are good, more than decent enough to allow the tracks to break free from the chains imposed by the recording studio and to soar into the air rougher and more incisive than ever. The performance, too, is not flawless, but even in this case, the quality of the result is not compromised, since from a live album, essentially devoid of post-production tweaks, one can expect imperfections and smudges.
The only real note to make is that it all could have been collected on a single medium, as the two volumes have almost identical setlists: not a big deal, as the saying goes, "more is less," so why be upset if, in the end, we have two concerts instead of one, perhaps to be listened to at separate times?
Let's finally move on to the contents: Shirley Collins' archaic singing, as if it came from an old broken radio, draws the audience’s attention in the room; the tremulous voice of a child, Tibet's own daughter, introduces the event and shortly precedes the band's entrance on stage. Cashmore's guitar and Wood's piercing violin break through the sparse clapping, and it's already goosebumps. Tibet's live voice, the ungainly minstrel of the apocalypse, is also chilling, and the enchantment will last for over an hour. It's “In the Heart of the Wood” that is providentially called to open “Alpha”, the first volume, which, as we said, will barely differ from the other, obviously named “Omega”.
The folk jewels that characterize the "middle age" of Current 93's career are reproduced quite faithfully compared to the original versions, purged of electronic contaminations (the guru of dark electronics Steven Stapleton is, after all, absent), but revitalized by the interpretative verve of a David Tibet in a state of grace.
The tracks follow one another like in a multiple and continuous orgasm, from which classics such as “Song for Douglas After He's Dead” and “The Death of the Corn” soar in all their beauty, the latter even more beautiful than the original, embellished for the occasion by McDowall's poignant counterpoint. A sound flow that, interrupted from time to time by the enthusiastic applause of the enraptured audience (in religious silence during performances), manages to homogenize the various concepts that originally animated the albums. Apt, in this regard, is the sequential reproposition of “Dormition and Dominion”-“So: This Empire is Nothing”-“This Shining Shining World”, just as it happened on "Of Ruine of Some Blazing Starre": a concept within a concept, we could say, and this is just one example of how the whole gains coherence and is reborn to new life. For the rest, the setlists are well crafted, mostly gathering folk tracks and acoustic reinterpretations of pieces born under the sign of chaos (how not to mention in this regard the acoustic version of “Horsey”, which here takes on the form of an evocative ballad of over eight minutes, suggestive in its calmness and intense in its impetuous crescendos: a version that, even in this case, far surpasses the original electric triumph).
So if the “new” Current take center stage, pleasant excursions into the band's past will not be lacking, such as the tracks drawn from the seminal “Swastikas for Goddy” (the overwhelming “Oh Coal Black Smith”, the alienating nursery rhyme of the darkness “Black Flowers, Please”), or the various “Be”, “Happy Birthday Spooky Moonbeam”, and “The Blue Gates of Death”, among the first folk experiments carried out by the band in the late eighties, here re-interpreted in the light of increased expressive and execution maturity.
In both volumes, the real surprises are relegated to the so-called encores, where “Alpha” concludes with a furious “Lucifer Over London” (shortened of the final lilting tail, thus regenerated into two minutes of insane and visionary punk), while the farewell of “Omega” is entrusted even to the theme of the mystical “Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow”, a perfect expedient to bid farewell to the audience as the group exits the stage.
The mass is finished. Therefore, all that remains is to “dress up like Christ,” press play once more, and finally abandon ourselves to the spiritual fumes of Current in its most fascinating and refined form.
Alpha:
In the Heart of the Wood (And What I found There)
Calling for Vanishing Faces II
This Carnival is Dead and Gone
The Descent of Long Satan and Babylon
Black Flowers, Please
Be
All the World Makes Great Blood
The Great, Bloody and Bruised Veil of the World
A Song For Douglas After He's Dead
Horsey
Happy Birthday Spooky Moonbeam
Oh Coal Black Smith
Dormition and Dominion
So: This Empire is Nothing
This Shining Shining World
A Sadness Song
Lucifer Over London
Omega:
The Death of the Corn
Calling for Vanishing Faces I
Happy Birthday Peek-a-Moonbeam
Horsey
All the World Makes Great Blood
The Great, Bloody and Bruised Veil of the World
A Song For Douglas After He's Dead
Dormition and Dominion
So: This Empire is Nothing
This Shining Shining World
Oh Coal Black Smith
Black Flowers, Please
When the May Rain Comes
The Blue Gates of Death
In the Heart of the Wood (And What I found There)
A Sadness Song
Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 In the Heart of the Wood and What I Found There (03:42)
In the heart of the wood
In the closed forest
Christ appeared to me
In several forms
One two three four
Swastika I'm told
On the Cliffs of Moher
I walk with Mary
Behind the eyes
Of his innocence or guile
The young old man talks
Of the brittle walls
That kept his son
Pinionned pinionned pinnioned
Mary walks on the Cliffs
But not on water
Then Christ appeared as wind
Mary runs down from the highwalls
Christ appears as flowers
Down longpath she walks
Christ appears as the rubble
That holds the stones
That holds the paths
That holds the feet
To the bones of the earth
If she waits
Oh if she wakes
Christ manifests slowly
As the dust on her eyes
Before she falls again
Into fields of sleep
(I would like this anger to dissolve)
And I wait for another
Revolution or revelation
It doesn't too much matter
If I see blood in wheals
"All shall be well" she said
But not for me
Not for me
The skeleton of the universe
Barbed wire of blues and stars
Remains unmoved
When the mother ocean covers me
I rush to drown
With her breakers
"All shall be well" she said
She said
"All shall be well"
But not for me
But not for me
02 Calling for Vanished Faces II (04:16)
If only I could take all of you at once
I would take you for ever and ever and only so
Lose myself in you
And so I smile and skip green god like there
The picture of allrage all lust and wanton
The inmost night
And lay waste to the playgrounds
The concrete covers all
The grass sleeps and waits to rise again
It listens for the final trumpet of
The inmost light
And I clench my left hand
Then I open it
The Gods I loved
Are all dead pages metal signs all gone
Edward Alexander in some sadhome falls alone
And sees clearly now the inmost light
The sadness of the inmost light
The growl the grip an final sigh
Paint by numbers of the inmost light
The plastic form illusion
We just have time to swallow
Before the doorknock of the inmost light
He waits at the door he waits at the door
And if you see me try to grin and then I hide
Myself behind a ball
A sign I wish to play and run hideandseek
The sound is gay and full of joy
It masks the binding of our eyes
The scourge of all the bone fire burns
We hop and skip and trick and treat
Just watch your heart and soul and all
And watch your back
It's waiting there and smiling there
The inmost light
Unforgiving there the inmost night
So broken there the inmost light
Howling
The inmost light
Bad bad bad bad inmost night
04 The Descent of Long Satan and Babylon (02:49)
Long Satan and Babylon are walking
They're talking of fire and of ice
Of the silence that stalks in the forest
And a Christ spun out of the worlds
Long Satan and Babylon are moving
Through a world ripped away from its centre
They shear through the rushes
They follow the night night night night
They want want want want want want
Everything
Long Satan and Babylon are rushing
They are hurtling away
From the centre of things
They are running from the inside
The wind cries full and in them
Cuts through their emptiness
Hoof on stone
Claw against sun
Where to look in an unknown
Where to search in the vast whole
Piggy-back cross oh piggy-black cross
Into the silence thundering
As they only hear the silence
They do not hear the pain
But Christ sees everything
The little children are falling
They'll topple till the end of the world
Long Satan and Babylon keep running
Through a universe empty of sound
Though the world makes dark shadows
You must look in your heart
In the dark
You must look in your heart
07 All the World Makes Great Blood (03:47)
Sorry then bird flight
Passes across my window
Sorry then dog crouches
Under the still sun
Sorry then moi je
Regrette tout ce que
J'ai fait
O le soleil se couche I
Lie me down I lay
With Your body under the
Honeysun
Suckled lovewing mine
You were
I was not yet dressed Tibetan red
And into You, as You'll recall
I fled
The twig-smashed landscape
Is rolling and waving
Wolf wild wide wind walking
Soft smoke star space stalking
This is the comic book end
We have waited for
And not believed in
Oh nearly not at all
Oh nearly not at all
Once when we were young
Oh once we were so young
And the rainways licking the glass
Made us the observers of the distant distance
We there watched the sky's goddy tears
Only once did GoodGod cry black
And then all the clockmovements start
To crick crack crick
By the hairs on my head
By the stare in my eyes
By the pain in my heart
I shall whisper through signs:
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
All this world makes great blood
10 Horsey (08:40)
Horses are riding into her arms
She lost her own way years ago
Her sister calls her from the far side of night
And she falls with that call
The only way out:
She tells me "I love you"
But it's only a game
So she slides from the silence
She's fixing a time
To move back into darkness;
Again with a smile
"Don't touch me - I'm falling"
She laughs in the night
"Don't catch me - I'll return
When the wheel comes around
You see we're all born to suffer
We're all born to fall
In the fading world
That calls us to Zero"
She touches my body;
I crouch up to die
Down the ramblers we're walking;
In Reykjavik, talking
She's reading a book
Finished years ago
She's tearing up paper - she's tearing up life
But she only starts thinking
When her blood is brown
Gold is the colour she promised to wear
But Christ's blood turns black
His body she bears
But she dipped him in water, and she blackened the faith.
It's hard to believe them when they spit in your face
And I don't want to touch you;
I don't want to lie
In the brownredgold slumber
That you've taken to ride
I remember I was thinking only of you
And I built you a playground,
It was built up with crosses.
But you wanted a valley
Where horse could run free
We knew it was over when you stammered out lies
It's hard to keep riding when the world is on fire
It's hard to keep riding when your eyes fill with blood
It's hard to keep riding when your grip has grown slack
It's hard to keep riding when your network is sliding
We were listening to lions at Flantern with James
We were riding the trams to kneel at his wake
Though Christ is impaled through the Cross with His hands
You'd make your own gospel centred on hooves
Christ I was thinking of Your bended arm:
It is blue on the outside; it is blue on the inside
You said as you buckled, as if you would die:
There's no point in living.. there's no point in life
There's spit on the bridle: there's blood in the saddle
And you slip in the shit - you shat in yourself
And Christus is Equus - and Equus is floored
You follow in footsteps made by a flower
Then I wanted to touch you -
But you're destined to fall
12 Oh Coal Black Smith (03:25)
Oh she looked out of the window
As white as any milk
But he looked in the window
As black as any silk
"Hello hello hello hello
Hello you coal black smith
Oh what is your silly song?
You shall never change my maiden name
That I have kept so long
I'd rather die a maid, yes"
But then she said
"And be buried in my grave, yes"
And then she said
"That I'd have such a nasty
Husky, dusky, musty, funky
Coal black smith,
A maiden will I die"
Then she became a duck
A duck all on the stream
And he became a water dog
And fetched her back again
Then she became a hare
A hare all on the plain
And he became a greyhound dog
And fetched her back again
Then she became a fly
A fly all in the air
And he becamee a spider
And fetched her to his lair
And she became a corpse,
A corpse all In the ground
And he became the cold grey clay
And smothered her all around
13 Dormition and Dominion (05:19)
In the mind of god
The dead sleeping lie
And the little cogs though unmoving
Hover over the turning wheel
All life's a farce
The broken bird is draped over the paths
And paths and paths and paths
And those who say this world is not
The bloody gleaming paradise of blood and jewel
Lie
Opal and pearl bloodsocket castings
Ruby jasmine jasper and onyx
Chalcedonthrone and ambergriscrown
Golden green leafwork
Scrolled with the farstars
Pitted with the moonworlds
Mother alldewey
Arrayed with the twinkling lights
The wovengold spungilded blinking godeyes
The spearshafts of heaven
The souldwelling rockhomes
Are...
Dormition and Dominion
Dormition and Dominion
The Mother is dead
The Mother awakens
Dormition
She sleeps
Dominion
He rules
She sleeps and rules
In her starry bodied glory
The Mother sleeps
The Mother loves
Dormition and Dominion
I wait
...Are the holders of the world and its dreams
I say there is no death
No death
We have lived before and shall live again
And again
We have slept before and shall sleep again
We have danced through the shallow pools
And shall rejoice once again
To those who say there is no hope
I say liars
Liars
Liars you are
Over the starry dancing stars
There is a land
Under the sweatribbed brow
There is a land
And this is the globed world of the Pantocrator
Finally I have understood
I have understood
I have understood
Though when I slip sleeping and silently
From this ribbed room of sighs
You shall not find the history of His personal visit
Sewn into my linings perhaps
Nevertheless I have understood
Where the logician watches god hinge all on a die
Nevertheless I have understood!
That all this is the breathbetween moment
Our eyeslids open and close
Between is the land
Between the time I first was accepted
In between Your brightboned body
Between then and there and the time You wept:
"Goodbye my love goodbye to you"
There there was the land
In the pearls of our heart
There is the immaculate heavenly loveland
In the middle of the forest Acton is slain by his own hounds
In the middle of the forestEustace meets the crisscross Stag
There is the land he has reached paradise
There is no death
There is no death
There as the stag turns and smiled loved
There he was takencaught by the prey
All the flowers are blossoming
And all the world calls to you:
"Dormition" - so you sleep
"Dominion" - so you rule
Dormition - oh You sleep, Mother
Dominion - Father, You rule
14 So: This Empire Is Nothing (01:11)
So: this Empire is nothing
Before me the green fields are stretched out
The broken body of a cat glows there
And the shimmering flies fall
This Empire is nothing
I said "I guess this isn't real"
This Empire is not real
I cannot hang words on the Silence
Everywhere God's goldenlight
S. said "You have appeared to me for a reason"
And I said to Her:
"Who do You say I am?"
Like One better before
16 A Sadness Song (04:17)
When we touch the world
And it falls away
When we feel that we're born
Just to fall apart
And our mother lies in state
And the broken pitcher glistens
And the snow is at the window
Creating neither sign nor symbol
And the earth covers earth
And the mud lies in pools
Where the sanddunes stretch unbroken
And the dry wind bends and sighs
And the geese are running harmless
And our desires are running wild
Then we're looking at the smoke
That's rising from the incense
Neither coming here nor going
Neither heaven here nor hell
Neither borning here nor birthing
Neither dying here nor death
And we're wrapped inside our troubles
And we're wrapped inside our pain
And wracked with fires with longing
And our eyes are blind with night
With our fingers clutching coins
And our thoughts burning with I
And our eyes cannot be sated
With the world and its nightmares
With the world and its dreams
Though later they'll be filled
With a small handful of dust
And the Gods appear on the altars
And we recognise their face
It's a face that we have carved there
And it's full of fear and longing
And promises and threats
But they neither stoop to conquer
Not do they stoop to praise
And the mines are void of diamonds
That we carry in our rags
Then all the world seems
A sadness song
And all the world seems
A sadness song
17 Lucifer Over London (03:43)
The twisted wings and clouds unfold
And the greatgape of He who fell
Makes darkened shadows over pointed spires
Little children point and sing
And little children run and dance
Over there the setting sun
And under that the silent stars
And under they the weeping sky
And under Her the laughing world
(Balance sits in western parts
And piles spare Spares in his gabled room)
Great Anarch and Monarch of Not
The Flight of Lucifer over London
And my little grandson
Wrinkled son forehead
All tiny blue pain
As the Mother Blood emerges
Then the Mother Grief
And the Blue Gates of Death
Open armwide
Open teethwide
All dead like the leaves
Old times shiver
Old dead calendar
Past blurred sunsets
Cinders flying in His heart His heart
His fingers punch holes in the sky
(And all the little Christs I count
Are covered in the breathwhite snow
And all the little Christs I call
Are laughing through the green green fields)
Some of those angels have the face of God
And some of them have the face of dogs
(By the Tower of Moad - see the sky's Greenangel form)
And lucifer flickers all around me
His hooded eyes alight
In the smoky musk
Look into Him just a little longer
See the true face of the Moon
So He wheels there through the heavens
His eyes are dotted brightlights
Licked with dust
A golden seabird
Halfdead with spray
His banners broken flags in the wind
Devouring life he breaks at walls
The glint of dead fruits glint
And then the Moon...
And then the Moon...
And then the Moon...
(And sixsixsix
It makes us sick
We're sicksicksick
of 666)
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