Current 93
Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God

Giving only three palettes to "Swastikas for Goddy" (or Noddy?)*, perhaps I was excessively harsh.

It's an album that has never fully convinced me: sometimes I listen to it with pleasure, other times not, and perhaps I wrote the review during one of those times.

The importance of a "Swastikas..." is, however, beyond question, because of the people who played on it, the tracks it contains, but above all for being the first step towards the folk universe driven by the creation of David Tibet. So much so that, alongside Death in June's "Brown Book" (released in the same year, 1987), "Swastikas for Goddy" is generally considered one of the cornerstones of the genre.

In light of all this, many ingenuities and some excessive flaws could have been understood and forgiven, yet I still think that there is something wrong with that work. And probably the same idea was shared by Tibet himself, who decided a couple of years later to reconsider the original material and shape it into a more perfect form.

"Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God", released in 1989, is therefore the rehash of "Swastikas...", as Tibet explains in the liner notes: "This is a remixed, re-structured and re-recorded version of Swastikas for Noddy, thus the before and after Iceland colours are now complete".

So only two years passed, but for a prolific band like Current 93, there was time to release as many as three albums ("Imperium", "Christ and the Pale Queens Mighty in Sorrow", "Earth Covers Earth") and to refine its own language, increasingly distant from the gloomy industrial ritual of its origins.

However, be careful, we should not expect a "Swastikas..." in a revised, corrected, and polished version: "Crooked Crosses..." paradoxically manages to be even more bizarre and irrational than the original. It's unclear how, yet the album seems to have an extra gear compared to its raw ancestor: the pieces seem to rejuvenate and shine with new life, the production is more attentive and less sparse than in the past, the sounds more rounded and enveloping, the visions clearer, more luminous and richer in nuances.

The tracks not only have new titles and a new order but end up being distorted, mutilated, overlapped, mixed, and aggregated in a hodgepodge that does not intend to put things in order, but rather reinterpret them in light of the artist's maturation: the images are decomposed and refracted as if Tibet were turning the dial of a fantastic kaleidoscope, and the result is a psychedelic roundabout to which we join with the joy and fears of a child who has had LSD poured into his milk.

The string of artists involved is impressive: Douglas P. (Death in June), John Balance (Coil), Boyd Rice (NoN), Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus), Ian Read (Fire + Ice), Steven Stapleton (Nurse with Wound), Freya Aeswynn, Rose McDowall, and the Icelandic artist HÖH (with whom Tibet will later collaborate to bring to light the wonderful "Island"). Although then, it should be noted, for the most part, these are contributions from the sessions of two years prior taken unaltered and discarded.

The hand of the trusty Stapleton, master of industrial transfiguration, is evident, and to him, I suppose, we owe the greater commitment in reworking the material. Tibet, for his part, reinterprets some pieces anew and also introduces some pleasant innovations (like the unreleased "Toytown Awakes"); the sixties guitar of Pearce, finally, flows beautifully among carillons, improbable invocations, and nursery rhymes, in a surreal and childish atmosphere that alternately lays on altars of madness, the dream journey, and even simple idiocy.

"Crooked Crosses...", like "Swastikas..." before it, remains one of the quirkiest and most carefree albums by Current, where only at times does unease surface: in Ian Read's invocations, in Boyd Rice's warlike rants, in the hallucinatory duets between Tibet and McDowall.

It's pointless to dwell on the individual details, one could get lost. However, two episodes deserve to be mentioned.

"Oh Thou Coal Black Smith", a reworking of the historic "Oh Coal Black Smith", loses the famous counterpoint of McDowall (here replaced by a hypnotic guitar arpeggio), but gains in tension and emotional intensity: the track thus becomes a fierce folk ride where Tibet's frenzied singing generates a visionary crescendo that undoubtedly constitutes one of the highest moments of the entire production of the Current.

"Panzer Runes", on the other hand, transforms into "Looney Runes", the strangest track of all: of the original piece, only the industrial carpet and Freya Aeswynn's mantra chant are retained, while the whole is crushed by a powerful drum machine and the deadly blasts of a distorted bass. The result would be halfway between a robust post-punk and a heavy metal piece, if not for Tibet's cartoonish voice (here accelerated and sharpened) that tempers the violent and threatening progress of the track and turns it into the hilarious carousel of a madman.

For obvious reasons, "Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God" is not part of the essential discography of Current 93, but it remains a very beautiful and enjoyable album, highly recommended to all fans of David Tibet's band.

* The album was originally released under the title "Swastikas for Noddy"; then, in 1993, the title was changed to "Swastikas for Goddy" due to copyright issues, and from that moment every reference to Noddy was replaced with Goddy.