Current 93
Haunted Waves, Moving Graves

In the early 2000s, David Tibet's creation was in a state of disorientation, conceptual and thus stylistic, which had rendered the path of the Current uncertain and faltering. At the time of "Hypnagogue," there were even rumors of a definitive shelving of the project, a course no longer congruent for a Tibet who had surprisingly recently converted to Christian doctrine, after years of rigorous satanic militancy.  Instead, a miracle happened, an "artistic resurrection" occurred, and this happened under the sign of a trilogy of albums such as "Black Ships Ate the Sky," "Aleph at the Hallucinatory Mountain" and "Baalstorm Sing Omega." A journey in truth more composite, not limited to the three albums mentioned above, but also includes the split with OM "Inerrant Rays of Infallible Sun (Blackship Shrinebuilder)," a worthy appendix to "Black Ships Ate the Sky," and the EP "Birth Canal Blues," equally worthy anticipation of the subsequent "Aleph at the Hallucinatory Mountain." And if the third chapter "Baalstorm Sing Omega" seemed to have come out too quickly, here at a few months from its publication is released "Haunted Waves, Moving Graves" (published in a limited edition of 999 copies - a number of copies more than sufficient for the amount of ears willing to consider it) to restore balance and to complete what until now seemed the "weak chapter" of the three.

"Haunted Waves, Moving Graves" is an album that we could define post-apocalyptic, for its ability to describe an inanimate, "dead" landscape, devoid of life, where the only element of dynamism is the blind and repetitive ebb of waves, waves "haunted" as if by ghosts, "moving graves" in which the last remnants of humanity seem to lie. As the saying goes in these cases: the calm after the storm. A storm that had been announced by certain thunderous episodes of "Black Ships Ate the Sky" (think of the nervous cacophony of the title track), a storm then definitively exploded with the blasting sound of the rough (and new) electricity explored with "Inerrant Rays..." and "Aleph at the Hallucinatory Mountain," with the impetuous vocal splurges of "Birth Canal Blues"; a storm finally dying down in the descending parabola (but not without jolts) of "Baalstorm Sing Omega."

A storm definitively faded away in the ambient stasis of this latest work: a work that definitively abandons the apocalyptic folk stylings, yet at the same time is not akin to the grim experiments of the origins, shrouded in the dark-industrial shadows of a genre still in becoming; nor is it similar to the ambient efforts that now and then our band has managed to dispense (and I am reminded of the works born from the collaboration with writer Thomas Ligotti, where the electronic component was still predominant).

If I haven't missed something, it was since the time of the EP "Faust" (it was 2000) that the Current hadn't proposed something of the kind. But too much water has passed under the bridge, the Current has meanwhile emancipated itself too much from the industrial ethos to return to its past as if nothing had happened, and so "Haunted Waves, Moving Graves" could not fail to take into account the evolution the project has had over the years: thus today Current 93, so different, so coherent, indulge in a peculiar form of chamber music that finds its strength in the synergy between John Contreras's cello, Baby Dee's piano, Andrew Liles's electronic manipulations, who now seems to have definitively taken the place of the master Steven Stapleton, of whom Liles nonetheless remains a worthy disciple, as well as his trusted right arm in Nurse with Wound (as if Stapleton had passed the baton to the only person he could trust, to whom he could entrust his dear friend David Tibet).

And so surprising is the career of Current 93 that a fact as surprising as "a Current 93 album without Tibet" does not surprise at all. Although, as we know, a Current 93 album cannot exist without Tibet, whose presence remains tangible as the inspiring soul of the work (a presence that is felt not only from the simple yet intense and peculiar poetics of the title, but also from the cover - in my opinion terrible - falling from Tibet's own pictorial sack).

The connection with the previous work is evident: if "Baalstorm Sing Omega" ended with the waves crashing against the cliffs, "Haunted Waves, Moving Graves" starts again from the sound of the waves, which will accompany us throughout the seventy-one minutes (fifty for those who own the vinyl) that make up the total duration of the work: a work divided into two very long compositions, "She is Naked Like the Water" and "The Sound of the Storm Was Spears", which in truth one is the continuation of the other, so much so that one can speak of a single setting.

In summary, the first part stands out for the intense operation of Contreras, starting from afar (from very afar: from silence and then from the calm of a long undulating reinforced by morbid, almost mythological organ dissonances) to develop into a slow, painful, restless crescendo in which his cello is called to weave sublime interweavings that are much more than careful improvisation; the second part, instead, is opened by the glacial partitions of an extended, cosmic (or rather "coastal") electronics that imperceptibly gives way to the melancholic phrasing of Baby Dee's piano (poetry in its purest state). But it is obvious that everything must be listened to, breathed, lived in a state of surrender, where art merges with magic.

Endowed with elegance, sinuosity, formal perfection that are divine, "Haunted Waves, Moving Graves" sounds like a passionate requiem dedicated to humanity as a whole, a tragic melody that, desolate, at the same time leaves room for "something totally other" that certainly cannot be grasped with the sole weapons of reason: a great album, perhaps not a masterpiece, nor something particularly innovative (as were the first works of Current 93); and for many it will certainly be excessively long, verbose, redundant in its pedantically dwelling on the same themes and moods, but like all Current 93 albums (whether successful or not) it is something unique, tremendously deep, dictated by a communicative urgency that justifies its essence.

Difficult to define or assign its actual artistic value, impossible to give an objective judgment outside the thematic concept sprouted and developed in the immediately preceding works. Perhaps futile to conceive it as a thing in itself. Certainly, in the light of what has just been heard, the whole recent history of Current takes on a different light. And it is nice to think that this is not a conclusion, but the prelude to something equally splendid.