Steven Stapleton & Tony Wakeford
Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish

"Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish" is one of those albums that you buy because you're attracted by the names emblazoned on the cover; you listen to it once, then put it back on the shelves, letting it gather dust for long periods; it's one of those albums you suddenly remember you own, listen to it a second time, and then put it back on the shelves to gather dust for a few more years.

"Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish" clearly does not have the merit of a good wine, improving with age: the strange pair Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound) and Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus) do not live up to the promises that such a collaboration seemed to make us hope for. It was the year 1992: the two, who had the opportunity to meet and get to know each other some time earlier during the recording sessions of "Christ And The Pale Queens Mighty In Sorrow" by Current 93, finally found a way to cement their friendship with a studio project. The two might have had fun, and for them it might have been a nice experience: they could have limited themselves to a picnic on a Saturday afternoon and smoked a couple of joints instead of making a shitty record. But we know that recording and releasing records has never been a burden to certain people.

The pairing of the names, as mentioned, can dazzle at first (just as the surreal cover in typical Babs Santini style, author of many artworks for Nurse with Wound and Current 93, attracts), but let's seriously consider the matter for a second: what do the cerebral and ingenious Stapleton and the passionate and rough Wakeford really have in common? Nurse with Wound is one thing, Sol Invictus another. What emerges is a ramshackle hybrid between dark ambient and a senseless instrumental music that brings with it all the flaws (and, alas, not the virtues) of Sol Invictus from those years: primarily the technical and performative naivety of Wakeford, and we will not struggle to believe what I'm saying if we think of the head of Sol Invictus as a multi-instrumentalist (i.e. juggling guitars, bass, keyboards, and percussion). The professionalism shown during mixing by a tireless Stapleton (in truth, he too was somewhat unenthusiastic; or at least consistent in the role of one who lives the project as a careless scazzo between friends: zero desire to make a big deal out of it, a lot of readiness to just enjoy it) will help little.

And so? And so "Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish" ends up being a bland episode, lacking the communicative urgency to sustain it, negligible even for the most die-hard fans of the figures in question. A dozen tracks hastily thrown together, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Stapleton's methodological rigor crumbles at contact with Wakeford's instrumental mess; the latter's passion, romance, and apocalyptic nature are paralyzed approaching the former's lucid coldness. In short, they cripple each other, crafting a work that certainly reflects both personalities equally, but ends up being a "neither fish nor fowl" existence that's light years, for example, away from the sublime results that the collaboration between Stapleton (mind) and his friend David Tibet (heart) yielded within the Current 93 experience.

Better nonetheless are Stapleton's "esoteric" digressions (the title track, the following "Walk the White Ghost", the immense - ten plus minutes - "The Frightened City"), authentic sound nightmares (sometimes rounded by Wakeford's grim bass and sonic alchemy, resurrecting his ancient industrial urges) than the episodes where the corpulent minstrel takes comfort and has the opportunity to botch everything with his incompetence. Particularly notable are the piano parts: irritating piano ramblings worthy of a ninety-year-old lady with stiff fingers seeming to tinker drunkenly with her five-year-old grandson's small piano.

There is also room for Wakeford's voice, which, in addition to various "atmospheric" interventions, takes center stage in two pseudo-ballads in Sol Invictus style: "Lucifer Before Sunrise" and "Our Lady of the Wild Flowers", both nevertheless falling short of the average artistic productions of the Unconquered Sun.

At least, it can be said, the two do not take themselves seriously, and here and there are pleasant flashes of humor revealing a self-irony that, despite the exhausting drama of many of their works, the two artists have never hidden. Obviously, this aspect alone is not enough to save from sinking what is quite a meager work, but that, ultimately, has the unforgivable fault of being useless.