Current 93: "Anok Pe: Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain" -

Current 93: "Anok Pe: Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain"

our tracks into Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, David Tibet finally relaxes his draconian, dramatic voice: "My teeth are possessed by demons and devils/ And I was by myself but not myself," he offers calmly through a patter of circular jazz drumming and a stout bass throb. For Tibet, who's spent many of the last 30 years pushing against reductive self-definition in Current 93, these two lines might be as close to an artist's statement as we'll ever get. Tibet has long written from the troubled threshold between his mind and God, juxtaposing images of himself as a heretic and an acolyte while sorting through interpretations of Christianity, mysticism, the occult, and the inane. In Tibet's gnostic vision, none of us-- God included-- is perfect or beyond reproach, so Current 93's oeuvre serves as a tool for self-flagellation and self-assessment. On his 1992 masterpiece, Thunder Perfect Mind, Tibet suggested that, "In the dark, you must look in your heart." With Aleph, Tibet-- a devout Christian who reads the Bible in Greek and occasionally writes and sings in the ancient Coptic language-- recognizes his troubles in another moment of solitary desolation. This time, he's asking for help.

Behooving a sinner, Tibet's rarely been alone for his most personal explorations: From Antony Hegarty and Ben Chasny to sound artist Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and Nurse with Wound's Steven Stapleton, he's amassed a revolving army to provide sounds worthy of such intimate and existential conflicts. Aleph is a charging, rock'n'roll appraisal of Tibet's central concern-- living with respect to himself and to God-- supported by one of the best casts yet. Stapleton, improvisational drummer Alex Neilson, Chavez's Matt Sweeney, and harpist Baby Dee return, along with Andrew W.K., Rickie Lee Jones, guitarists James Blackshaw and Keith Wood, and the artistically ambitious porn star Sasha Grey. Carefully orchestrated beneath Tibet's uncanny voice, they create not only Current 93's most rock-oriented album to date but also a fine, fitting crown for Tibet's prolific decade. A surprisingly tuneful, consistently compelling mix of industrial stomp and folk grace, Aleph offers both a career-spanning capitulation for newcomers and a bold push forward for zealots.

As with most of Current 93's albums, specifically 2006's sprawling, apocalyptic dream-state manifesto, Black Ships Ate the Sky, Aleph is a concept album of connected scenes and themes. At its center stands an exploration of the archetypes we often reduce into binaries-- good and evil, dark and light, God and Satan.