Thunder Perfect Mind
©Durtro. UK, 1992.
‟Thunder Perfect Mind reminds me of a horror-film cliché that I've never been quite able to understand - the rule that for something to be scary, it has to be old. From Dracula to War of the Worlds to The Exorcist to Ringu to Cloverfield, it seems that in a significant percentage of horror films that play by the rules, it's always implied (if not outright explained) that the evil the characters are facing is something from another time that has been re-awakened.
Current 93 are a bit like that. For the first 9 or so songs, the album sounds ancient, and deliberately so; chord progressions and orchestral arrangements are swiped from chamber music and pre-blues folk music, the male vocals sound more like a preacher giving a sermon than a singer, and "A Song for Douglas After He's Dead" lifts directly from Chopin's funeral march. It sounds positively medieval, in a way matched only by a few bands I can think of (Rome and H.E.R.R. are the two that particularly come to mind). The horror, the evil, is only ever implied. That's just the first half of the album though - after that, everything fragments, cracks start to appear, and all that darkness bubbles over onto the surface.
Is that disappointing, or a compromise of Current 93's ability? I wonder, and I feel like the answer is probably yes. I'd like to think that, as a listener, I'd realise the darkness and the haunting mood behind these songs anyway, even if the second half of the record didn't steam in and make it obvious. I think most people would. We can't speak on the behalf of David Tibet, so we don't know what his intention was when he recorded this, but it seems possible that he was worried that people just wouldn't get it. And maybe, if you think of it in those terms, the second half of the album becomes a little patronising, in the same way that the reveal of the monster in Cloverfield seemed to imply that the directors thought the audience's imaginations wouldn't be active enough to come up with anything better‟
Current 93 are a bit like that. For the first 9 or so songs, the album sounds ancient, and deliberately so; chord progressions and orchestral arrangements are swiped from chamber music and pre-blues folk music, the male vocals sound more like a preacher giving a sermon than a singer, and "A Song for Douglas After He's Dead" lifts directly from Chopin's funeral march. It sounds positively medieval, in a way matched only by a few bands I can think of (Rome and H.E.R.R. are the two that particularly come to mind). The horror, the evil, is only ever implied. That's just the first half of the album though - after that, everything fragments, cracks start to appear, and all that darkness bubbles over onto the surface.
Is that disappointing, or a compromise of Current 93's ability? I wonder, and I feel like the answer is probably yes. I'd like to think that, as a listener, I'd realise the darkness and the haunting mood behind these songs anyway, even if the second half of the record didn't steam in and make it obvious. I think most people would. We can't speak on the behalf of David Tibet, so we don't know what his intention was when he recorded this, but it seems possible that he was worried that people just wouldn't get it. And maybe, if you think of it in those terms, the second half of the album becomes a little patronising, in the same way that the reveal of the monster in Cloverfield seemed to imply that the directors thought the audience's imaginations wouldn't be active enough to come up with anything better‟
Iai
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