WHERE THE LONG SHADOWS FALL (BEFORETHEINMOSTLIGHT)

This is the first part of the Inmost Light triptych, the central piece of which is the All The Pretty Little Horses album. This EP essentially presents an ambient introduction to the sequence, a mournful dark ambient collaboration between David Tibet and Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, Tibet's most long-term collaborator and someone whose presence is rarely far away whenever the Current 93 project steers into this sort of dark ambient waters.

The piece is distinguished among the project's ambient works by the way archaic sounds like gramophone noises are used to construct its soundscape, lending it an old-timey Victorian feel that perfectly fits the Arthur Machen-inspired concept of the triptych. That said, it is very much a prologue, and is best experienced as a prelude to the All the Pretty Little Horses album. A compilation release, titled simply The Inmost Light, brings all three of the pieces of the trilogy together and is perhaps the best way to experience it.

Where the Long Shadows Fall (Beforetheinmostlight) EP

After releasing one CURRENT 93 album and three EPs in 1994, David Tibet followed in 1995 with no full-lengths and only one EP which is this strange 19-minute track titled WHERE THE LONG SHADOWS FALL (BEFORETHEINMOSTLIGHT). Once again Tibet is back to offer a muffled poet prose only this time over a looped sound bite sampled from "Domine Salvum Fac Pontificem Nostrum Leonem" to be found on Alessandro Moreschi's compendium The Last Castrato (Complete Vatican Recordings). While castratos were fairly common before 1861, Moreschi who was born in 1858 in Rome, Italy (where it was most common) emerged as one of the very last castrato and the only one who ever made solo recordings.

WHERE THE LONG SHADOWS FALL (BEFORETHEINMOSTLIGHT) was the first part of The Inmost Light Trilogy which was followed by the full album "All The Pretty Little Horses" and the one track EP "The Stars Are Marching Sadly Home." Once again Tibet is joined by Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton in the mixing chair and also contributing some bell sounds as well as Coils John Balance on vocals and lyrical writing. Also on board is guitarist / engineer David Kenny from the Aeolian String Ensemble and guitarist / bassist both of CURRENT 93 and Nature And Organization.

Like the 1994 EP "Lucifer Over London," WHERE THE LONG SHADOWS FALL (BEFORETHEINMOSTLIGHT) is a dark and creepy album that evokes CURRENT 93's earliest days as well as keeping you ponder the ethics of castrating pre-pubescent boys simply to pimp them out as opera singers in previous eras. While the entire track is basically a looped piece of Moreschi's famous recording recorded in the first years of the 20th century. The track offers a 17-second excerpt of "The Frolic" as a hidden track which finds a barrel audible John Balance narrated an improvised phrase.

This one is quite interesting on my levels. The castrato parts will surely evoke a historical reality many have heard about but probably never actually experienced while the creepy atmospheres and idiosyncratic poetic prose of Tibet's whispered and spoken lyrics will offer a continuity of not only The Inmost Trilogy but of Tibet's experimental neofolk approach in general that had usurped the dark collage like ambient and industrial soundscapes of his 80s releases. Overall i find this one to be a fascinating clash of varying ideas and a brilliant sampling job that offers Moreschi to shine again for a brief moment some 90 years after the original recording. Another example of Tibet's wild and unorthodox approach.