THUNDER PERFECT MIND

4.5 stars, really

Perhaps Current 93's most melancholic output (that I've heard so far), Thunder Perfect Mind is a harrowing and impactful listen at worst, and a beautiful masterpiece at best. Soothing strings are gently overlaid on soft acoustic guitar. There is barely any percussion, but it doesn't lack for it. The vocals don't always seem inclined to stay entirely in tune, which if nothing else just lends to the inimitability of it all. The lyrics are marginally less dark than earlier Current 93 albums, but it's still not exactly Fairport Convention. You might LA LA LA along at parts; I did.

Overall, a masterfully executed and beautifully wrought gentle work of folk music. If some of Current 93's albums maybe scared you off their work a bit, if you are the sort to not like that kind of thing, this is probably your best bet to listen to of C93's albums. Quite accessible and, if I haven't emphasized it enough, pretty. Well actually, it gets a bit weird near the end but in a good way. Doesn't exactly thunder, and it's not entirely perfect, but I don't mind. Hyuck.

David Tibet of Current 93 is an artist prone to passing fixations which, for their duration, entirely permeate his work, and also is very open to collaborating with a wide variety of people. In the mid-to-late 1980s this almost took Current 93 down a very dark road, due to Tibet aligning with elements in the neofolk scene such as Douglas Pierce of Death In June, a man who if he isn't actually a neo-Nazi of a Strasserist, Ernst Rohm-supporting bent has done such a good job of masquerading as one it rather amounts to the same thing.

On Thunder Perfect Mind, however, his art turns in a more personal and reflective direction, revolving around his mystical conception of reality and firmly rebuking fascism such as on Hitler as Kalki (SDM), a song which takes a concept from mystical fascism and uses it to frame Hitler as the enemy of the cosmic pantheist sort of Christ that Tibet tends to support (and a song which is dedicated to his father, who fought Hitler in World War II). Even more cutting is the lament A Song for Douglas After He's Dead, a premortem eulogy for Doug Pierce whose message essentially boils down to "Douglas, I love you as a friend, but your obsession with Naziism has completely taken you over and you've hitched yourself to a bunch of ideas which have comprehensively failed".

Tibet marries his powerful lyrics to a powerfully melancholic neofolk style which slowly and gradually acquires more complexities and progressive twists as the album progresses, like a philosophical discourse in music which begins with simple axioms and then builds something greater and greater on that foundation, with Hitler as Kalki as the summit of that exploration (with A Sad Sadness Song/An Ending as an epilogue).

Tibet's lack of discretion in his choice of collaborators made me wary of his work for a while; I am inclined to agree with Strelnikiov of the Who Makes the Nazis? blog (a useful resource tracking the rise of fascist elements in the neofolk and martial industrial scenes) that rather than being an actual fascist himself Tibet is more "part naif, part charlatan and part public schoolboy narcissist" - but somehow he is able to create art which exceeds the sum of his parts.

If acquiring Thunder Perfect Mind on CD, hold out for a copy with the bonus disc; the studio off-cuts on there are, whilst not exceptional, still pretty decent (when even your rejected takes and songs hit four star quality you know you're onto something), and the live tracks from the Amiens concert are a must-have if you aren't otherwise able to get hold of the exceptional ...As the World Disappears live CD, which captures more of the set.