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ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

Current 93

Prog Folk


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Current 93 All The Pretty Little Horses album cover
4.25 | 27 ratings | 2 reviews | 30% 5 stars

Excellent addition to any
prog rock music collection

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Studio Album, released in 1996

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. The Long Shadow Falls (2:15)
2. All The Pretty Little Horsies (2:35)
3. Calling For Vanished Faces I (1:50)
4. The Inmost Night (2:16)
5. The Carnival Is Dead And Gone (3:11)
6. The Bloodbells Chime (2:58)
7. Calling For Vanished Faces II (4:10)
8. The Frolic (8:11)
9. The Inmost Light (1:45)
10. Twilight NIhil NIhil for Thomas Ligotti, who has seen the bloodbells shine (8:22)
11. The Inmost Light Itself (9:29)
12. All The Pretty Little Horses (2:34)
13. Patripassian (5:50)

Total time: 55:26

Line-up / Musicians

- David "Tibet" Bunting / vocals, strings, bells, drone
- Steven Stapleton / strings, drones, percussion, mixing
- Michael Cashmore / guitars, bass, piano, glockenspiel, sounds
- David Kenny / guitar, bass
- David Rowlands / steel guitar
- Joolie Wood / violin, whistle, piano

With:
- Geoffrey Laurence / vocals (1,10,11)
- Lilith Stapleton / vocals (5,7-9,11)
- Timothy d'Arch Smith / vocals (10)
- Geoff Cox-Dorée / vocals (10)
- Salamah Binti Isa / vocals (10)
- Nick Cave / vocals (12,13)
- Thomas Ligotti / voice (13)

Releases information

Sub-titled "The Inmost Light"

Artwork: Geoff Cox-Dorée

CD Durtro - DURTRO 030 CD (1996, UK)

LP Durtro - DURTRO 030 (1996, UK)
LP Durtro - DURTRO 030 (2004, UK) New cover art

Thanks to clemofnazareth for the addition
and to Quinino for the last updates
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CURRENT 93 All The Pretty Little Horses ratings distribution


4.25
(27 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(30%)
30%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(44%)
44%
Good, but non-essential (19%)
19%
Collectors/fans only (0%)
0%
Poor. Only for completionists (7%)
7%

CURRENT 93 All The Pretty Little Horses reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by kenethlevine
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog-Folk Team
4 stars Imbuing nursery rhymes with sinister musical, vocal and lyrical overtones, CURRENT 93's "All the Pretty Horses" is about as viscerally disturbing as broadly defined folk music can get. It's as if SPIROGYRA and THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND were stripped of their tenuous sanity layer by layer. I understand this band goes back to the early 1980s but leader David Tibet, a pioneer of industrial pop at the time, only turned to twisted folk after meeting early English pioneer SHIRLEY COLLINS in the 1990s. The result was nothing like her work, yet could never have existed without her influence.

Against all odds, some of this is shimmering in its beauty, even as you over clutch the edge of your seat until the stuffing extrudes. In particular, the short pieces that comprise the bulk of the tracks combine hypnotic and minimalist melodies with heavily enunciated barely sung words and sonorous acoustic guitar. Apart from the lullabye "All the Pretty Horses", "The Bloodbells Chime" is almost pure acoustic bliss with innocent if creepy cliches, while "The Inmost Light" begins to insert dissonant voices that add to the growing sense of foreboding. "The Frolic" is a much longer track that is in the vein of the brief experiments, just successfully elasticized, and with a macabre closing. Then again, "The Inmost Night" might be where Tibet could ease off the throttle. It's all well and good to be privy to the ruminations of a disturbed mind, but dementia?

The two climactic "epics" veer sharply towards post rock, particularly "Twilight Twilight", which fails to engage for more than a third of its considerable duration, while "The Inmost Light Itself" represents a continuation of "Inmost Light" but with considerably more overt vitriol. The album ends with a reprise of the title track and the ambient "Patripassian".

Just like the music herein, the album deliberately lacks balance. It's one that invites, nay, demands, at least rudimentary pangs of interpretation. Regardless, it erodes prior set points for progressive folk. I won't get on my high horse here but I'm pretty sure this intriguing if mildly flawed effort deserves a roundup.

Review by Warthur
PROG REVIEWER
5 stars After a transitional phase following his artistic parting of the ways with Doug Pearce, David Tibet led Current 93 to another storming success on this album. Having already taken the group's neofolk style in a more gentle direction on the previous album (Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre), Tibet and his musical collaborators (including guest vocalist Nick Cave and horror writer Thomas Ligotti) work in more variation, ranging from childhood lullabies to aspects of the drone and ambient styles of Current 93's pre-neofolk days. The end result is one of the group's richest musical concoctions yet, with even Tibet's lyrics taking in a more diverse range of moods and styles than before.

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