PROG FOLK

I believe this stuff was recorded in '73/'74 but never released back in the day. I think it may have been if the band were from and it was recorded in the UK or even Europe, but I can see why it would have sunk without trace in the US. The sound on this album suggests a touch of Comus but with a Curved Air and even PFM vibe...which I know doesn't sound very fusion. That comes mainly from the keys man who seems to be pulling the band in that direction. The aforementioned influences/comparisons are due to the prominent violin which is never JL Ponty flash but more of an enhancer of the sound and perhaps the melody too You can hear a bit of National Health and Hatfield and the North too even though it preceded them. It's not quite 'all over the map' but makes good use of its travel pass and was a speculative purchase in a sale as it looked very my kinda 70's ...and is a just under but will give it a 4 star rating and for those looking for an off the beaten track thing...those travel passes eh...I really would suggest giving it a try if any of the above 'influences and similarities' are in your wheelhouse.

The next album to follow the massively successful "Alturas de Machu Pacchu," the content on the material was actually created prior to that album and primarily brought together from a number of songs that were written during the band's European tour (the band was based out of Paris since 1977's coup in Chile). This was actually supposed to be the album that followed 1979's "Los Sueños de América" but due to the insistence of Daniel Camino who convinced the band to put all its other projects aside and work on a concept album about Peru's most famous archeological site. The result was that a loose number of floating songs accumulated but deemed of high enough quality that the band still wanted to use them.

In essence of compilation of flotsam of jetsam from the late 70s and early 80s, ACONAGUA throws it all together as an album's worth of LOS JAVIAS material but that doesn't mean it's not some mighty good catchy music on it. On the contrary, while not as focused on the progressive rock aspects as its predecessor, if taken as the album that musically precedes "Alturas," ACONAGUA is an excellent slice of Rock andino, Indigenous Andean music, Taquirari ( a highly syncopated traditional music of Bolivia), rock and folk music and while the prog aspects aren't nearly as pronounced as "Alturas," they're not completely absent either. ACONAGUA features the same lineup as on "Alturas" and the tracks are all either archival ones and re-recordings of old songs with a few new songs thrown in at the last minute.

One of the last tracks to be recorded was the opening title track which was inspired by the many sightings of flying in and out of Santiago, Chile. The mountain is located only a short distance away from the Chilean capital. The festive melting pot of Latin American musical sounds and styles pretty much summarizes the album's mission which is sort of a like a musical ambassador for all things Latin American brought together under one roof. While prog purist's may sneer at the mere lack of keyboard solos and moments of European influences, the album is a treasure trove of melding Latin American traditional music sounds in a feat of contemporaneous glory all the while adding elements of rock and Western folk throughout the album's rather short playing time of just under 34 minutes in the form of seven tracks.

Noteworthy is the beautiful "Debajo de las Higueras" features wild classical piano runs in cahoots with the thundering bravado of a Mexican trumpet section as well as delivering the main melody on an electric guitar. "Takirari Del Puerto" takes on a Caribbean vibe only mixed with Andean folk music and instrumentation. The highlight is perhaps the lengthy closing "COrre Que Te Pillo" which at almost 10 minutes in length was actually recorded as a B-side as far back in 1973 and resurrected and re-recorded into an extended powerhouse Indigenous folk meets rock extravaganza. The track is basically a lengthy jam session with moments of repetitive cyclical looping for a few improvisational ideas to float around. The use of classical piano allows a nice fusion sound. Despite complexities involved the track sounds as festive and inviting as the rest of the album with a lively fiesta of the soul sort of exuberance to it.

For being a mere collection of loose track floating around for years with a few newbies recorded to top it off, ACONCAGUA is actually an infectiously beautiful album and an ethnomusicologist's dream come true with references to many styles of ethnic folk music of the Southern Hemisphere as well as adding Western aspects of rock guitar and classical piano. The band was a well-oiled machine and clearly made these tracks more lively through the re-recording process than they ever could've possibly been before. When taken into context as to this being a compilation of previously unreleased material and not the proper followup to "Alturas de Machu PIcchu" then this will make a lot more sense in its relationship to the albums that bookend it. As for my ears i find this to be a brilliantly uplifting album. The album has been released two distinct album covers. My favorite is the one with the band all gathered in the High Andes with all their instruments giving a peak performance!

The first EP of the 2000s by David Tibet's CURRENT 93 project finds him delivering another round of poetry with various field recordings, tape music and dark ambient music decorating the background. A 22-minute single track I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN FOR THIS WORLD features Tibet narrating the poem of the same name by the author Thomas Ligotti who was most famous in the 1950s for his weird and gothic fiction short stories that tackled two of Tibet's favorite themes, namely pessimism and nihilism!

A sparsely decorated affair the EP features a return appearance of Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound and harkens back to CURRENT 93's post-industrial sounds of the early 80s which includes synthesized drones and random sounds from found objects. Only the most minimal use of acoustic guitar and piano can be heard and the EP has proven to be one of CURRENT 93's most beloved of his entire length list of shorter EP releases. This was specifically released as a one track CD on the Durtro label but the 12" vinyl version featured a B-side titled "Excerpts From Bungalow Tapes."

One of the closest things to the apocalyptic nightmare music that was displayed on Tibet's earliest albums such as "Nature Unveiled" and "Dogs Blood Rising," I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN FOR THIS WORLD is indeed a bleak and depressive affair with clearly enunciated spoken word prose that leaves nothing to the imagination in exactly what he is uttering. The bursts of radio static, tape machine blips and bleeps and dark ambient droning really takes this to a whole new level of bleakness especially after releasing such brilliant and more uplifting albums in the 90s that focused on the catchy and melodic acoustic guitar strumming of neofolk.

Of course the most sinister sounds from this EP are from Tibet's poetic delivery itself with a cold and sterile detached procession through the darkest subject matter one could wish to experience in a poetry reading. While i've never really been a huge fan of spoken word vocals in a musical context i have to say that David Tibet delivers it all in such a thoughtful creative way that it's utterly irresistible but only if the darkest of subject matter attracts you for such things. Yet another excursion into some of the most psychotically delicious poetry sessions laid down to a recording, CURRENT 93 is the gift that keeps on giving!

The final chapter of the Inmost Light Trilogy, the 22 minute plus single track THE STARRES ARE MARCHING SADLY HOME (THEINMOSTLIGHTTHIRDANDFINAL), this apocalyptic grand finale proved to be the most experimental as well as the most stripped down with only ambient minimalism providing any musical backing and set to eerie loops and layered vocal effects that narrative a continues poetic prose by David Tibet with the guest vocal contributions of Andria Degens, Roxanne Stapleton and the even the legendary Shirley Collins leaving her traditional folk musical career behind fro a taste of the avant-garde.

Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton is back in the mixing engineer's seat and David Kenny offers some processed guitar sounds otherwise this is a swirling dark ambient excursion through some of the most most apocalyptic poetic recitals that one could ever hope to experience! The music itself is making to the abstruse musique concrète which utilizes recorded sounds as the source material and then processed through audio signals and tape music techniques that result in an otherworldly effect of sound collages and in the process creating some of the most alienating sound back possible. The Louis Wain painting on the cover art perfectly depicts the overall effect of this strange journey into the bowels of poetic prose hell.

More of a lyrical experience than a musical one per se, THE STARRES ARE MARCHING SADLY HOME in many ways provides a summary of the mood setting of the previous two installments of the trilogy with a recap of the thematic bleakness and abstruse esotericism that was all the rage in the post-industrial esoteric movement that swept the English underground by storm with CURRENT 93 emerging as one of the top acts to engage in it. A swirl box of ceaseless subtleties in the turbulent atmospheres finds the various vocal performances adding a new dimension to the overall feel of the EP with Collins' traditional singing a calming motherly lullaby thus offering a resolution to the nightmarish three installment set of some fo the 90s darkest forays into the world of experimental intersection of neofolk and electronic music.

Revolving around an adhesive label on the original packaging referring to the album as a Hallucinatory Patripassianist's Philosophy which apparently in Christian theology is an Eastern concept of modalism that God The Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are three different modes or emanations of one monadic God. A lyrical rotisserie of various themes of pain and death along with the overcoming of such through the light or inner soul is the primary theme of this esoteric and heady excursion through an apocalyptic folk based soundscape steeped with varying vocal narrations with a post-industrial mood setting. The album focuses on the usual neofolk acoustic guitar strumming of this chapter of CURRENT 93 but also heavy on droning, electronic experimentalism.

Graced with the same Shirley Collins inspired folk intimacy of previous releases only set to the world of eschatological esotericism and the mysticism of poets like William Blake, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES goes for the jugular with its bizarre post-industrial bleakness that seems to come into full fruition with the collaborative forces of Steve Stapleton and John Balance by his side. The album features lush lullaby type folk as heard on the traditional title track (which makes an augmented reprise at the end) as well as offering piano-based bleakness with TIbet's most sinister vocal narrations on "The Inmost Night." While mostly narrating his poetic prose in a most exaggerated spoken manner, on tracks like "This Carnival Is Dead And Gone" Tibet almost succeeds in a full-singing effect but offers his utterly distinct methodology of always sounding like he's speaking even when technically hitting the notes that would indeed qualify him as a singer!

The album's greatest strength is the varying soundscapes at hand with alternating folky passages mixing with bleaker electronic-based industrial bits that evoke an earlier age of CURRENT 93. Many tracks are nothing more than short little ditties whereas others such as "Twilight Twilight Nihil Nihil" capture a full apocalyptic industrial soundscape approach and eke out a sense of impending disaster for over eight minutes thus making the album feel like a seesaw ride of uplifting little folk pieces of innocence to full on climactic nightmares in musical form. Followed by the 9 1/2 "The Inmost Light Itself" which offers a continuation of the bleak detached and depressive subject matter only reverting back to the apocalyptic folk with not only Tibet's particularly whispered vocals but by a scattering of sound samples of children in the background. The album ends with Nick Cave offering vocal performances, first on the reprise of the short but sweet title track and followed by the closing "Patripassian" which finds cave in spoken word narration reading text from the Pensées of Blaise Pascal over a loop of English 16th century choral music.

Considered a fan favorite many are unaware that this album sits smack dab in the middle of a conceptual trilogy which is not surprising due to the fact Tibet's esoteric connections are more conceptual than on a musical footing that makes it all easy to connect. There is really no reason why any of t these three chapters cannot exist on their own and the listener will not diminish the experience one little bit if any of the EPs are simply glossed over. Overall a great apocalyptic dirge through the many musical forms of depression and bleakness that Tibet sought out with great fanfare. I absolutely adore these intersecting creative forces where the masterminds of CURRENT 93, Coil and Nurse With Wound bring the best of their worlds to one work table. A triumphant display of dark ambient and apocalyptic folk at its finest.

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.

TAMLIN was the third EP released by David Tibet's CURRENT 93 project in 1994 and pretty much followed in the formula of "Lucifer In London" however this time without the collaborative effort of Coil's John Balance the two tracks that add up to about 17 minutes don't quite deliver the same impact as the previous superior offering.

Once again Tibet narrates in poetic prose with Nicholas Saloman sitting in on electric guitar and dulcimer with Michael Cashmore also of CURRENT 93 and Nature And Organization joining on acoustic guitar. Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound is back but only as the mixing engineer but the production is less compelling this time around.

The title track almost has a lullaby quality two it with a repetitive folky strumming session without all the bells and whistles of the previous EP. Likewise the subject matter isn't as compelling neither is the poetic delivery. While "Lucifer Over London" had a certain darkness to it, this one is more straight forward and almost campfire folk only with Tibet's dramatic and passionate enunciations.

"How The Great Satanic Glory" really doesn't deviate at all from the first track in stylistic approach except it adds a melodic guitar lead to the mix however the basic chord progressions of the acoustic guitar sound very similar. The EP was limited to 2000 numbered copies and related for Halloween 1994. It's seen both vinyl as well as CD releases. Personally i find this one to be quite inferior to "Lucifer In London" which was captivating on many levels. This gets the job done but it's a fairly uneventful slice of psychedelic neofolk that doesn't quite get my juices flowing.