CURRENT 93 & HÖH: ISLAND

Frequently miserable and occasionally brilliant, 'Island' is quite unlike any other Current 93 album. This is mainly due to the fact that it is in fact a collaboration with with electronics whizz- kid Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson. The production values on 'Island' are far better than any of their previous releases. A young Bjork makes an early appearance which is a nice addition.

An ice cold recording that is less diabolical than it's satanic predecessors. At times it does get a bit silly and pretentious when you consider how overtly serious it sounds. The lyrics are, as usual, without hope - where man is destined to eternal damnation with no hope of re-birth. Portent of doom David Tibet makes sure of that with his willfully obfuscating lyrics.

Quite frankly, the whole album can be quite upsetting if you're not in the right mood for it. It could quite easily put you in a complete downer for the whole day. It did to me when I listened to this and 'Imperium' back to back whilst cycling to work a few weeks ago.

Thankfully there are one or two moments that, whilst not being upbeat, certainly enliven proceedings. 'Crowleymass' is the perfect Christmas carol for all anti-christs. Full of of references to Aleister Crowley and re-birth, it even has some electric guitars at work and is a good laugh to terrify employees at work with.

'The Fall of Christopher Robin' is a classy little tune which has excellent lyrics and is executed with real malevolence by Tibet. This sounds bizzarely like the early 'Human League' with lots of heavy electronics, although the vocals give it it's own definite identity. Clearly influenced by the German legend of Faust - it's all about a wee boy who basically sells his soul to Beelzebub.

What was almost a four star recording has to be trimmed back to three simply because the first half hour made me thoroughly suicidal. Sometimes 'Island' is beautiful but it is mostly depressing. I used to love this kind of stuff when I was younger, but now at 42 I find it quite hard to take. I guess it's just a sign of getting older. Bah!

This collaboration between Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and David Tibet largely boils down to synthpop and dream pop- influenced tunes by Hilmarsson, with David Tibet incanting his eldritch lyrics over them and various guests from the Current 93 stable or Hilmarsson's own musical connections stepping in here and there to back things up.

The CD version of this album has five additional tracks which aren't on the LP, one of which has a cameo from Björk, but these are best considered as being a sort of comical encore rather than part of the main event; whilst the 8 LP tracks focus on a particularly gloomy atmosphere, the bonus tracks are all over the place, with an overlong revision of the Crowleymass single leading off the pack. This was a goof-off single which Hilmarsson and Tibet had put out back in the 1980s, and is best treated like the novelty track it is. The other standout among the bonus tracks is The Fall of Christopher Robin, which is one of the last gasps of Tibet's ongoing project to recast British childhood classic characters in a spooky context.

The main body of the tracks, though, largely represent an interesting recontextualisation of Tibet's work. Tibet had, by this point, revealed himself to be a highly gifted lyricist, and reframing older pieces and pieces which would later be explored further on other works (like As The World Disappears or Thunder Perfect Mind) in this sort of dream pop context is an intriguing experiment. I would say three and a half stars for the album if we are judging solely on the LP tracks, but knock half a star off if you want the CD bonus tracks considered too.