CuRReNT 93

The light is leaving us All 8/10

end times hymns from David Tibet’s apocalyptic folk troupe

Born from the dark flux of industrial music, in the early ’90s Current 93 blossomed into a deeply strange folk group, albeit one powerful enough to pull Nick Cave and Shirley Collins into their orbit. The Light Is Leaving Us All – their 40th album or thereabouts – strikes an autumnal tone. David Tibet’s incantatory lyrics weave a wild patchwork quilt of witches, stars and “horsies”. But the presiding tone is ruminative, beautiful even. An extended group – featuring Ben Chasny, Alasdair Roberts, Ossian Brown and more – reach for bells, strings and hurdy gurdy, and every now and then, music gives way to bird song, as if a window has been thrown open to an overgrown country garden.