Current 93 as Anok Pe– Birth Canal Blues EP [Durtro]

How can a dinky four song EP be one of the finest albums of the year? The answer is clear; yet again Current 93 has crafted an outlandish oeuvre—balancing beauty with horror and simplicity with scope. And unlike many enduring groups, David Tibet et al. rarely make me cringe. In fact that’s not true at all, while listening to Current 93 I am a fidgety and frightened child, but my cringes aren’t due to dire compositions, but rather because of their colossal continuation of obscure darkness, fascinating poetry, and utter sinister-creepiness. Current 93 as Anok Pe is the triad of svengali David Tibet, transgender street marvel Baby Dee and dark ambient producer Andrew Liles. At first listen Birth Canal Blues comes off as a collection of piano ballads laced with classic cryptic Current 93 lyricism. Nonetheless, as soon as the nonsensically distorted vocals of “She took us to the Places Where the Sun Sets” clobber out of an eerie piano line, the terror unleashed has enough clout to make Judas cower. As ‘we will murder you’ is shrieked and intertwined in a cradle of static, it is apparent that the likes of Wolf Eyes, John Weiss and even Merzbow are mere stuffed animals compared to the malicious monster that is Current 93. If after listening to the first three tracks of Birth Control Blues you aren’t convinced of Tibet’s sonic luminosity, the final clip from “Suddenly the Living are Dying,” is one of the most inventive samples in recorded history. As a stampede of horses gallop through the unknown, the increasing volume of their hooves is a masterful display of the passage of time and space, until suddenly the entire EP is demolished and obscured with a finale of blaring noise. I imagine the closing rabble to be analogous to the noise that must blare off of stars before their death and inauguration as black holes.

Bardos Freedoom