I Am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel is perhaps the most uncategorizable album in
Current 93's catalog, and that's saying something. Though it employs a vast array of musics as it has on previous albums, it also strategically integrates them in new ways and dynamically adds elements of improvisational jazz to the mix. Frontman David Tibet's present lineup includes regular collaborators --
James Blackshaw,
Andrew Liles, Ossian Brown,
Antony Hegarty, and
Nick Cave -- as well as new ones:
Comus' vocalist Bobbie Watson, the
Groundhogs'
Tony McPhee and Carl Stokes,
These New Puritans' Jack Barnett, Dutch piano wizard
Reinier VanHoudt, reed and woodwind master
Jon Seagroatt, and saxophonist
John Zorn. The album's tracks are a suite meant to be played in order, as dynamics, textures, and styles touch, repel, contract, attract, expand, and merge, often disintegrating into sound itself. At times, Tibet's half-sung/half-spoken poetry is framed by musical arrangements that can evolve so slowly they feel static. "The Invisible Church" is driven by
VanHoudt's repetitive, nearly hypnotic series of classical changes, dusted by Stokes' cymbals and made otherworldly by
McPhee's out-of-time acoustic slide guitar. Watson's ghostly mezzo-soprano underscores the drama in Tibet's text, which is delivered with restraint. The band's feverish heart is exposed on "Those Flowers Grew."
Zorn's bluesy alto and
VanHoudt's piano erect a minor-key ascension for the rhythm section, angular shards of electric guitar, bass, and flute propel Tibet's growl inside the maelstrom. In the ballad "Kings and Queens," the two singers articulate a sinister eros as a distorted electric guitar screes in the margin. The bass, guitar, and drum vamp on "The Heart Full of Eyes" recalls the Bad Seeds' drone-blues quake, though
Seagroatt's lilting flute above Tibet's poetically rich narrative alters that focus.
Hegarty's wrenching vocal on "Mourned Winter Then," is the sound of longing itself, decorated artfully by
van Houdt's elegant pianism. "And Onto PickNickMagick" is a pulsing rocker colored by soaring flute, stinging guitar, and
Blackshaw's throbbing bassline with Tibet in full rant. Dark sexuality and occult spirituality couple in "I Remember the Berlin Boys," a cabaret song like no other. "Spring Sand Dreamy Larks" (featuring a spoken word intro and outro by artist Norbert Kox) recalls
the Bad Plus with its interlocking, syncopated rhythms culminating in a bleating
Zorn sax solo. Closer "I Could Not Shift the Shadow" features
Cave's lead vocals, singing Tibet's words with endearment, sensuality, and resignation, illumined by
Zorn's sweet alto and
van Houdt's lilting piano. It's a given that Tibet's brand of art song is an acquired taste: it's arcane, transgressive, and sometimes excessive. But as displayed on
I Am the Last of All the Field That Fell: A Channel, an album at once holistic, maddening, erotic, bleak, and bright it is also visionary. [
I Am the Last... was also released on vinyl.] ~ Thom Jurek