It happened quite by chance that I was fortunate enough to meet David Tibet.  I’d been a huge fan of his work as Current 93 since I was first introduced to them in 1993 and had over the years eagerly followed the bands progress whilst discovering their past works with equal gusto.  There was something about Tibet’s recordings that touched the very essence of my being – I was drawn to his work and every element of it, whether it was the music or lyrics or the coming together of both.  And I was not alone – over the years Current 93 had spawned legions of fans that were staunchly loyal to them and this dedication and interest seemed to grown more intense and dedicated with each release carrying the band head first into to the new millennium.

Then things went quiet… not quite deadly quiet but still quiet.  New recordings from Current 93 slowed down to a crawl and rumours of a new Current 93 album rumbled on but nothing came of them.  Towards the end of 2005 news began to filter through that Current 93’s latest album, the intriguingly titled ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ was nearing completion and would finally see the light of day in 2006.

Shortly before the release of this highly anticipated Current 93 release, Pantaleimon  (which is David’s wife Andria’s project) and Baby Dee played in Cheltenham, a small yet beautiful town nestled in between the rolling hills of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire.    

My wife, Annette and I attended, as did David.  We talked for quite a while and we were struck by how approachable, funny, polite and deeply interesting a person he was to talk to.  He had a great passion when he spoke and a tremendous skill in articulating every word with near perfection making it easy to see how he has capable of producing much deeply moving and fascinating recordings that as you a listener you could gain so much from.

As we were saying our goodbyes at the end of the night, David suddenly agreed to do this interview and we exchanged numbers.  

A few weeks later, in the Spring/early summer of 2006 the following interview was conducted over the phone.

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I believe that it’s taken four years to record and release the new album.  Why has it taken this length of time?
That’s a good question and I suppose like all good questions there are lots of different answers.  I started it four years ago with me, Marc Almond, Michael Cashmore and Antony.  We put down the initial section with was Michael’s guitar and Marc and Antony’s ‘Idumea’ with Michael’s guitar.

 

'Black Ships Ate the Sky’, like all Current 93 albums are conceptual to a degree in as much as all songs are all held together by a unifying over-arching concept, so with ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ it reflected really and specifically this dream that I had.  I really want it to reflect what I felt about the world and what I felt about the world to come as I saw time developing and running out.  I was aware there was no way I could rush it as it was very important to me and at the same time although it started out as a dream, these dreams continued so at the same time I wanted to carry on painting down what these dreams where saying.

 

At the same time, of course, this is something which is connected to it, but finely isn’t very important, but World Serpent were in the process of collapsing or ‘going under’ or ceasing anyway, so my income became really iritic and at the same time I was beginning to spend so much time in the studio so I could do two things.  I could use the little money I had and finish it quickly which was not at all what I wanted or I could take a lot of time and also do a subscription edition which is where people, through their kindness and support could help me finish the album.  I thought about that a lot and then I thought that if somebody got in touch with me, somebody who I admired and loved like, just say Shirley Collins.  If I had an email from her saying ‘dear friend, I’m having a problem with this album and finishing it.  Would you be you be interested in subscribing to help finish it’ and I thought there’s no way I really wouldn’t do it.  I went through a list of groups and artists that I love and I would have been delighted to do that for all of them.  So I felt that with all for the people who are interested in what I’ve done over the last twenty-five years, why not try?  That seemed to work very well and it gave me an increasing amount of money to finish off the album and make it more and more elaborate, until I got to the point that fundamentally the album was absolutely perfect or was a prefect as I could make it.  The only thing I was forced to do in a sense was on the final album where was twenty-one songs and I actually recorded about thirty and then I had to think if it where feasible or desirable to make it a double CD.  But I really thought that the narrative, the obsessive thrust of the album would be, not destroyed but would be halved if you had to take the CD out and up another one in. 

 

‘Black Ship Ate the Sky’ is a narrative, as I refer to it, it’s a hypnagogic patripassianist dream narrative of the apocalypse.  I’m using apocalypse as the proper sense of the word.  Now it’s used for such things as Armageddon or destruction or holocaust, nuclear holocaust, the end of the world.  Apocalypse, as in the New Testament means ‘the unveiling’ so this patripassianist hallucinogenic narrative is the unveiling, the pulling away of all the masks from those who are hiding the essential reality of what’s happening around them.  ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ is my way of explaining how I see the world working.  People might agree with me, they might disagree with me they might think I’m insane, they might think that I’m paranoid.  I can appreciate people not agreeing with me but from my point of view it’s an absolutely factual description of what’s happening.  This is the way of the anti-Christ, the second coming of Christ and judgement.  

At the same time there are metaphors in it such as the black ships ate the sky.  The black ships meaning the black ships from my dream invading Heaven and corrupted the sky as they eat their way through it.  They were the sign of the second coming, the arrival of the Anti-Christ. They were the vanguard of the Anti-Christ, the final Caesar. In one way that’s a metaphor for the invasion of our world by satanic Anti-Christ forces.  On another level it is also how I saw it.

  

When people ask me about the second coming, some people think that I’m being ironic or that I’m metaphorically interested in Christ or that I have a weird occult slant on it.  My belief is pretty orthodox.  People say ‘do I believe in a literal second coming of Christ’ and I do.  I see the skies opening and Christ returning on a white horse.  And that is how I see it so I expect that is how it will happen.  The skies will open and we will suddenly think that it wasn’t fiction in the bible, as this is reality.  At the same time of course I’m aware that people, many Christians, use metaphors, but I can only speak about what I feel and the black ships coming into the sky is therefore a metaphor and a reality.  

As the album has such a personal feel to it, how do feel about it being open to such interpretation by those who listen to it?
As you say it’s really personal and on one level I’m really surprised that anyone has an interest in what I do because it’s so self-referential.  I’m referring to things that happen in my inner world and my obsessing and the way that I see things and my no-doubt peculiar or particular theological ideas.  So, at the same time I don’t see that people should interprete it any differently from what I’m actually saying is happening.  So when I say that the final Caesar arises, I mean final Caesar arises. I mean the Anti-Christ arises.  I don’t mean that sounds a good image, I just mean that’s what I think is happening.  

When I talk about the Second Coming I do mean the Second Coming.  I don’t mean the second coming of awareness – this is a new age connect and something which doesn’t interest me at all.  

I’m not a biblical literalist at all, I mean I’m not one of those people who believes everything the bible says is absolute, like God created everything in seven days and there was a snake in the garden of Eden. However on certain topics I am literal.  I believe in the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ, the payment for mans sin, for mans falling short.  We’ve all fallen short and I think everyone knows that.  I don’t have puritan views, I mean people dancing on the Sabbath and such but I do believe a lot of it is how the bible says it is.

The album has a very deep-set passion about it.  How difficult do you find it to transfer this passion from the written context to actually recording it?
I just never think about it. I normal do several takes on the vocals but I’d say 95% of the time it’s the first version that I use.  I think things are passionate because you feel passionately about them and if somebody doesn’t feel passionate about what I do or the things I believe in, then I can see why people would think I’m being melodramatic or whatever because they don’t share my view on things.

I mean really Current is just me, it always has been me.  I’m not at all putting down all of the other people that I’m working with, what I mean is that lyrically it’s just me.  If I’m working with say Stapleton, or Cashmore or Ben Chasny then it’s just them as well.  It’s absolutely them and it’s absolutely me.  So the people I work with are also incredibly passionate about what they do.  

Take Steve, Mike, Pantelamon, Antony, Marc, everyone.  They are all really passionate about what they do and that’s one of the things about Current 93, it’s a strange sort of collective, where all of these people are in groups of their own yet there’s something that binds them together.  It’s sure as hell not my belief in the literal second coming of the Messiah.  You mention that to most people in Current 93 they no-doubt raise their eyes in their head and say ‘there he goes taking about the Anti-Christ again’.  You know Steve doesn’t believe any of that, Mike doesn’t, I think that probably out of all of the people that I work with Pantaleimon is Christian, but not in the same dogmatic way I am. Julie is Christian, Baby Dee is Christian, I think that probably it.  I’m not saying that all of these people don’t have their own beliefs but they are all really passionate and they are all great friends.  Antony doesn’t share these beliefs and his work of very different to mine but the common thing is with any of the people I work with, even if say people like Antony or Marc Almond or Pantelamon is that they like Current and that is why they can make it so passionate.  

That’s the nature of their conviction and they are also very good friends.  It’s rare to find people who believe in absolutely what they do and don’t sell out but when you look at say Antony or Marc Almond or Will Oldham, these are people who are commercially very successful, much more than I could ever hope for, but they remain really true to their beliefs and they can put some of this into their work with Current.  Like all music, if you get a connection with that music, whether or not you ever get to meet these specific artists, it’s this connection, of finding something in their music and this is what I get from everyone who works with Current.

One track on the album which has to be mentioned is ‘Idumea’  - this song was written by Charles Wesley (Bother of Charles Wesley, who founded the Methodist Church).  What was the reason for choosing the reason the tracks inclusion on the album?
The reason I chose that was purely and simply something that has stuck me since I was a child.  I’d go to church a lot as a child and there was a couple of songs that really really stuck – Idumea was one, another one was the hymn ‘My Song is Love Unknown’ and another one, which is a bit twee now, ‘the Lord of the Dance (Tibet sings the chorus ‘dance dance where ever you shall be, for I am the Lord of the dance said he’), which as a child I thought was thrilling but now I suspect that its new age thing.   Concerning Idumea and ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’, the reason it’s there is, as I was saying before, ‘Black Ships’ is a narrative, its my personal version of the second coming of Christ, but even I’m aware that they are my beliefs and not everyone will find something it there that relates to themselves.    

Imagine that ‘Black Ships’ is all a play.  That the ‘Black Ships’ is a play itself unfolding on the stage in front of you.  I mean I happen to think that this is a reality, but just imagine that you’re watching a play.  A play, which is David Tibet’s version of what is happening to us at the moment or will happen.  And then in classical theatre on either side of the stage you will often have what they call a ‘chorus’.  They would make an observation or a moral prompt or perhaps put the play into contexts because you’re getting so drawn into it that you lose track of how it exists in the world that’s carrying on around you.  And what Idumea is.  The reason I’ve got all of these people and the reason it keeps on coming back is that Idumea is the four last things  - we will die, we will be judged, we will go to Heaven or we will go to Hell – these are the four last things of any Christian doctorate, or I suppose any religious doctorate at all.  So whilst this dream-like play of ‘Black Ships’ is going on, what I’m trying to do is remind the listener and more importantly remind myself that just in case you start getting to caught up in it, ‘oh Anti-Christ is arriving.’ ‘Who is Anti-Christ?’  ‘How long do we have left?’  ‘What is the date of the second coming?’  All of those things can become so fascinating yet so useless, to work out dates, it doesn’t matter.  So Idumea reminds us that we will die and we will be judged and there are two states we can end up in, which will it be for you?  

So as I say it’s really aimed at myself, I have to remind myself sometimes to stop being so obsessed with looking at the minutiae of what fascinates me and swing my focus back and look at the broader picture of what will happen when I die.  It’s all very well that studied New Testament Greek or I studied Coptic or that I read the scriptures in ancient languages but I’m not going to be tested on grammar when I’m dead. Probably!        

Idumea is the theme of the album – there are two themes, one is this obsessive ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ vision and the other one is repeated over and over and over again, ‘you’ll die and you’ll be judged, you’ll die and you’ll be judged’ and that is Idumea.

How did you choose which artists where going to sing Idumea, as there are nine different version of it, with each one being sung by a different singer?  And how did their recording of it work?  Where they given the lyrics and where free to deliver the track as they saw fit?
It’s funny, as I don’t actually remember choosing artists it just became evident who I should ask.  They where all friends of mine, either for a very long time or more recently.  The only person I asked who couldn’t do it was Bill Fay, who because of one reason or another was unable to find the time.  I suppose I just asked all of the people who’s names appeared in my mind and that I felt would understand what I was trying to do.  That it is a conceptual narrative reflecting my way of viewing the world and obviously they are all people who’s work I admire massively and whom I’m lucky enough to call a friend.

In retrospect, is there anybody outside of the circle of Current 93 and friends, who you would have liked to record a version of the track but, but who you didn’t approach for one reason or another?
I can think of some names but whether of not they would have fitted, I don’t know.  Cyndi Lauper, Kate Bush, Lynn Briggs and Joanna Newsom.  As I said I don’t know if would have fitted in but these are four people who I admire.  I would have loved Klaus Nomi, if the name doesn’t mean anything to you Google it.  He was one of the first people to die from Aids, he was a soprano, a German living in New York.  He was very futuristic.  Almost pop in away.  There was a great track that he did called ‘Total Eclipse’, which is my favourite.  I sure there are other people who I would have loved to have asked and there are a couple of whom there would have been absolutely no chance they would have ever done it.  So if I had to have five people, one of whom was dead, that would be it.    

A little earlier you mentioned Coptic, can you explain exactly what this is?
If you imagine Ancient Egyptian which is written in Hieroglyphs, but there are different forms.  The ancient Egyptian language that was spoken was originally Greek, with five or six extra characters added on the dialect. And those five or six extra letters where taken from the cursive for of hieroglyphs.  So basically its Ancient Egyptian with Greek and a few extra letters that was used after the establishment of foreign Greek Roman rule, which died out as a spoken langue around the eleventh or twelfth century, as a result of the Arabic nations and Arabic become used. A lot of the Gnostic Gospels are written in Coptic.  They would have originally been written in Greek and these Greek versions often disappeared, but they would have translated into Coptic in around the second, third, fourth century.  So basically, that is what Coptic is.                   
 
The booklet that accompanies ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ contains Coptic, what was the reasoning for this?
There is a bit of Coptic but not a huge amount because I’m aware that people can’t read it but it is one of those obsessions of mine.  I’m not fluent in it by any means, you know I’m learning it, but I do refer to it a lot.  I originally became interested in it because of the Gospel of Thomas, an Apostle Gospel, which is only known in Coptic, well the earliest version are in Coptic with tiny fragments in Greek.  From there it just went on and I became more and more obsessed with it.  And this all started to happen at the same time I started having the dream about the black ships.  When I was younger I was interested in Ancient Egypt, not to any academic degree, I’m talking about when I 10, 11, 12 old and in a way I was rediscovering some of that atmosphere that was important to me as a child.

You’ve released two different editions of the album, one British/European and one North American.  What was the reason behind this?
 They’re not actually different editions as the music is absolutely the same.  The differences are purely in the colour that’s used around the booklet and the arrangement of the images.  And if you’re going to ask me why I did that.  We’ll I came up with two designs that are pretty similar and I just couldn’t decide with one to do.  I liked them both equally and then I realised that the edition we were doing in the States was being manufactured and distributed by a company called Revolver, with the other edition being manufactured in the UK by a company called Southern.  We were going to be using separate files because they where separate factories and separate templates, so I thought I might as well do both of them.  I wanted to do both of them and I’m a person that when I group I like does two editions I’m always delighted.  I like that and I like seeming two different ways of doing the same work.  But at the same time I did tell everyone that the music is absolutely the same on both editions.  I didn’t want people to feel ‘oh no, I’m a fan so I’ve got to by both’ because there was a different mix or something like that.  The music is identical but with slightly different covers.  So for those people who feel like getting both, fine and for those people who aren’t collectors and are purely interested in the music and want to make sure that they’ve got all interpretations, when that’s fine for them as well. Nobody will lose out.  

When me met, you mentioned that you where also planning on doing a vinyl version.  
There will be a vinyl version but I still don’t know when.  That will be a double vinyl and that will have different mixes of every track on there.  I’ll do all different vocal versions, absolutely different.  Again that’s something I’ve tend to do in the past, released a different vinyl version.  I’m not too sure how many people actually buy vinyl although I still have a fondness for it.

 (note: at the time of the interview this vinyl version of the album was still being planned however in December 2006 is was finally released as a double LP in a beautiful gatefold sleeve).  

I was going to say you must have a fondness for it, as almost all of the Current 93 releases have come out in vinyl.
Most of them have, yeh.  We don’t ever keep those in press.  We just do a certain amount and when they are gone, there gone.

You know, Current, all it’s ever been about since it started, from my point of view, is myself looking at myself in the mirror and trying to understand my obsessions, my fascinations, my fears, my loves, my hopes.  I’m just talking into a mirror all of the time and trying to understand myself and trying to pull of the mask that have obscured who I am, as they do for us all.  Kiergaard, my favourite philosopher talks a great deal about masks and has this quote that I used on one of the Current albums ‘do you not know there comes a midnight hours when everyone must take off their masks’ and of course when you take off one mask there is another one there.  The way that we armour and manufacture ourselves to cope with the dream-like reality we are living in and to cope with.  The demands that we make on each other is extraordinarily complex and what I’m trying to do is just for myself, is pull off all of these masks and see what’s behind it and of course there’s another make, but they come subtler and subtler. Current has always been just for myself and I never thought that anybody would find it interesting or get it or care.  But I cared.

So if I want to do two different versions of the CD cover and I want to do vinyl with different mixes, I’m really doing it because I want to do it.  You know I’m not thinking ‘oh great I can screw another grand out of the audience’.  Really nobody has got to buy any of this.  I’m never forcing people, how could I?  It’s done for me and sometimes I do things that I’m really happy with and I lose money, sometimes they make money and sometimes they break even.  If I look at all the Ghost Story Press books, because I’ve done about 25 to 30 of them, some of them have made money and some of them I’ve lost a lot on, but they’ve all been things that I badly wanted to do.  I’ve just really followed my heart.  I’m an enthusiast and I’m a fan.  I’m an enthusiast for my own work and I’m an enthusiast of many, many other peoples work. Whether it be Arthur Doyle, Afro-American free-jazz or Tiny Tim.  I’ve got really universal tastes and I’m just full of enthusiasm for things and if something moves me I just really want to be involved with it, whether it’s something I do myself or where it’s something someone else has done.  I am obsessive.

Does it surprise you what with Current 93 being such a personal project that you have an almost obsessive collection of fans?    
Well, yes.  As I said to you earlier I can’t understand why anyone would get this.  Dri, my wife and many other close friends have pointed out that ‘Tibet you don’t get it, but look at the people you like.  You’re liking people who have absolutely obsessive personal views and visions and they themselves are probably thinking ‘‘gosh I don’t know why anyone buys this’’, and often they don’t!’  I mean I’m passionate about what I do and I also believe it.  I think perhaps people pick up on that.

You know, I’m full of faults and failures, like we all are.  I’m passionate about what I do and it matters greatly to me.  I think people often have an image of me, which is very dark and mysterious or occult.  You know how people are?  If they are just listening to the records they might think it’s all a bit dark.  I remember reading a review, which was quite a good review but it started of with ‘for an obsessive paranoid death obsessed guy David Tibet sees to have a lot of friends’ and I do.  I think if I look at myself I hope I’m not arrogant, I’m affable, I’m friendly, I like to meet people that are interested in my work.  I mean often I can’t because of the pure nature of the shows and we’ve only got so much time.  I hope that people are moved by it because I’m moved by it and I think that if they are moved by it then they share something with me and I share something with them.  There are webs that bind us all, getting stronger and weaker depending.  If people are moved by what I do then I’m probably moved by what they do.  

How many of my audience have the literal belief in the second coming?  Well, probably a minority but I know there are traditionalist Catholics fans for Current 93, I know there are Born Again fans, I know there are Evangelical Christian fans of Current, there are Pagan fans of Current, because you don’t have agree with that I believe in.  I think people are aware that I do believe in it.  I have a respect for their beliefs, I might not share them but I think it’s important that people are passionate about what they believe.  People who are passionate about the situation that we are in.  We’re human and we have manifold failings and we also have manifold links to God.  We’re full of both weakness and the beautiful terrible power that we’re often not aware of it.  I mean people aren’t going to rush to see Current 93 because they think that I’ve got the widest vocal range of all time or that I’m the most technically accomplished singer.  At the same time I got a voice that’s limited but is powerful for what it wishes to be.  So I think that people are moved by it because they are moved by it and I guess you’d need to ask those people.  I do think I’d be moved by what they do or at least I find myself in a similar territory with different architecture perhaps, with similar landscapes.  Does that make sense?

Yes, I think so.  If people have similar beliefs as yourself and can gain something through your music, great, but if someone’s tastes in Current are purely musical, than that’s fine as well.  As long as they can find something in your music it doesn’t matter what element it is.
Yeh that’s it, but if they do have the same beliefs as myself, I don’t think it’s all the better.  I’d never want anyone to listen to one of my records tomorrow and think’ yeh, Tibet’s absolutely right, that’s how it is’.  I think it is how it is but we all have our own slants.  GK Chesterton, A writer who I admire a lot said ‘a man must be orthodox in most things otherwise you will never be able to create your own heaven’ and I think that’s important.  I’ve got a lot of views that mainstream Christianity would find unorthodox, as they’d find other things that Id said down the line where absolutely correct.  What matters is what we feel, what matters is that we express that we truly feel and feel better for doing that and that gives us a clearer sense of our power and our own inadequacies.  I sound like a self-help column!    

Are you aware of the prices that some of the Current 93 back catalogue sells for, especially in relation to items being sold on Ebay? (At the time of the interview there was a signed white-label copy of C93’s Island listed with a starting price of £500).
I don’t look at Current 93 on Ebay, I did used to but not anymore, none-the-less I am aware as once in a while people do email me. It does piss me off and it also depresses me a bit, when I’ve given things to people and then they sell them on.  Dri pointed out that ‘you’ve given it to them, you’ve given it to them!’  It is strange, sometimes people sell my letters on-line and I find that kind of depressing. But saying that, in that past I’ve wanted things and had to pay high, I guess that it’s just the market.  

Some people think that I take a cut of Current releases then they’re re-sold, which is odd.  Someone once wrote to me saying ‘how can you justify your greed?  Second-hand copies of your records are so expensive’ and then they went on to say that they thought that I got a cut.  I suppose the market determines what something is worth, but I don’t think that they are worth it.

If somebody, for example Shirley Collins, if somebody put up an unreleased Shirley Collins album and said minimum bid two grand, I’d make the bid.  I really would.  And that’s why I find it difficult to criticise the prices that people put things up for.  It may be hypocritical of me but I’m a collector of people that I really admire and will pay a huge amount of money to get something that I want. It’s a weird, no-doubt, sickness. They aren’t too many of them I’d do this for but if there was something I didn’t have I’d do anything to get it.

Because of the nature of my obsession I think that I’ve got everything by these people anyway.  With Count Stenbock. I’ve got duplicate signed copies of his books but if another signed copy came up I’d buy it because it would be a different signature and it’s be the same with David Lindsey, who as a fantasy author who had written 5 books in his life time.  So guess I’m an obsessive.

Are you still planning to re-issue the Current 93 back catalogue?
It is coming out, it’s just that there is so much of it that is out of print now, its just such a huge task.  I’d rather we working, like anybody would, on new material, doing new things rather than excavating the ‘museum of my fault’ and putting out stuff, which I did twenty years ago.  So it’s really a matter of prioritising things.

How do you feel about the recordings that you did twenty odd years ago?
I go in and out really. There are a couple of things that I don’t think are great, I think that they are lazy, like ‘Dawn’.  I think with the early material, the person who did that is like a friend of mine and someone I’ve got a connection with and I’m aware that I was at the recording session but I don’t know how similar I am to that person now. But at the same time when I listen to ‘Nature Unveiled’, the first album, it’s an absolutely apocalyptic Christian concept album.  So in one way Current hasn’t changed, in terms of the guiding obsession that made it what it is.  Yet on the other hand it has changed.  Primarily I think that the lyrics have become a lot more personal, where as then they weren’t really personal at all, or the music was instrumental!  There is nothing I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t done.  Even ‘Dawn,’ which I think is pretty lazy.  The fact that it was lazy made me look at what I was doing and think that this can’t go on.  I can’t go in and churn these albums out.  

But then again some people say that ‘Dawn’ is their favourite Current releases, so to some people it’s a powerful involving, hallucinatory dreamscape and I’m still glad I did it.  If I hadn’t of done it, I wouldn’t have had the extreme reaction.  Really I’m proud of everything that I’ve done.  Some things mean more to me that others but then again I never listen to them.  

‘Black Ships’ started four years ago and I haven’t listened to it after the mastering, to check that it was OK.  Occasionally I listen to alternative mixes to reconsider how things worked out but anything before ‘Black Ships’ the only time I ever listened to it is if I’m considering performing a track live and I need to remember the thrust.  As I say I don’t collect my own work.  I do have it all but it’s not on my racks.  If somebody asks me something about an album of mine I have to ring up a friend rather than going into the attic and dig out the box.      

One thing that you seem to be very passionate about aside from your music and your collections are your cats.
Oh yes, I collect cats!  I just love cats and I’d have as many as it was possible to have. Of course you always have to keep a limit on it as they are very territorial.  We’ve got four now and two years ago we had seven.  My favourite cat Squiggy went to Christ on Valentines Day so I’ve still got her ashes by the bed.  I found that really, really difficult.  My cats are really good friends of mine and I love them dearly.  I don’t make any distinctions between cats and humans.  I mean this sounds stupid in one way as you can’t have a two way conversation with them, actually you can have a bit of a two way conversation with them.  I just love them without limits.  I mean if you asked my why I love my cats so much I suppose I’d have to say ‘Lee, why do you love Annette (my wife) so much?’ you know why you do and everyone in meeting her will see that she is charming, lovable and a great person, but you still couldn’t explain to me why you love her.  Only you know and it’s inexplicable.  I love cats because I love cats.  Generally I just love animals but cats are just my favourite, although I also really love snails, slugs and seahorses.  If it’s been raining I’m always picking up snails and slugs and putting them to the side, I just really love them.  The sentimentality of the whole nature of love is loving something you can’t give a reason for.  Loving something although you know you can’t explain it to others as you can’t explain it to yourself.  

The nature of love is that love must be inexplicable and crazy and absurd.  It’s like a belief in the resurrection of Christ or the Second Coming, it’s absurd but I know its true.

Tertullian, a Patristic author, i.e., he is one of the fathers of the early church and one of the first Christian writers, when asked about Christianity and how he could believe in it because to a lot of people it didn’t make sense.  How could God the all powerful come down and be so weak and despicable and get crucified, fall in punishment of all and rise again it made no sense and Tertullian’s famous answer was  “credo quia absurdum est” which is Latin for “I believe because it is absurd”.

I’m not a great believer in rational discourse, humans try to be rational but the heart isn’t rational, the soul isn’t rational.  Something’s work within a logical template or a rational template but I don’t know much about that.  I’m not saying that it doesn’t have its values or I’m not one of those people who say we should get rid of computers because they work on a digital platform.  Again I can only believe in what I know and I really delight in the absurdities of the situation that we are in.  I’m a very optimistic and hopeful person.  People often think that I’m apocalyptic, gloomy and melancholy but its not true because the Second Coming of Christ is the beginning.  When all true faces are revelled I think that this will be the end of pain and the end of suffering.    

I’m not an Evangelist, my job isn’t to make the entire world Christian, even less the specific, odd Christianity I believe in myself.  I’m just stating how I see the world and I’m stating that it’s a hopeful way of seeing the world. No matter what pain and suffering is being undergone, there will become a change, but maybe not in my life time, but may be in yours.     

I believe in 2000 that you almost died in hospital.  Did this make you question your own mortality and that of those around you?
It made me REALLY question my own mortality instead of questioning my mortality in a poetic manor, lets say.  It’s all very well to talk about {sing} “we must know that we must die” – “life is just a candle, a shadow of a candle”.  Even when we think about these things we don’t actually believe that we are going to die.  Nobody really believes it.  So when I did nearly die I thought “Fuck, I really really will die’.  I have to say at the same time the nature of human self-deception is so strong that not long after that old habits re-constructed themselves and I was back into the dreams of personal immortality that we all have.   

It did give me a new view on things.  As I say people are creatures of habit and now I’m back again thinking exactly as I did before I nearly died.  One gets comfortable again.  I start to think ‘yeh I know I nearly died, but that’s Ok now.  You came for me and you didn’t get me and now I’m going to live longer’, which of course is me being self delusional.

It was an interesting and profound experience.  I think it was made even more profound by the fact I was under such huge doses of morphine but only for a couple of days before I took the epidural out.  After that happened as I mentioned in the book (England’s Hidden Reverse by David Keenan) I did see the Angel of Death descend to the person next to me.  I think some people think I was still on morphine but it was very clear.  I was no longer drugged and had taken the morphine out early although the nurses had said I should carry on for a few more days.  Actually the last vision I had on morphine was of one of Elvis Presley under a strobe singing ‘Jingle Bells’ which was so realistic and that’s when I called the nurse over and said ‘nurse detach me, I think I’m Ok now’.  Before that I was just absolutely great, I just loved the morphine but things started get less profound and more banal.  I mean Elvis Presley, God bless him, it could have been a more credible song like ‘Hound Dog’.  It was an early period Presley when he has hip swinging and not the Vegas stuff.  

So not the white jump suit then?
No, he was singing the material he sang in the big white jump suit but he was still looking pretty good.  He was still swivelling his hips, which I think this was pissing me off as well because I couldn’t even walk.  I had staples all up my stomach and a tube up my penis for the urine and tubes up my nose so I wasn’t felling very swilled hipped.

Did it take a long time to fully recover from?
I came out of hospital and was in bed for about 6 weeks.  I was starting to move with a stick but I could only walk at a right angle because I had about eighty-four metal stables in my stomach.  The scar goes down from where my ribs meet to my public hair, so it’s pretty long and was held together by these staples.  Strange times indeed.

Over the last few years you’ve moved from London to Scotland and have now settled back on the South Coast.  What was the reasoning for this and how has the almost constant moving affected you?  
London, I was just growing increasingly sick of.  I really hated London and it was a good time to move.  When Serpent (note: Word Serpent Distribution  - the distribution company/label that released many Current 93 recordings) went under it was a good time to look at our situation again.  We often came to look at the South Coast and thought about moving here a lot but when we where in London we wondering  if moving out of  London straight here would have felt like moving to the suburbs of London.  I think we needed a good year and half to really change our whole geographical location.  We wanted to move up North and certain things happened that made it a good idea.  A flat came up and it all just slotted into place.  I don’t regret going up there.  I love Glasgow and the people are really nice but eventually we wanted to be back down South.  My wife has family down here, most of our UK based friends are down here. I was easily accessible to London but not in London.  We live two minutes walk from the sea and the Downes and it’s perfect.  I’m just really really happy here.  

You’ve just recorded a split 10” with Om.  (editors note – this record has now been released on various coloured vinyls and subsequently on  CD)
Om, my favourite group in the world!  Yeh, I love them.  That’s a track that was recorded during the session of ‘Black Ships Ate the Sky’ called ‘Inerrant Infallible (Black Ships At Nineveh and Edom)’, which we said earlier Edom is Idumea.  We are going to be working together and Om have played with Current three times now.  I’m always looking for interesting people to work with.  As I said, I’m an enthusiast and big fan of Sunn O))) to.  I’m very inquisitive.

I’m [also] off to San Francisco for ten days because I’m recording an album with Ben Chesny of Six Organs and Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))) (note: this trip was subsequently cancelled but I believe is still planned).  It’s going to be the three of us under a group name but we don’t know that the name is yet.  We’ll see how the album turns out.  It’s going to be a three way project, absolutely not a Current 93 album.

How come this release with Om is coming out on Neurot?  
Chris and Al of Om and I decided we’d do this and they said what if Neurot do the 10”?  Steve Von Till of Neurosis is good friends with them and I’ve got to know him as well.  They are doing the 10” and Durtro and Durtro Jnana are doing the CD.  Al suggested Neurot because he’s friends of theirs and has always said he’d do something with Steve.  Sleep, the group that Om arose from have a connection with Neurosis and other bands on Neurot records.

With the releases of the ‘Black Ships’ album, the mini tour (“the last” David adds) and spate of interviews as well, what is next for Current 93?
 After this I’m going to stop doing interviews again and tours and then carry on working on the next Current album.  Work on the album with Ben and O’Malley, try and get more of the back catalogue in print, finish off my collective works of Count Stenbock, settle into our new house, get more cats, study more Coptic.  I’d like to do more painting as I haven’t done any painting for a while.  Just carry on doing the thing I enjoy doing and are the only things I know how to do!

 

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