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The live group centres round the similarly prodigious Ben Chasny(Six Organs of Admittance) and cellist John Contreras,both of whom are key contributors to the new album,as is Tibet's regular foil,Steven Stapleton of Nurse with Wound.After the skeletal intimacy of the last two 'full' Current 93 albums,Sleep has his house(2000) and Soft Black Stars(1998),the new release sees Tibet re-introducing greater thematic complexity and textural richness into his ouvre,wich had perhaps been in danger of being stripped down to oblivion.As with the best Current 93 work,it draws on private dream imagery,declamations of deeply held beliefs and allusions to arcane theology.The apocalyptic metaphor of the black ships literally devouring the heavens came from a recurring nightmare of Tibet's,and both the individual musical settings and the careful architecture of the album bring the theme to terrifying life.
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