Well, this is a surprise, and I say that without sarcasm. The lead single from Youth’s debut solo album is a breezy slice of indie with a heavy 60s folk influence.
But then, Youth has always been a man of surprises. His transition from Killing Joke bassist to producer and remixer of some incredibly high-profile mainstream acts including U2 and Erasure, via recording as a member of 90s dance act Blue Pearl and back to playing bass with Killing Joke and juggling infinite other projects is an incredible feat, and while I might consider his lack of commitment to any one thing uncritical, it’s clearly apparent that he’s an artist who can turn his hand – and successfully – to anything. I suppose the only real question is ‘what does he truly believe in?’ or ‘who is the real Martin Glover?’
The press blurbage for the album, out in November, and its eclectic range does attempt to shed some light one this:
‘Growing up with the sound of 70’s pop radio and bands such as Smokie, Pilot and Bay City Rollers – some of the tracks here are a flashback to those times and the initial inspiration of a thirteen year old Youth to write his first songs. ‘Sha La Laa I Love You’ and ‘The King Of The Losers’ are intimate, honest and have a naïve and innocent pop sensibility that are underpinned with regret and loss. He’s also took [sic] inspiration from psychedelic pop and English folk rock and his own words, he was thinking – “Everything from Nick Drake to Led Zeppelin, through a lens of Fairport tripping out with the Velvet Underground with a couple of Beach Boys, all the way to Cohen and Rodriguez, via Jim O Rourke, jamming with Fred Neil and Bert Janch and Michael Rother.’
Yes, Youth has been around, and so absorbed and assimilated a lot of stuff, and ‘Spinning Wheel’ brings many of those different pieces together, starting with a keen ear for melody, with the added bonus of some nice, subtle harmonies. Objectively, it’s a neat and accessible pop tune, and you can’t say fairer than that.
Having unveiled the Sic Transit Gloria Mundi EP via their Bandcamp page last November – and subsequently on all of the usual digital platforms, Ulver are finally giving the EP a physical release. The initial release was somewhat hurried as the band were about to embark on a lengthy tour to support the album The Assassination of Julius Caesar – so now, in addition to the three studio tracks (two originals which had lain dormant, incomplete for a time, and a cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘The Power of Love’) – they’re giving fans four live tracks recoded on the aforementioned tour as an added bonus.
The studio material – offcuts from The Assassination of Julius Caesar – continue the band’s pop-orientated evolution, and as with the material from album which spawned them, there’s a very mid-80s synth-rock style in evidence. Now, some aspects of 80s revivalism make sense: the dark times in which we find ourselves seems to demand bleak post-punk inspired sounds. But is there anything that can truly justify the revisitation and recreation of radio-friendly pop-rock, the overproduced sound of mullets, hair gel and rolled jacket sleeves? Ulver have fully made the transition into purveyors of sleek, slick and ultimately overtly commercial. I’ve no objection to pop per se, but let’s not pretend that sonically or lyrically, Ulver 2018 are any more challenging than Bastille. Then again, there are shades of darkness in a lot of 80s chart music that are often overlooked, and Ulver still brood, with hints of Depeche Mode and Disintegration-era Cure in the many-layered mix. And the cover – a song that feels somewhat underrated in the FGTH discography – is done justice with an extremely faithful rendition.
The live tracks are, as one would expect, pristine in both performance and production. It’s perhaps easier to marvel at the fidelity and the quality than it is the dynamics and the passion, and there’s nothing that connects the silent scream of pain of Francis Bacon’s ‘Study After Velasquez’ used on the cover art, but music where synths are dominant tends to sound a lot cleaner and more polished live anyway.
The Assassination of Julius Caesar opener,‘Nemoralia’, is presented here in extended form, its dreamy disco on sedatives groove stretching past the six-minute mark, and ‘Rolling Stone’ is allowed to breathe in all its epic glory. ‘Southern Gothic’ (which does bring some atmosphere and emotion to the partly) ‘Transverberation’, both recorded at Labirinto Della Masone, Fontanellato showcase the band’s stadium-filling, reverb-soaked sound to optimal effect. And the fact of the matter is, I can’t fault it. I’m just not really feeling it, either.
Like Natalie Imbruglia, I’m torn. Fence-sitting is no position for anyone, least of all a music reviewer: ho-hum is no critique. But I’m torn between instinct and critical distance here. Y’see, it’s a fine line between spirituality and pseudomystical bullshit. And the trouble is, one man’s spirituality is another man’s pseudomystical bullshit. The orientation of most organised religions and many other credos includes a certain emphasis on collectivism and unity, but ultimately any belief system or spiritual framework is inherently personal.
This review starts on difficult ground: Hypnopazūzu is a collaboration between David Tibet and Youth. I’m a huge fan of Killing Joke, and can only salute Youth for his production work, despite the fact I’m not keen on many of the major artists he’s worked with. David Tibet is an entirely different proposition and is someone I’ve never really been a fan of. I don’t have any issue with Current 93 per se, and it would be a grave mistake to overlook their contribution to the development of the experimental strain of industrial music in the early 80s. I’ve simply never got into their work. But some of the company David Tibet has kept over the course of his career does give cause for concern, not least of all prominent neo-Nazis Boyd Rice and Douglas Pearce. It would be a mistake to call Tibet guilty by association, but perhaps he should be more careful about the people he works with: Current 93 re broadly associated with Neofolk, and the Neofolk scene is conspicuous for the number of dodgy people connected with it. And beyond that, there are an awful lot of really turgid albums in circulation, which, when not revelling in far-right thematics, are preoccupied with disappearing up their own sphincters while preaching high occultism.
To give Tibet the benefit of the doubt, he presents as a broad-minded individual, who identifies himself as a Christian, but has devoted a lot of time to exploring occultism, Buddhism and Gnosticism, and as such, appears to be genuinely exploratory (rather than hiding behind the pretence of exploration as a means of justifying the use of dangerous imagery), engaged with spirituality in its broadest sense on a purely intellectual level first and foremost. Which brings us to Create Christ, Sailor Boy. How does one position a work such as this?
The press release describes it as ‘transcendent, tumultuous, and tricky, the sound of two spirits skipping as one to create a sidereal glimpse into uncounted cartoons,’ and quotes Tibet as saying, “I am happy always to work with Youth in any way, forever and for ever and always and in all ways… I wait for my Ouija Board Planchette to receive his Mind’s Eye Text.”
I’ll refrain from making any gags about the mind’s eye, third eye, and the brown eye and keep things as objective as possible. In such a context it’s perhaps a mistake to attempt to determine whether or not this is an album of high spirituality or pseudomystical bullshit, primarily in the interest of keeping a certain critical distance. Is it possible to separate the aesthetic from the art? Perhaps: Tibet has also long shown himself to be a man preoccupied with the apocalypse, and the sense of apocalyptic foreboding hangs heavy over this album. In the current global climate, it feels entirely appropriate. These are scary and challenging times, regardless of one’s faith or faithlessness, and in this context, Create Christ, Sailor Boy is an album of our times. It’s the soundtrack to struggle, the soundtrack of desperation, of humanity reaching out and clutching, desperately for something. Anything.
There can be no question that Create Christ, Sailor Boy is truly immense in scope and depth. Particularly in depth. This goes beyond the human condition. And in many respects transcends vague notions of spiritualism. This is not soul music, or even soulful in the conventional sense, so much as music which probes the very core of the soul, pulling hard at the gut. From the opening notes – shimmering, sweeping synths and crashing cymbals – provide an epic and portentous backdrop to Tibet’s evocations of apocalypse and build to a momentous climax. And all within the album’s first five minutes. Yes, this is colossal work that’s epic on every level. Every level. On first listen, I detested this album, but it needs time to grow. And time to grow. Whichever side of the fence you may sit.
‘Christmas with the Channellers’ brings forth an ethereal subterranean atmosphere which typifies the album as a whole. It’s an immense track which brings together heaven and hell in a battle on this earthly domain and as Tibet tears his guts out through his vocal delivery, the enormity of existence is thrown into sharp relief. ‘The Crow At Play’ is a tense colossus, which finds Tibet rasp into a frenzy as he name-checks Gary Glitter. Yes, this is a work’s that’s socially engaged and as such it would be wrong to accuse it of being a work which focuses on the spiritual at the expense of the real world.
‘It’s tool time!’ Tibet announces in a wide-eyed and excited tone on ‘Sweet Sodom Singings’. Is the invocation of Home Improvement intentional? It surely must be. There is no shortage of lyrical evidence to confirm that Tibet is as in touch with the upper world and its culture as he is with all things internal and far above the flesh.
Sonically, it’s interesting, too, with tracks like ‘The Sex of Stars’ whipping up a dense sonic maelstrom in contrast with the psychedelic / eastern / industrial crossover of ‘Sweet Sodom Singings’ and the trudging ‘Pinoccio’s Handjob’, the ethereal spacetronica of ‘The Auras re Escaping into the Forest and the and brooding folk of ‘Night Shout, Bird Tongue’. In terms of textural range, it’s hard to fault.
In many respects, I’m still on the fence, but musically and compositionally, Create Christ, Sailor Boy is an impressive work. It may be pseudomystical bullshit, but it’s a powerful album that has a lot of listening hours in it.
Really? David Tibet and Youth? With an album , Create Christ, Sailor Boy, and live show in the offing, they’ve unveiled a brace of tracks, including the album’s final track, ‘Night Shout, Bird Tongue’. So yes this is really something which is happening nd it promises to be unusul if nothing else. And given the various path-crosings the two have made ove the last three decades, it’s perhps not as bizarre as it may ppear on the surface, so much as a collaboration a long time in the making.
A transformative union of two idiosyncratic tellers, Hypnopazūzu sees Current 93 speller David Tibet joining forces with the eternal Youth, famed not only for his work as bassist with Killing Joke but for production and collaborative work with an outlandishly eclectic list of artists from Alien Sex Fiend to Paul McCartney. Together, they’ve created a singular hallucinatory vision that marries symphonic splendour to indignant gnostic intensity – Create Christ, Sailor Boy draws in, and down, masks terrestrial and celestial and summons a collection of songs unlike anything either artist has created previously. In addition to this debut album release, the duo have also announced a live show in London on Saturday 22nd October at Union Chapel with The Stargazer’s Assistant in support.
Having both first skipped together on Current’s debut album Nature Unveiled in 1983, together, these two again manifested their sticky alchemy, with Youth’s ornate and dramatic arrangements sliding into and around Tibet’s vivid hypnagogic visions to end up in a psychic picnic hinterland that is as sumptuous as it is colourful in its opulence. Tibet’s luxurious kosmoi sliding slyly onto peaks of intent and intoxication on the album, and songs such as the Galactic Sexiness of ‘The Sex Of Stars’ and the Cuneiform Cuteness of ‘The Auras Are Escaping Into The Forest’ show him, backed by the emotive and expressive power of Youth’s arrangements, as a conduit turning unspelled grammars into grimoires.
Transcendent, tumultuous, and tricky, Create Christ, Sailor Boy is the sound of two spirits skipping as one to create a sidereal glimpse into uncounted cartoons. It seems likely this partnership will be a fruitful one, both in this realm and other playgrounds. “I am happy always to work with Youth in any way, forever and for ever and always and in all ways” stresses David. “I wait for my Ouija Board Planchette to receive his Mind’s Eye Text.”
93 years in the making, this elaborately-packaged 3-sided LP (it will have a laser etching on Side 4) contains ten songs and brings together spheres and planets for the Ultimate Hallucinatory PickNick. Also available in CD and digital formats, check out the House of Mythology store for pre-orders. This album will come with two different front covers; one by David Tibet, the other by Youth, available on 26th August.
Aural Aggravation 