ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

The only full-length album in the Inmost Light Trilogy, ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was released in 1996 between the two EPs, "Where The Long Shadows Fall (Beforetheinmostlight)" and "The Starres Are Marching Sadly Home (TheInMostLight ThirdAndFinal)." The most diverse soundscapes of the trilogy are found on this 14-track release that adds up to about 55 1/2 minutes. One again David Tibet is joined by Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton on percussion and strings as well as sitting in as producer and mixing engineer with John Balance returning for vocals on three tracks and CURRENT 93 counterpart Michael Cashmore plays guitar, bass, glockenspiel and piano. The album features many other guests including Nick Cave making a cameo on a couple tracks.

Revolving around an adhesive label on the original packaging referring to the album as a Hallucinatory Patripassianist's Philosophy which apparently in Christian theology is an Eastern concept of modalism that God The Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are three different modes or emanations of one monadic God. A lyrical rotisserie of various themes of pain and death along with the overcoming of such through the light or inner soul is the primary theme of this esoteric and heady excursion through an apocalyptic folk based soundscape steeped with varying vocal narrations with a post-industrial mood setting. The album focuses on the usual neofolk acoustic guitar strumming of this chapter of CURRENT 93 but also heavy on droning, electronic experimentalism.

Graced with the same Shirley Collins inspired folk intimacy of previous releases only set to the world of eschatological esotericism and the mysticism of poets like William Blake, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES goes for the jugular with its bizarre post-industrial bleakness that seems to come into full fruition with the collaborative forces of Steve Stapleton and John Balance by his side. The album features lush lullaby type folk as heard on the traditional title track (which makes an augmented reprise at the end) as well as offering piano-based bleakness with TIbet's most sinister vocal narrations on "The Inmost Night." While mostly narrating his poetic prose in a most exaggerated spoken manner, on tracks like "This Carnival Is Dead And Gone" Tibet almost succeeds in a full-singing effect but offers his utterly distinct methodology of always sounding like he's speaking even when technically hitting the notes that would indeed qualify him as a singer!

The album's greatest strength is the varying soundscapes at hand with alternating folky passages mixing with bleaker electronic-based industrial bits that evoke an earlier age of CURRENT 93. Many tracks are nothing more than short little ditties whereas others such as "Twilight Twilight Nihil Nihil" capture a full apocalyptic industrial soundscape approach and eke out a sense of impending disaster for over eight minutes thus making the album feel like a seesaw ride of uplifting little folk pieces of innocence to full on climactic nightmares in musical form. Followed by the 9 1/2 "The Inmost Light Itself" which offers a continuation of the bleak detached and depressive subject matter only reverting back to the apocalyptic folk with not only Tibet's particularly whispered vocals but by a scattering of sound samples of children in the background. The album ends with Nick Cave offering vocal performances, first on the reprise of the short but sweet title track and followed by the closing "Patripassian" which finds cave in spoken word narration reading text from the Pensées of Blaise Pascal over a loop of English 16th century choral music.

Considered a fan favorite many are unaware that this album sits smack dab in the middle of a conceptual trilogy which is not surprising due to the fact Tibet's esoteric connections are more conceptual than on a musical footing that makes it all easy to connect. There is really no reason why any of t these three chapters cannot exist on their own and the listener will not diminish the experience one little bit if any of the EPs are simply glossed over. Overall a great apocalyptic dirge through the many musical forms of depression and bleakness that Tibet sought out with great fanfare. I absolutely adore these intersecting creative forces where the masterminds of CURRENT 93, Coil and Nurse With Wound bring the best of their worlds to one work table. A triumphant display of dark ambient and apocalyptic folk at its finest.