Dawn

Wonderfully expanded for CD, where three bonus tracks almost double the original album's 33-minute running time, Dawn is the album that proved Current 93 more than capable of shifting from their early experimental/industrial sound, without losing an iota of the original vision or power. "Great Black Time" and "Maldoror Est Mort" are natural continuations of David Tibet's earlier work, the former ushered in on church bells and the faint echo of a carnival, before splintered speech and ghostly vignettes begin slicing through the cacophony, and "California Dreaming" gets in there as well, albeit in the kind of mangled fashion that leaves you wondering what Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music might have sounded like if he'd had samples instead of feedback to play with. Flip the original vinyl and "Maldoror Est Mort" is as monkish and mumbled as it ought to be, and at 18 minutes it does get a little wearing after a while, particularly as great swathes of it seem to have been deliberately played back at half (or worse) speed -- suggesting that it could have been a lot livelier if Tibet had only wanted it to be. On to the CD, and the first of the bonus tracks is an alternate version of "Great Black Time," although things aren't quite that simple. The original 1992 CD featured this alternate version only, as the original vinyl master had been lost. The current edition restores the vinyl version, together with the grandly fragmentary "A Day in Dogland" (originally found on the compilation The Fight Is On) and an ethereal Nature Unveiled outtake, "Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus." ~ Dave Thompson|