Salt Marie Celeste

Salt Marie Celeste has just one long track that begins with a whisper of sound that ever so slowly builds even as it remains quite ambient. The underlying track was issued earlier on a rare Current 93/Nurse With Wound double CD called "Horse Hospital", and consists of an ambient, ultra-minimalist tape loop drone with a sound that rises and falls but otherwise doesn't change during its hour length. The original release didn't have much to it, and was no match for an earlier Nurse With Wound release in the same vein, Soliloquy for Lilith. On Salt Marie Celeste, other noises are very gradually introduced to the underlying drone and repeated at regular intervals. First, there's a whizzing sound that was also used on Man With the Woman Face, then a one-second high-pitched tone that almost sounds like a distant ship's horn calling for help in the mist, and later on, creaking noises that earlier appeared on a Nurse With Wound track titled "Creakiness." Then comes a low, clattering noise a bit like thunder and then eventually, other clattering noises. The creaks have a back and forth movement like the wooden masts on a listing vessel, and with all the other elements thrown in, one gets an eerie sense of doom, as if the ship was slowly sinking, whereas the earlier recording suggested the never-ending waves of an implacable ocean. Towards the end of the track (album), the sounds fall away and we are left again with the original minimalist drone ebbing and surging for another five minutes before slowly fading away. It?s one of the bands' more ambient ventures, borrowing bits from several other albums to make something completely different. Not quite their best but certainly a nice listen, and a big improvement over the earlier version. ~ Rolf Semprebon