Steven Stapleton & David Tibet • The Sadness Of Things (United Dairies, 1991)

Your good doctor is in a bit of a quandary, and taking a walk in the snow currently blanketing New York has not made things any clearer. I'm not sure if I had witnessed a car wreck, nervous break down, a bad power struggle, infidelity, anima dimorphism, imaginary lycanthropy, or any other form of what the hell was that a few months ago. Regretfully I am a man driven to get to the bottom of things. Had I only picked up a different match book and filled out the coupon, my entries would be written by the aesthetics a different hand. That appendage would be one guided by the mind of a private investigator. While my psyche has been honed to look for signs of malignant growth, or even host parasite imbalance, and these are detecting skills, I wish I was better suited to the world of mind and motivation.

When I find myself in such a state, wondering what has happened, or perhaps even my role in unfolding events, one can either chose music that numbs all thought or enhance it. To perform audio anesthetic I would opt for something ridiculous not unlike T.Rex or even Esquivel, but for moments of reflection the nod must be given to Steven Stapleton and David Tibet's apex of inner-space; The Sadness Of Things.

Sprawled out across two tracks is the fog of contemplation and melancholia. The title track begins with a slow and steady drumbeat, not unlike something one hears at the finer temples in Lasha Lasha. A mournful wooden flute pipes lonely against a indecipherable electronic fog. As this builds in stately momentum a girls voice intones "I am not born. I do not die". Her voice is assured, very much like the words of the departed - not connecting with any event in the room, but still with intention of place. This is the ritual that draws you out of your body and allows you to look down and see that the world was really constructed of back lots and extras. Mono no aware? Most certainly. There are things in this world that will never be fully understood. Nuances is all one can gather, and even then to study it too long its inner workings become various and open ended. No answer is forthcoming. Eventually all one learns is that cruelty is one of the easier actions we are capable of. You walk away muttering the sadness of things. Such is the music of the first track. With a stringent viola line working its way through the gauzy haze eventually David Tibet appears. With a somnambulists dedication he reads bewildering lines asking where the years have gone. By the simple magick of sound he has helped you through your quandary. What is unknown can be left aside, content we are that some mysteries are the sum total of themselves. Now the great work can begin.

By the second track; The Grave And The Beautiful Name Of Sadness, you are fully dislodged and now among the protoplasm and dark mater that holds existence together. With just human voice and echo, Stapleton glides you to somewhere. Yet it seems the trip is more important than the destination. Are these the voices of the departed we hear and are they just sounding off in the fog, with no definitive omens to come for the living?

It seems that this CD has gone out of print and there are no immediate plans to reissue it, which is a shame. Of the collaborations that Stapleton and Tibet have lodged under their names, not just under the designations as Nurse With Wound or Current93 this is some of their most powerful work. Equally a shame is the scarcity of the CD. Used copies are almost impossible to come by, and most due to a mastering issue have disc rot.

Please click on the review title for the selected track: The Sadness Of Things.