CURRENT 93 ‎– Bright Dead Star (2018)

The Light Is Leaving Us All (2018) is an album by British experimental music group Current 93. It was released on 13 October 2018 through The Spheres record label and House of Mythology. The album was performed in its entirety on 13 October 2018 in a rare performance at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, backed by a series of slow-moving films by Davide Pepe in the style of the album’s artwork.

The Light Is Leaving Us All has received generally positive reviews from critics. Writing for Brainwashed, Anthony D’Amico praised the album, stating it “effortlessly transcends time and space and dissolves reality to open a fleeting portal into an alternate world swirling with unknowable mystery, unearthly beauty, and ineffable sadness. At its best, this album feels like a motley and wild-eyed caravan of minstrels, actors, and puppeteers unexpectedly appeared in a medieval town to share a vividly haunting, hallucinatory, and deeply eschatological fairy tale that will be the last thing that any of the villagers ever hear.” Writing for Pitchfork, Calum Marsh called it “an arduous but rewarding album, the feeling of listening to a preacher behind the pulpit, or a doomsayer on the soapbox.”

The hummingbird sings but soon come Byebye blackbird the harsh night And I read in the tealeaves And scan in the stars Marked the trails of moths The light shall leave you all

Excuse me–that voice that falls from stone Perhaps it was the word saying a word– Ugaritic Speak that word whilst the sea falls And moths swirl and clouds call The light is leaving us all

Spring is coming–so they said Spring is moving In the whirlpools And the Moon is as full As the sea is as deep And in the clouds The shadows creep And the light is leaving us all

Sweeping down like foxes Who have heard in the dust News travels hard from heart to dark Rumours of war hum softly And on their paws black rolls the chariot Over the plains and waves The light is leaving us all

In other faces the eyes twitch and switch Back and forth king fall queen fall Silence shouts Shut lock shut door shut lights out Trees fall–the taste of your face Our first kiss said– The light is leaving us all

Under which star shone that? You sang which sky is that? You sang and pointed north and south I see you didn’t see Bright dead star fallen You looked east and west And he birds sang so sweetly The light is leaving us all

So suddenly nothing was you Your hair so fair I recall so well still And then the light left you quite I dreamt I lived on a hill In that dream where the real Is just dots on my lap The light is leaving us all