Nodding God’s new album (House of Mythology)

Three assenting Pazūzu-heads agree: David Tibet and Andrew Liles’ new album of DayGlo demonology is more fun than a desert wind bearing fevers and plagues! Nodding God Play Wooden Child is the first release from the pair’s new group, which has yet to make its live debut; the Islington Assembly Hall show scheduled for May appears to have been cancelled. Nodding God is as fresh as a daisy.

To be sure, the press materials for the LP claim Liles and Tibet have been working with a third member, The UnderAge Shaitan-Boy, since 1353:

NODDING GOD were formed 666 years ago by Andrew Liles, David Tibet and The UnderAge Shaitan-Boy in a Boys-Only preparatory boarding school in Babylon, since shut down by unfortunate events that took place there, in the night, in the dark.

Tibet’s lyrics for the album are mostly (I hear the Hebrew names of the archangels) written in the ancient Mesopotamian language of Akkadian. Chanted through a pitch shifter over the plashing and gurgling of liquid sequencers and synths, they sound like fearsome invocations of the Great Old Ones, though for all you and I know, they might just as well be sections of the Code of Hammurabi or complaints about the rising price of crisps at Sainsbury’s. Whatever the lyrical content, the effect is the same: discarnate entities awake from their centuries-long sleep, take spectral form in front of your hi-fi, and boogie.

House of Mythology, the London label that has released music by Tibet’s Hypnopazūzu and Zu93 projects, will issue Nodding God Play Wooden Child on pink vinyl, black vinyl, and CD on May 10. The album is available for pre-order from House of Mythology’s US and UK stores. Below, stream Nodding God’s selection for Dangerous Minds, “Natron Skipping Rope.”

The very lovely exhibition Invocation of Almost: The Art of David Tibet is open through May 25 at Cal State Fullerton’s Begovich Gallery.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The thrilling conclusion of Andrew Liles’ 42-hour musical work, ‘Colossus’
Current 93’s David Tibet and Killing Joke’s Youth discuss their first album as Hypnopazūzu

 
I learned many things during my recent conversation with David Tibet (Current 93 and related projects) and Youth (Killing Joke, the Orb, the Fireman, Brother Culture, Pink Floyd, et al.) about their fabulous new album as Hypnopazūzu. One of these was that during the early 80s, a British pop magazine had, at Tibet’s urging, numbered its final issue 666 and put Aleister Crowley on the cover. Tibet had written the cover story, too, about the Beast and his influence on pop musicians.

Both Youth and Tibet seemed to think the magazine in question was Smash Hits, but in fact Flexipop! was the one that employed Mark Manning/Zodiac Mindwarp as art editor and concluded with the Crowley issue. Though I wasn’t there, Flexipop! seems much hipper than Smash Hits from my vantage point: Every issue came with a flexi disc, and alongside the shit (and not) pop stars of the day, they profiled quality bands like the Birthday Party, Pigbag, Motörhead, Bauhaus, and Killing Joke (Youth dropped his pants in the pages of No. 19).

Having reached the kabbalistically significant number 32 with their second-to-last issue in June 1983—featuring both Killing Joke sans Youth and Brilliant, Youth’s new band with Jimmy Cauty—Flexipop! made a daring editorial decision at its perch atop the Tree of Life. For the cover of their valedictory number, instead of Paul Young or Sting, they took a chance on this fresh-faced, golden-voiced up-and-comer with a song in his heart and an Enochian key on his lips.

More after the jump…

David Tibet’s cover for Create Christ, Sailor Boy
 
My main impression of Create Christ, Sailor Boy is of its grandeur—not so much in the sense that it’s musically fancy, but more that it has the dignity and courage of a bravura theatrical performance. Where recent Current 93 records have presented David Tibet’s voice as vulnerable, or naked, on Hypnopazūzu’s first release he sings out, summoning a voice he acknowledges he hasn’t used much before, if at all. Youth’s sound-world draws it from him: Here, that means the mad scientist of Space Mountain is using a psychedelic orchestra of strings, bells, horns, synths, tamburas and God knows what else to play compositions that draw equally on 20th-century art music and raga-rock. But all you really need to know is that the album is gorgeous and moving, for which reasons I hereby declare Hypnopazūzu “the hottest new group of 2016.”

Tibet and Youth are two of my musical heroes, as my long-suffering friends will attest; to ride in my car is to enjoy Youth’s Killing Joke in Dub and Current 93’s Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain at high volume. So when I learned of Hypnopazūzu, I immediately began writing sweaty-handed emails to their publicist.

This is Tibet and Youth’s first collaboration since Youth played bass on Current 93’s first LP, Nature Unveiled, released in 1984. (Get the Andrew Liles remix before they’re all gone.) Since the last person I interviewed for Dangerous Minds, Little Annie, also appeared on C93’s debut, I started by asking about that 32-year-old apocalypse.

(When they weren’t busy kicking members of Hypnopazūzu off the conversation, Skype gremlins were hard at work garbling Tibet’s bons mots. I had to resort to “[inaudible]” more than once.)
 

 
Dangerous Minds: Coincidentally, the last person I interviewed was Little Annie. So I feel I ought to bring up Nature Unveiled, since I’ve now spoken to so many of the participants in the session. What do you remember about it?

David Tibet: Me, or Youth?

Both of you, since you both participated.

Youth: Let David go first, because it’s his album, really, that I guested on.

Tibet: Well, that’s a shame, because I’d always thought of it as Youth’s album, and I’d wanted to put it out as Youth, featuring me.

Youth: [laughs] I remember the studio in Shepherd’s Bush.

Tibet: Yeah, the studio was a really weird place. It was called IPS, as in “inches per second,” and it was run by a guy called… Pete. Pete something. And the odd thing about it was, Steve Stapleton from Nurse With Wound used to work there, and when I became friends with Steven, he said, “Oh, come and join Nurse With Wound and come down to this studio.” So I went down there. It was in the basement. And we worked there for years. Steve actually had—I think it was Wednesday—every Wednesday booked for something like [inaudible] years in advance, we would go down there on Wednesday. And then the last time I went down there, just before it closed, all the sewers had backed up, and so there was urine everywhere, and other stuff which I didn’t choose to identify. But it was a great studio.

But the bizarre thing is that I was down there getting things ready for Youth, and there was a guy in the studio, working there. And he said, “Oh, what are you doing?” And I said, “I’m working on a new album; I’m waiting for my friend to come down.” And it was Jaz [Coleman], from Killing Joke.

Youth: That’s right! He was walking out as I was walking in. [laughs]

Tibet: It was a time when Youth wasn’t, uh—well, you had—

Youth: I’d left the band, yeah.

Tibet: —you’d left the band, and you were very uncomplimentary about [each other]. But I didn’t know who he was at first, because I thought you said he was working [in] jazz. [inaudible] And I thought, Oh, that sounds horrible.

Youth: There was some serendipity.

Tibet: [laughs] It was just bizarre, looking back. But Youth and I met, I think—it must have been through Kris Needs, mustn’t it?

Youth: And Mark Manning, Zodiac.

Tibet: I think I met Mark through Kris, or Kris through Mark, and then I met Youth. And we used to go clubbing.

Youth: I was sharing a coach house with Kris at the time.

Tibet: You were! Yeah.

Youth: And we were all going down to the Batcave. And also, I’d just done this album with Ben Watkins on Illuminated, The Empty Quarter, just around that time. And Zed had done the artwork; Zed had been doing the layout for Smash Hits. Weren’t you doing something for Smash Hits as well, David?
 

Youth and Ben Watkins’ The Empty Quarter
 
Tibet: Yes. Oliver, Zed is Mark Manning, became Zodiac Mindwarp, and that’s who Youth means, I believe, as Zed.

Youth: Yeah.

Tibet: I wrote an article on Crowley for them.

Youth: That’s right! The Crowley edition. They had Crowley on the front cover of this pop magazine.

Was there a special issue of Smash Hits?

Tibet: It was their last issue, and I said “It has to be number 666.”

Youth: [laughs]

Tibet: And it had an interview, I remember, I think in that same issue, with, there was a band called—oh gosh, what were they called? They were a new goth band or positive punk or something, and the guy who was interviewed was interested in Crowley. And then they spoke about somebody that had been killed who was interested in Crowley, who was knocked over in a car accident, and they said to the guy, “What do you think about that?” And he said: “Well, it’s love under wheels.” Which I thought was pretty funny, but I can’t remember the name of the band.

Youth: Good name for a band.

Tibet: Yeah. That’s how Youth and I met. Then I said to Youth, “I’m doing my first album,” and Youth probably looked at me and said, “Who are you again?” And I said, “I’m a friend of yours; we go clubbing, and doing other things that go with clubbing, together.” And then he kindly came down and played amazing bass, and Annie was there swearing in Spanish, and then Youth and I didn’t see each other for… 30 years or so.

Youth: Yeah. That’s right. But I did know who you were, because Zed had been hanging around Sleazy, he’d had his penis pierced by Sleazy and was hanging around the Psychic TV clique of people. There were interesting, alchemizing scenes at the time that were all coming together, and weirdly enough, the Batcave was one of the nexus points. Not just for goths and punks, but also the emerging New Romantics and electronic scenes that were bouncing up. And—

Tibet: It was the guy from Doctor and the Medics. Was it Clive?

Youth: Oh, that was Alice and Wonderland, wasn’t it. That came after the Batcave.

Tibet: Then that was Olli from the Specimen.

Youth: Yes, yes, yes.

Tibet: ‘Cause they got loads of bands to play there. I mean, I saw the Jesus and Mary Chain there before they were—I think that was the same show that Alan McGee saw which made him want to sign them.

Youth: At the Batcave?

Tibet: Yeah, definitely.

Youth: Really? I don’t remember that. But I do remember the club was more based around DJs than bands, with Hamish and Sex Beat. It would go on until two in the morning, so the DJs carried on. It was the dance floor in that club where I thought, this is the sort of beginning of indie dance, really. There was a real special chemistry and alchemy going on there. Lots of ideas came out of that place, and Alice in Wonderland, actually. There’s a new Derek Ridgers book, actually. You know Derek, the photographer who was around those clubs all the time?

Tibet: No, I don’t remember that, no.

Youth: He always looked a bit straight, and he had a beard, but he was doing everything—the S&M clubs, everything. And he’s got a new book out where there’s pictures of me and Zed, I think you might even be in it, from the Batcave in those days.

Tibet: No, I don’t remember him at all. I do remember it wasn’t Sleazy that pierced Zed, it was Mr. Sebastian.

Youth: Ah.

Tibet: Because recently I got a lot of footage of Mr. Sebastian in action. And I was hoping Zed would be there, because I remember, I was actually down there when Zed was pierced—

Youth: Really!

Tibet: But yeah, the footage wasn’t there. There was other footage, which I’ll be releasing soon if people don’t [inaudible] making huge amounts of money.

Youth: Did he have a semi-chub on, or was it just flaccid?

[laughter]

Tibet: I can’t remember! I was young; I was too busy admiring myself in the mirror, probably.

Youth: Zed’s got a legendarily big dick, goes down to his knee.

Tibet: I heard about that, and Sleazy told me about that, but I—

Youth: I gone on holiday with Zed, the first time he’d ever been on a plane, and I took him to Formentera in Ibiza when we were 21. And we woke up on this nudist beach, totally naked, and the ring in his cock had heated up in the sun [laughs] and he’s fallen asleep and woken up in agony.

And then he had these eagle wings coming out the top of it, tattooed, right? So he’s coming out of the sea with his snorkel and flip-flops, with massive dick dangling between his knees, his eagle wings and a big ring hanging out of it—and all these German families just gathered their children and ran to the other end of the beach. [laughter]

Tibet: Those were the days.
 
More after the jump…

 
This is a welcome development: Hypnopazūzu, a duo comprising Current 93’s David Tibet and Killing Joke bassist Youth, will be releasing an album and playing a show in London this year. (Youth’s other duo is the Fireman, with Paul McCartney of Wings fame.) The date of the show has not been announced, but the record, Create Christ, Sailor Boy, is coming out on the House of Mythology label in August; it will be a three-sided LP (with side four devoted to “a laser etching of a Youth/David Tibet Hallucinatory Cartoon”) and a single CD.

It figures these guys are old pals. Youth, along with Annie Anxiety and Steven Stapleton of Nurse with Wound, joined Tibet on Current 93’s first album, 1984’s Nature Unveiled. As for Pazuzu, whose name I will forever hear as intoned by Richard Burton in Exorcist II, he is among the evil deities William S. Burroughs invokes at the beginning of Cities of the Red Night:

Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities…

 

 
Pazuzu is also the subject of a number of Tibet’s recent paintings. Tibet explained (sort of) his interest in the Mesopotamian demon king in a very condensed memoir published by Dazed three years ago:

I started painting Hallucinatory Prayers, which consisted of biblical verses written thousands of times in white ink on black paper. Revisiting my pubescence, I did an MA in Coptic and started translating mainly Sahidic texts. Then I began to learn Akkadian after dreaming of metal doors covered with cuneiform, which meant I had also to paint Pazuzu. Anaku pazuzu, as the Akkadians wrote.

While you search for your copy of Huehnergard’s Akkadian grammar, hallucinate with “Magog At The MayPole,” from Create Christ, Sailor Boy.
 

 
This is a guest post by Nick Abrahams

Madge Gill (1882-1961) is finally being heralded as one of England’s premier visionary artists thanks to a major exhibition of her works taking place currently at the Orleans House Gallery in Richmond, London. Her work is also the subject of a major new catalog, filled with essays (including one by Roger Cardinal, the critic who first coined the term “outsider art,” to cover the wide range of artworks created by self taught and visionary artists) and - even better! - that includes many rare pictures by Gill, most reproduced for the first time.
 

 
Madge Gill produced all her work under the influence of a spirit guide named “Myrninerest,” whom she believed was responsible for her prolific output of work. Under Myrninerest’s influence, she would often draw 100 intricate postcard sized drawings at a single sitting! Gill believed she was channeling images from an alternate reality and that the work therefore belonged to her spirit guide. To this end, she did not sell her work during her lifetime, and upon her death hordes of work was found stacked under her bed and in cupboards.

Gill’s work invariably includes female faces, staring out at us , but who these women are (self portraits? Myrninerest?) is never clear. Occasional words and phrases appear. And often heavily repetitive abstract patterns fill the background, or become the subject in themselves. Although self taught, Gill had a draftsman’s eye for composition, and the hallucinatory nature of much of the work is exquisitely delicate. Here is an example of her purely abstract work:
 

 
Although Gill seemed to have little influence on the wider art world, the work carries an amazing psychic power, and seeing the work en masse gives a glimpse of Gill’s restlessly inquisitive inner world.  It is exciting to see these works in the flesh, many for the first time being exhibited in public, and to get a glimpse of the compulsive need this woman had to make art. There is something visionary in her work that often echos elements of psychedelic art, as well as Gustav Moreau or William Blake, but with a far more obsessive focus, and a feminine lightness of touch.
 

 
So if you are in London, scoot along to Richmond to see this epic show, including the colossal “Crucifixion of the Soul,” a brightly colored and heavily drawn upon 10 meter long work on calico, here on a rare public display, taking up one entire wall of the gallery, alongside a bewilderingly range of other works by Gill, as well as a carefully curated display of other artists who were themselves visionary or mediumistic in their approach. And its free!

Loosely inspired by Madge Gill and her work, David Tibet, best known for his musical output as Current 93, now has a new musical project under the name Myrninerest. Tibet has also collaborated with Henry Boxer, one of the curators of the Orleans House Gallery show, to publish a book of 108 reproductions of some of Gill’s postcard sized drawings, reproduced at their actual size, available here.

Below, Myrninerest’s recent soundtrack for filmmaker Derek Jarman’s magical Journey To Avebury film, all shot on Super-8 back in 1972.

 
This is a guest post by Nick Abrahams