Released in 1992, 'Thunder Perfect Mind' is often considered one of the finest creations in Current 93's vast discography and surely Louis Wain’s bizarre cartoon artwork depicting some startled cat will make some people instantly wonder about this albums contents. Although C93 had already begun exploring a folk-ish side in the late 80's it wasn't until this point in 1992 (after Michael Cashmore joined) that the band released something proper and fully satisfying too.
The sound of this album generally revolves around intricately played acoustic guitars (by Douglas Pierce & Michael Cashmore) with accompanying instruments like flute, violin and piano and David Tibet's lead vocals with backing vocals from Rose McDowall. The feeling of the music is also generally of a more subtle and depressing nature, plus Tibet's lyrics only make things even more vague, but it works, it works wonderfully. Songs like, 'A Song for Douglas after he's Dead' or 'A Silence Song' are simple songs, but very effective with their atmospheric qualities.
The album mostly runs in a calm neo folk style, but as usual Current 93 has also been a band to experiment and they add a few surprises as well on this impressive release. After the first twelve songs The album suddenly shifts to a more experimental side with the two part self-titled album tracks, ‘Thunder Perfect Mind.’ These slow ominous songs have some vague droning ambiance in the background while Tibet speaks solemnly over the music.
After that we come to track fifteen the sixteen-minute epic ‘Hitler as Kalki.’ In the booklet Tibet explains, 'Some people think that Hitler was Kalki the tenth and final incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu who comes on a white horse to destroy the cosmos at the end of each world cycle.' Tibet’s lengthy lyrics do a nice job of explaining this concept to the listener yet parts of the lyrics are very strange. The music portion holds sort of a slow trance inducing progressive rock feeling to it accompanied with some well-played violin, and acoustic guitars and strange howling in the background, but its really impossible to describe fully. Probably one of the weirdest songs from Current 93, but I absolutely love it. As the album ends it returns to the folk style with a very melancholic song called, ‘A Sad Sadness song.’
Taken as a whole ‘Thunder Perfect Mind’ is one of the most ambitious, melancholic, weird, hypnotic and utterly enjoyable albums from Current 93. The album is more or less broken up into three different parts with each piece sounding extremely interesting. From the lovely folky songs that start the album to the bizarre latter parts, ‘Thunder Perfect Mind’ is another masterpiece in the large discography of Current 93.
[Note] A couple of years ago it was re-released in a digipak, completely re-mastered as well it contained an entire second disc of songs recorded during the TPM sessions, but songs that the band ultimately left off. Those that are interested should definitely pick this version up since the original pressing suffers greatly from poor sound quality.
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