Current 93 Quotes

I really do miss him, and I think about him a lot. The sadness of his death and the sadness of the phone call we got saying he was dead was a real shock to us all, but was not a surprise to any of us. He had gotten worse and worse; his alcoholism was incredibly extreme. The times when he was lucid and when you could speak to him or meet up with him became very few and far between. We didn't see each other much, we didn't speak much, you know, sometimes you'd get e-mails, which make no sense because...he was drunk. And then you'd get e-mails that make a lot of sense because he was sobering up and trying to work out where he was and who he was but you know, he just couldn't. The last time I spoke to him on the phone I said, “Please, please stop, you are going to kill yourself. You'll be dead soon.”
David Tibet (about Jhonn Balance)

I was talking to Ben about the music that we both liked-- so we were talking about metal or rock, hard rock, heavy rock, and so on. I was talking about a lot of the groups that are popular now like Meshuggah and Nile; I was saying I really love the music, but I find this style of singing-- which I guess is originally from black metal, you know [Tibet does a black metal voice] -- I can understand why they do it and I appreciate it, but I don't like it because I can't hear the words and to me it seems just a generic style of singing. I guess people can say that about the way Robert Plant and Ronnie James Dio sing, except that I really like that style, and I can hear the lyrics.
David Tibet

That's also how I got connected with Stephen O'Malley from Sunn 0))-- we're working together. Oddly enough, when Ben started many years ago, he sent me an acetate of his first record. I think he did 10, and he sent one to me. It never got to me, so I didn't hear it for several years. He was a big Current 93 fan-- I think he mentioned that in an interview on Pitchfork with you. We got in touch, just got on really well, and I asked him if he'd want to start playing in Current and doing stuff together-- and he did that.
David Tibet