Furthering their deep and longstanding dedication to sounds from the radical margins of subculture, Dirter returns with one of their most ambitious and monumental releases to date: ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’, an astounding, expanded limited edition CD box comprising Andrew Liles’ mind-bending “redreamings” of Current 93’s early output as sprawling, dark ambient soundscapes. Created in close collaboration with David Tibet, drawing out the deeply mystical threads that have guided the project through its many decades of activity, this limited Soundohm mail-order exclusive edition of 500 copies includes the playable full-color picture-postcard reproducing Tibet's painting of the track ‘Like Swallowing SunBeams’, inserted in risograph-printed CandyBag, a full-color 7" single ReWishing the Ancient Single There's No Hiding From The BlackBird, five color cards, and a poster painted by Tibet himself, enclosed in a stunning box featuring by Saint Rob Hopeye.

While often cast as a free-standing world of its own, the scene of industrial music that rose in the UK from the first wave of punk during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, established a crucial bridge between direct countercultural and subcultural action and the sound practices of the avant-garde. Including projects like 23 Skidoo, The Anti-Group, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, Coil, Nurse with Wound, Psychic TV, Test Dept, Throbbing Gristle, and numerous others, this movement represented a radically experimental approach to the DIY and transgressive attitudes emerging into the underground at the time, creating some of the most singular musical gestures produced during the second half of the 20th century, providing an enduring legacy that’s been built upon ever since. Among the most noteworthy projects to emerge from the UK scene was Current 93. Founded and guided over the decades by David Tibet, joined by a rotating cast of collaborators, alongside its closely aligned cousin, Nurse with Wound, it’s hard to think of a project that has remained so active and influential over the decades. Building upon its long-standing dedication to the UK industrial, dark ambient, and noise scenes, Dirter Promotions now returns with an expanded edition of Current 93’s astounding ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’ box set. Originally issued in 2010 as a now long out of print X6LP - now appearing as an even more immersive special edition of X7CDs and 7” Flexi disc - the project was conceived by Tibet and Andrew Liles, placing material originally performed and released across seminal, early Current 93 releases like ‘Nature Unveiled’, ‘Dogs Blood Rising’, ‘Bar Maldoror’, ‘In Menstrual Night’, ‘Dawn’, and others - into Liles’ hand to be “redreamed” into a sprawling body of recontextualised ambient works. Retaining all of the energy and intricacy of the original renderings, woven into a seamless expanse of resonances and space, as a dark ambient/industrial re-imagination of Current 93's early apocalyptic works, across which Liles extracts and amplifies each piece’s “most disturbing and ritualistic elements, creating soundscapes that function as sonic invocations rather than simple songs”, ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’ is monumental, mind-blowing, and absolutely essential for any fan of David Tibet, Current 93, early industrial and ambient music, and DIY experimentalism at large.

A poet, artist and musician whose output stands as one of the longest continuums of English countercultural activity and sonic experimentalism, David Tibet emerged into the creative landscape at what was effectively ground zero of the development of the UK’s industrial music scene, working as an early member of Psychic TV and 23 Skidoo, a frequent collaborator within Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound, and a slightly later member of Death in June. In 1983, Tibet left Psychic TV to form Current 93 alongside fellow alumnus, Jhonn Balance, and 23 Skidoo member Fritz Catlin, before establishing the project as an expansive solo effort, with a consistent and constantly rotating group of collaborators, including Steven Stapleton, who appeared on nearly every Current 93 release until 2010, Michael Cashmore (Nature And Organisation) and Death in June’s Douglas P. Guided by Tibet’s deep and expansive engagement with numerous mystical traditions, ranging from Christian eschatology, Gnosticism, a variety of occult topics, and the ideas of Aleister Crowley (to name just a few), while the imagery of Tibet’s lyrical content has remained centered around themes of death, loss, and destruction over the project’s many years of activities and morphologies, Current 93’s sound has never been easy to nail down, evolving from early gestures constructed from abrasive tape loops, electronic noise, and Tibet's distorted vocals, to the singular expression of Neo-folk that emerged during the mid-1980s, and a great deal of variety within and since, with near every release within the project’s vast discography exploring new and unexpected possibilities of sonic expression. With this in hand, the Current 93 collaborator Andrew Liles’ expansive reimagining and reworking of a vast range of the project’s early efforts, comprising the X7 CDs of ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’, fits seamlessly into the broader conceptual, aesthetic, and creative output of the project.

While extending well beyond it in scope and draw, the majority of the material comprising ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’ was originally recorded and released by Tibet during Current 93’s early years (1983-87), harvesting albums like ‘Nature Unveiled’, ‘Dogs Blood Rising’, ‘Bar Maldoror’, ‘In Menstrual Night’, and ‘Dawn’, “redreamed” by Liles and renamed ‘UnVeiled’, ‘Rising’, ‘MalD'Aurorian’, ‘MoonBled’, and ‘DayBreaking’, as well as other subsequent works retitled ‘Faustian’, ‘Suffering’, and ‘BlackBird’, and a new addition to the original 2010 suite: a stunning rework of the seminal 2001 release ‘Who Is The Sufferer?’. Conceived to “mark The Death Of The Age, Or Æon, Or Arse, Of Aquarius”, under Liles’ guidance and singular creative hand, the raw acoustic and electronic elements of some of Current 93’s most groundbreaking and influential releases emerge as sonic rebirths, configured into a flowing stream of immersive, intertwined, and deeply conversant sonority. As each of the long-form pieces unfolds, Liles manages to draw out the deep spiritual and mystical ponderances that have always rested at the core of Tibet’s musical pursuits, sculpting a body of dark ambient soundscapes that bridge the inner and outer world through tense harmonic and dissonant arrangements into what often feel like swirling storms of ghosts.

Revelatory and creatively visionary, ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’ adds a startling new dimension to Current 93’s endlessly shapeshifting form, as well as radically expanding perceptions of what ambient music can be. ‘Like Swallowing Eclipses’ is an essential and unprecedented juncture of industrial and ambient music.