Though Steve Stapleton is often a fixture in the David Tibet-led Current 93, just as Tibet often contributes to Stapleton's Nurse With Wound project, this is the first record they put out collaboratively under their own names. The CD consists of two very long tracks, the half hour title cut and the slightly shorter The Grave and the Beautiful Name of Sadness, that's credited to Stapleton and Geoff Cox. The opening track finds them in a Zen-like ambient state as drones and a slow repetitive background rhythm are combined with flutes, strange noises, and a smattering of Tibet's vocal murmurings, as well as some female speaking as well. It almost sounds like Japanese meditation music taking a more surreal direction, as well as a nod towards the cosmic tones of Krautrockers like Klaus Schulze. The other track, a soundtrack to a film by Nurse With Wound collaborator Diana Rogerson, offers something similar, more deep space cosmic ambient drones. The piece is even more minimal and doesn't have the plodding rhythm or the voices, just vast deep multi-layered tones that have that same dark ominous mood as the more ambient parts of Lustmord, which it somewhat resembles. It's quite different than most of the stuff from either the Nurse With Wound or Current 93 catalogs, but as a pair of dark ambient tracks, these are very good. ~ Rolf Semprebon, Rovi

1		The Sadness of Things
2		The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness