Terra Serpentes (1997)

Een zeer afwisselende cd die wel goed weergeeft wat het World Serpent Distribution zoal te bieden heeft.

Persoonlijk ga ik voor de wat zachtere, melancholieke tracks van o.a. Current 93 (het prachtige Frolicking), Bryin Dall, In Gowan Ring en Narure and Organisation.

Helaas, World Serpent Distrubition is niet meer. De nu nog actieve artiesten als Backworld en Current 93 moeten op zoek naar een ander label. Voor laatstgenoemde betekent het de rand van het faillissement. Hieronder zijn officiele statement:

World Serpent: The Carnival is Over


The past and the future


THE PAST (bad trip): As many of you may have heard by now, World Serpent Distribution have ceased trading.


Current 93 and Nurse With Wound, as well as many other groups, have worked with them almost exclusively since 1989. We felt a great closeness with all three of them: Alison Webster, David Gibson and Alan Trench, and they were both our colleagues and our friends. We are very proud of all the work we did together and the beautiful material and editions we issued with and through them. We would like to thank them for all that they have done on our behalf and wish them the best of luck with their futures, and hope we shall all keep in touch remembering the halcyon days and not the unsettled end.


This is, understandably, causing Tibet and Stapleton financial and cashflow problems, and it has certainly made it very difficult for us to continue recording as were previously accustomed to. We have many projects which have been held back, and which are still being held back, by the financial uncertainty of our situations for the past couple of years as WS's situation declined. Our payments, like those of other groups, became increasingly erratic, and this had predictable effects.


One of the results of this sad state of affairs is that my wife Dri and I will be selling our house and leaving London (see below) as we can no longer afford to keep our situation in London viable. Another result is that I will be digging still deeper into my archives and selling my own copies of many C93 items, as I have decided that I no longer wish to keep vinyl copies of most of my recordings or groups with which I was associated.


At the height of WS's success, they were perhaps the most important small distributor around, and home to artists such as Tiny Tim, Shirley Collins, Nature & Organisation, Coil, Antony and the Johnsons, Baby Dee, Pantaleimon, Sand, Xhol, Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, CR Lama Rinpoche, Sol Invictus, Cyclobe, Coil, Chris & Cosey, Carter Tutti, Backworld, Death In June, Boyd Rice/Non, Thee Majesty, and many others, unfortunately also including the Aryan Aquarians.


Some Durtro casualties along the way of the worsening WS situation were: the non-release of CDs by Billy Basinski, Little Annie Anxiety and Mirror, though the Basinski 2CD set is now to be released on Durtro/Die Stadt this autumn/fall; the non-release of Antony's 'I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy' 7" and the non-release of his self-titled first album as a double 12" LP with the 'Dead Boy' as the extra 12" in the package--all of these Antony titles got to test pressing stage, but were then abandoned. And it all ended in tears! As a result now we see Steven Stapleton rushing headlong into the abyss of hip-hop mania and fussing over succulents, whilst David Tibet becomes rabidly fundamentalist in his quaintly dated and dogmatic (though heretical) Christian worldview.


Another increasing problem has been the wide availability of pirate CD and CD-ROMs from Eastern Europe reproducing all the catalogues of NWW and C93, as well as the perennial downloading situation, which has impacted especially badly on smaller groups who depend on their sales to fund future recording. I wish we were back in the days before the www/666 and when vinyl was all there was. Well, adaptability is all.


Anyhow, and consequently, ALL material that was issued through WS on Durtro, United Dairies and United Durtro is now deleted and out of print, with the exception of small amounts of the remaining stock which will be made available on durtro.com in the very near future. All of these CDs and LPs are available in very limited quantities.


I will be selling my house, signed and numbered 1 of 1 copy, on eBay in the near future, with bids starting at £93,939.93 pence. Internal circular plaques will point out where I sat, defecated and talked to myself whilst wildly gesturing at the sunset and unicorns; an inverted triangular plaque will mark where Steven and I fell out so badly we will never work again or speak to each other again. Furthermore, I will be leaving a copy of an unreleased C93 double album from 1995, 'Black Ships Ate the Sky', in a cavity in the house with a plan hidden in the garden to both find it and to give the successful house buyer full rights to release it.

Met een half sterretje verhoogd naar 4.5 *, omdat dit album toch wel voor een ommezwaai van mijn muzikale voorkeur heeft gezorgd.

Interessante compilatie. Lastig te krijgen denk ik als ik zo lees dat het label over de kop is. Coil - Heartworms is iig een topnummer. Als je eenmaal aan dit muziekgenre heb geroken dan laat het je niet zo makkelijk meer los.

In Gowan Ring is ook zo'n breekbaar bandje die op deze cd een prachtige bijdrage heeft geleverd.

Ik heb dit album nu een aantal dagen in bezit en ik moet zeggen diverser kan een album niet zijn! Van liefelijke Neofolk tot rech toe rechtaan electro. Het nummer Bahnhofstrasse van Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza) viel me ook positief op. Lekker experimenteel. In Gowan Ring ten slotte is een van die Neofolk formaties die een heerlijk laidback gevoel bij me creeren. Ze hebben duidelijk inspiratie opgedaan bij Folk acts als Incredible String Band.

Hoe ben je er aan gekomen? Online ergens nog kunnen krijgen?

Ontzettend moeilijk te krijgen inderdaad. Ik heb een tijdje ebay in de gaten gehouden en op een dag werd het aangeboden voor 25 dollar. Niet over nagedacht en gekocht. Sommige cd's moet ik gewoon hebben.

De bijdrage van Tiny Tim is trouwens wel de enige misser op dit verdere voortreffelijke album. Past niet in de darkambient, industrial, neofolk stijl geheel.