Michael Cashmore - The Snow Abides Completely / Until The End of Vibration

Michael Cashmore is best known for his work with Current 93, where he was both guitarist and composer for many of their albums, from Thunder Perfect Mind to Black Ships Ate the Sky in 2006. His own musical project, Nature and Organisation, brought together many leading figures in the apocalyptic folk genre on the highly acclaimed Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude, blending intricate guitar arrangements with lush orchestration. As a solo artist, he released Sleep England and The Snow Abides, alongside collaborations with Marc Almond on Feasting With Black Panthers (a reissue of which is imminent). Now with this release of the full intended version as The Snow Abides Completely and Until The End of Vibration, the latest in his series of albums using audio frequencies, we can see the trajectory of his music, resulting from a musician on a personal journey to find the potential of their true individuality.

The Snow Abides was originally conceived as an album featuring a mix of tracks with vocals by Anohni (formerly Antony of Antony and the Johnsons) and Tibet, along with several instrumentals. However, Michael Cashmore, who had written lyrics for the first time, felt that his own lyrics - intended to be sung by Tibet - were "weak" compared to those Tibet had written for Anohni. As a result, the five or so tracks sung by Tibet were shelved, leading to an abridged edition released in 2006. This version was notable for being the first to feature Anohni's vocals after being awarded the Mercury Music Prize for I Am a Bird Now. It is only now, almost two decades later, following a period of transformation, Cashmore feels comfortable to release the album in its full and completed form.

In the liner notes, Michael Cashmore writes, "When I wrote these musical pieces and texts I was suffering from a deep depression," and yet nothing is dimmed here. His lyrics burn with deep intensity, poetic and reflective, intoned and enunciated by David Tibet, delivered over piano arrangements featuring oboe, cello, violin, viola, and flute. These arrangements, with tumbling piano notes swelling and shadowed by forlorn, sweeping strings, embody the melancholia and loneliness of the lyrics.

These are songs steeped in the fond remembrance of a lost or perhaps imagined lover. In 'As the Sun Disappears into Water', tumbling piano notes swell alongside sweeping strings and flute, as Tibet recalls images of birds, coins, flowers, blood, and silence. Meanwhile, 'I Cradle Future Graves in My Innocent Arms' unfolds with melancholic piano chords woven with strings and vivid, evocative lyrics filled with references to the sun, moon, and natural elements, captured so powerfully in lines such as, "Chase your turquoise shadows across the twilight, forever."

Michael Cashmore captures this loneliness and melancholia through beautiful and moving arrangements. A delicate oboe melody flows at times through 'And All I Understand Is Nothing', as Tibet speaks of endings and emptiness. The following tracks are more spacious, unfolding with gently tumbling piano notes and chords that form poignant melodies accompanying deeply introspective lyrics of thwarted dreams and lost love.

Anohni makes three appearances on The Snow Abides Completely, bringing a soulful elegance to David Tibet's poetic lyrics. His expressive vocals on 'The Snow Abides' contrast with Tibet's approach of conviction and pain, lifting the words with effortless grace. While the album's piano based compositions, reminiscent of Current 93's Soft Black Stars, find an affinity with Antony and the Johnsons' interpretation of that album's title track on 'I Fell In Love With A Dead Boy'.

The emotional centerpiece, 'How God Moved At Twilight', sees Anohni's soft-soul swoon weaving through a melancholic piano arrangement, surrounded by haunting cello and oboe. 'Your Eyes Close' offers a delicate, understated beauty, with Antony's quivering harmonies evoking the liminal space before sleep. The instrumental 'Snow No Longer', a drifting piano piece that fades into a flurry of bells and chimes, leaving a lingering sense of ethereal melancholy is followed by 'My Eyes Open Into The Eternal Sunlight Forever' reprising the melody of the opener, but here it is the aged hushed tones of Bill Fay who asks for silence, peace, courage, strength seeking the "sweet star of truth" to end all this bloodshed.

For Michael Cashmore, who struggled with shyness, low self-esteem, and depression, the quest for courage and strength that led to this belated release came through a period of self-transformation. Fortunately, The Snow Abides Completely sits alongside Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude and Sleep England, featuring some of the strongest and most beautiful material to emerge from the artist.

Michael Cashmore's music also serves a self-transformational tool, which has helped him overcome personal struggles such as shyness and depression. His concept of Transformation Through Love led him to document his journey and eventually form The Hidden Throne 434 movement. Until The End of Vibration is the latest in a series of releases that explores sacred audio frequencies, tied to his personal transformation where music becomes a tool to stimulate consciousness. Consisting of 23 pieces to be regarded as one, Until The End of Vibration is about the journey from life to death, transforming from physical to cosmic consciousness and the final arrival at a place of contentment and serenity.

While The Snow Abides Completely is composed of melancholic scores and arrangements with guest vocalists Until The End of Vibration like much of his recent works has shifted to instrumental experimental structures involving and fleeting between piano, orchestral, electronic textures and ambient soundscapes which appear as short vignettes of sound. The result is simultaneously comforting and overwhelming and with 23 tracks it can be challenging and disorienting.

Until The End of Vibration opens with the symphonic electronics of 'The Eternal Universal Vibration' followed by the sacred ambience and sombre piano score of 'The Sacred Swallow is Born Bathed in Sacred Sunlight' which bursts into a sort of euphoric prog-rock passage with a soaring guitar solo. From then on, it veers between the melodic pastoral and melancholic piano score with orchestral passages, some accompanied by warm synth and organ, while others feature bubbling, block-like electronics. Those opposing elements become more prominent reaching a highpoint on 'As Both Brutality and Beauty' where wriggling electronics and beats slip into piano melodies and ambient synth.

The formula of "beautiful brutality" and "brutal beauty" is one of Cashmore's techniques used throughout Until The End of Vibration and his other releases to induce a heightened audio experience. However, the constant switching between styles can become frustrating. At times just as you become immersed in a beautiful melody it is abruptly interrupted by incongruent bursts of electronic sequences and beats. Given that comment, it is somewhat ironic that 'Escaping Negativity' offers a fine balance straddling swirling blocks of electronics and orchestral synth layers. For Cashmore, though, this chaotic method of overstimulation is part of the transformative process.

A section of delicate melodic piano underpinned by autumnal synth and organ appears between 'In Which We All Will Be Found and Lost' and 'We Shall All Feel The Warm Grass Under Our Childhood Feet Once Again', with some passages filled with orchestral sweep, which if listened closely recall the melancholia of the majestic and tumbling chords and notes that enlivened the words of David Tibet on some of Current 93's finest moments.

Later tracks adopt Cashmore's more idiosyncratic electronic approach with pieces such as 'Celebrating the Wonder of Physical Consciousness' and 'Energy Fills Me As My Body Drops Through Infinite Skies' offering a brief glimpse into his album The Night Has Rushed In, which saw him reuniting with Anohni on a song written by Tibet.

Due to its composition, Until The End of Vibration is a challenging listen but repeated listens reveal many worthwhile moments offering insight into Cashmore's later works released across multiple labels, as well as his self-released symphonic suite.

Listening to these two albums is to witness the trajectory of a musician on a personal journey shaped by intuition, instinct and personal experience. While he once created melodic and beautiful arrangements from melancholia, his most recent works strive to turn suffering into something positive. It's part of his own personal transformation, using frequencies to achieve intensity to increase endurance and expand consciousness. His theories on reaching his true potential are compiled in Transformation Through Love, an intriguing collection published by Temporal Boundary Press based on the texts of the The Hidden Throne 434, a movement he founded to document his personal transformation, as a tool for others to find their own path. These are two very different albums from a singular musician: one expressed through melody, the other intent on eliciting change through intensity, brutality and beauty. The Snow Abides Completely is available as a limited double vinyl from Svart Records. Until The End of Vibration is released on CD from Lumberton Trading Company.

Michael Cashmore - Transformation Through Love accompanied by an exclusive CD album, Awaking into the Colour Wheel, is available from Temporal Boundary Press