C93 + IF A CITY IS SET UPON A HILL +

“If A City Is Set Upon A Hill was given to me by YHWH G+D through my endless readings within the Akkadian Omen series šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin (“If A City Is Set Upon A Height”), my endless obsession with the story of Cain Killing Abel (Genesis IV: 8), and my endless rewatching of the same ten supernatural films.

wayyōˀmer qayin ˀel heḇel ˀāḥîw wayhî bihyôṯām baśśāḏeh wayyāqām qayin ˀel heḇel ˀāḥîw wayyaharḡēhû

I and the Perfect C93 FamilyOrgasm have been leaping higher than hares to bring you this Obsessive, Incomprehensible, DreamText. It must make NoSense AtAll!  Beyond that, I have nothing to say except: There Is No Zodiac. And Hey AnyWay, Kids, We’re All Dust.

Love David+++”

Some Slight Details on the various editions follow:

• A clear curaçao vinyl edition with lyric insert. Released March 5, 2022.
• A crystal clear vinyl edition with lyric insert. Released March 5, 2022.
• A CD edition in a mini-LP sleeve with lyric insert. Released March 5, 2022.
• A Cassette edition with lyrics. Released March 5, 2022.
• An album bundle, which will have a special gift added to it that we are already Utterly OverMoon about. Released March 5, 2022.

• A small edition of a white one-sided, 2-track, 12” lathe single, cut by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!, featuring the album mix, along with a different mix, of “If A City”, the single from the album, which is also the first track on it. Labels on both sides—both The Small And The Great—ScreenPrinted by our dear friend Cyril at Cure Toujours. Signed and numbered lyric insert. Davide Pepe’s film for the single can be seen here from MidDay ChristMass Day onwards. We already have the lathes with us, as you will see by the photograph of me voguing on a bench. More details nearer the release date which will be in January 2022.

• A small TP black-vinyl edition of a rejected mix of the entire If A City Is Set Upon A Hill album. Signed and numbered lyric insert included. After we made the TPs, I decided I wanted to the album to be remixed entirely, and to have one track removed and another added. This rejected mix will not be released in any other form except as this vinyl TP edition. More details nearer the time. More details nearer the release date of March 5, 2022.
• A 12” picture-disc, in an edition of 500 copies, which features a different HallucinatoryPhaseMix of the entire If A City Is Set Upon A Hill album. More details nearer the release date of March 5, 2022.
• Two micro-editions lathe-cut of the entire If A City Is Set Upon A Hill album, one on blue vinyl, and one on white vinyl, again cut by The Bricoleur at Bladud Flies!. Signed and numbered lyric insert included. More details nearer the release date of March 5, 2022.

T-Shirts featuring the front-cover artwork for If A City Is Set Upon A Hill are presently been ScreenPrinted by our friend Cyril at Cure Toujours. We are not taking advance orders. They will be added to shop at Cashen’s Gap once we receive them in January.

As I have mentioned before, I am dispersing a lot of my gatherings. I have passed on a large number of my archive copies of books, proofs, and running sheets of “my” publications on publishing imprints with which I have been involved—such as Ghost Story Press, Durtro Press, Coptic Cat, and The Spheres—to my friends at Weiser Antiquarian Books.

These items will be sold in an imminent catalogue, which Weiser hope will be in January 2022. All of these items are signed by me, and have “Archive Copy” also in my handwriting, written in, or on, each item. Those interested in seeing these items, and who don’t already receive Weiser’s wonderful email updates, can subscribe to them at their website, where the catalogue will be first announced.

I mentioned a few months ago that one of my favourite-ever authors, and perhaps the least-known (and very very undeservedly so!) was the English author Phyllis Paul (1903—1973). Her books are incredibly hard to find. It has taken me a few years to find hardback first edition copies of all of them in jackets. So scarce are her books that I am told by a friend, who has one of the most remarkable collections of supernatural fiction in the world, that I am the only person that he has knows of who has all of her books. Typically they cost many hundreds of £ or $ when they come up for sale, which is—hardly ever!

In the photograph, David is holding the UK and US first-edition hardbacks of Pulled Down, as well as a US paperback reissue, when the title was changed to Echo of Guilt, and the new Sundial Press edition.

Photo by Ania Goszczyńska

You will be able to see a small film that I made, which I will upload in a day or two on my Instagram account, reading from her work, and enthusing obsessively about it too.

So it was a huge honour for me to be asked by my good friend Frank Kibblewhite—who runs the Sundial Press, and who has started a project to republish all of her dark, bright, novels—to be asked to write a short Preface to the second volume in his series of her novels, Pulled Down.

And of course, loving her work as I do, I am very eager and excited to spread the word about this unique artist.

The first 300 hundred copies also include an insert which reproduces a proem about her work by me, “All Shall Not Be Well”. Each copy of this insert is hand-signed and hand-numbered by me. This proem is not the same text as my text for the Preface.

The title of her final book—and her rarest—An Invisible Darkness—encapsulates, for me, her work perfectly. Her work is sinister, threatening, melancholy, surprising, unnerving, disturbing, and damned. It’s hard to know what to compare it to in its subtle malevolence. Henry James’ peerless The Turn of the Screw comes to mind, but Phyllis’ books are far more complex, and rich, and shocking. I recommend her work utterly and always and ever and forever. I feel a very strong connection to her, and often visit the place in Hastings where she was killed in DarkTrafficDeath, not terribly far—a walk of some 15 minutes or so—from where I and Ania live.

Please do read this astonishing author, a Truly UnSung Queen of Darkness Invisible—and Visible—who saw and sang, matchlessly, The Back Of The Stars.

An interesting overview of some of her themes can be found here.

A piece about the rarity of her books, and the paperback editions, is here.

The author Elizabeth Jane Howard, who also collaborated with Robert Aickman, wrote that Phyllis Paul had “An almost medieval sense of good and ill. One enters a different world—compelling, fearful, mysterious. The characters live, the place has frightening reality… a kind of violent beauty.”

Frank and Sundial also publish another book by her, A Cage for the Nightingale. An excellent piece about it can be found here.

I am still HareLike on both these releases; but there have been delays in receiving some of the material with which I am working for these editions. Realistically, they won’t be sent out until January 2022. I am sorry for the delay but, as ever, I want them to be as G+D tells me they should be. Anyone can of course ask for an immediate refund if they would rather not wait another month. Thank you for your patient patience and understanding.

Edited by the wonderful Baby Dee, Zagava Press will present a collection of fables of Aesop re-imagined and modernized. Dee gathered an eclectic group of contributors: Michel Faber, David Tibet, Ania Goszczyńska, Gregory Maguire, and many others, some of whom have sent amazing art works as well!

In a previous update, we mentioned this item, limited to 250 postcards, signed and numbered by me, and which is only available from FEX and The Folklore & History Museum of Xanthi. The front image is by me, from my new series I AM BECOME ALL LIGHT.

I have received, signed, and numbered, all 250 cards—please see attached photograph—and they are on their way to Greece.

An (abbreviated) Press Release from FEX and The Folklore & History Museum of Xanthi follows:

FEX and The Folklore & History Museum of Xanthi are honoured and delighted that we are able to announce a special artistic release, a worldwide exclusive, which is being implemented in the context of supporting the Folklore & History Museum of Xanthi, from whom this release will be exclusively available. All the proceeds will be used exclusively to support its operation.

The flexi-postcard has a previously-unreleased song, “Soft As The Sun”, by Current 93, playable on record-players, and reproduces also a painting by David Tibet.

This unique postcard is released in 250 copies, each hand-numbered and signed by David Tibet.

Email for reservations is: fexorg@gmail.com

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With Love From Around The Bars And The BackStreets Of The City Of G+D,

You friend, and mine,

david+++