Almond, Marc And Michael Cashmore

Gabriel and the Lunatic Lover is the first in a series of collaborative releases by Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore. The duo sets to music two poems by Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock, the extraordinary 19th-century gay writer whose bizarre life of decadence, drug-addiction, alcoholism, and poetry--coupled with Satanic, vampiric, and Catholic obsessions--led to his early death at the age of 36 in 1895. Stenbock's final years, it is said, saw him accompanied everywhere by a life-size wooden doll that he called "le petit comte" and which he believed to be his son. 
 
This two-track CDEP features vocals from the legendary Almond, who needs no introduction, and music composed and performed by Cashmore, well-known for his extensive catalog of recordings with Current 93 and Nature and Organisation, as well as for his work as a solo artist. The CD is housed in a beautiful full-color digipak that contains previously unpublished paintings of Almond by Russian artist Vania Soutavliov, a rare photograph of the enigmatic Count, and the complete texts to both poems. 
 
The poems themselves originally appeared in two of Stenbock's fantastically rare volumes, Myrtle, Rue, and Cypress and The Shadow of Death, both republished in Current 93's David Tibet's Durtro Press volume The Collected Poems of Count Stenbock. 
 
This is one of the most haunting and exquisite releases from either artist, and is presented in a package that fits the beautiful melancholy of the music, the vocals, and the spirit of Count Stenbock himself.