Gabriel and the Lunatic Lover is the first in a series of collaborative releases by Marc Almond (Soft Cell) and Michael Cashmore (Current 93). 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 believed to be his son. This two-track CDEP features vocals from the legendary Almond and music composed and performed by Cashmore. The CD is housed in a beautiful full-color digipak that contains previously unpublished paintings of Almond by Russian artist Vania Soutavliov, a rare photograph of the enigmatic Count, and the complete texts to both poems. 2008.