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COIL
Queens Of The Circulating Library stands alongside Time Machines and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith as a post-industrial pinnacle of sensory-warping long-form drone. Crafted by the distilled duo of Thighpaulsandra and John Balance, the 49-minute piece unfurls in swirling, cyclical waves, tidal as much as textural, channeling the spirit of levitational minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young. Touted as the first part in "a continually mutating series of circulating musickal compositions” upon its initial release in 2000, the album remains a compelling case study in Coil’s exceptional capacity for mutation and extremes.
The theatrical introductory monologue delivered by Thighpaulsandra’s mother – a career opera singer, in her 80’s at the time of recording – sets the stage for a grandiose ascension. Written by Balance, the text is declamatory but dreamlike, refracted through megaphone echo: “Return the book of knowledge / Return the marble index / File under "Paradox" / The forest is a college, each tree a university.” As her voice fades, the lulling synthetic infinity deepens, congealing into transient crests of volume and haze, like slow-motion surf misting in moonlight. Thighpaulsandra describes their aesthetic intention as a “bliss out,” static but shape-shifting, an amniotic drift towards an eternal vanishing point. A supreme sonic embodiment of the slogan on the sleeve of Time Machines, two years prior: "Persistence is all."
The theatrical introductory monologue delivered by Thighpaulsandra’s mother – a career opera singer, in her 80’s at the time of recording – sets the stage for a grandiose ascension. Written by Balance, the text is declamatory but dreamlike, refracted through megaphone echo: “Return the book of knowledge / Return the marble index / File under "Paradox" / The forest is a college, each tree a university.” As her voice fades, the lulling synthetic infinity deepens, congealing into transient crests of volume and haze, like slow-motion surf misting in moonlight. Thighpaulsandra describes their aesthetic intention as a “bliss out,” static but shape-shifting, an amniotic drift towards an eternal vanishing point. A supreme sonic embodiment of the slogan on the sleeve of Time Machines, two years prior: "Persistence is all."
TRACK LISTING
Side A
Queens Of The Circulating Library
Side B
Queens Of The Circulating Library
After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one.
Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.
Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.
As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”
Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.
Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.
As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”
TRACK LISTING
A1. Something
A2. Tiny Golden Books
B1. Ether
B2. Paranoid Inlay
C1. An Emergency
C2. Where Are You?
C3. Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)
Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as interdimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as interdimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey. The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
TRACK LISTING
1. Are You Shivering?
2. Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The
3. And Destroy Paris In A
4. Night
5. Red Queen
6. Broccoli
7. Strange Birds The
8. Dreamer Is Still Asleep
This Mortal Coil was the given name of a strictly-studio project that spawned three albums, conceived and produced by one-time 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell.
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
Released two years after their debut album, This Mortal Coil’s Filigree & Shadow (1986) was no less ornate than its predecessor; a double album with each of its four sides a self-contained unit.
New faces joined the cast for this record, including a variety of singers Ivo handpicked like Alison Limerick, Jeanette, Dominic Appleton (Breathless), sisters Deirdre and Louise Rutkowski (Sunset Gun), and Richenel.
An intense listen, The Quietus called it “tortured yet oddly euphoric… (music which) could easily rip flimsy souls apart.”
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
Released two years after their debut album, This Mortal Coil’s Filigree & Shadow (1986) was no less ornate than its predecessor; a double album with each of its four sides a self-contained unit.
New faces joined the cast for this record, including a variety of singers Ivo handpicked like Alison Limerick, Jeanette, Dominic Appleton (Breathless), sisters Deirdre and Louise Rutkowski (Sunset Gun), and Richenel.
An intense listen, The Quietus called it “tortured yet oddly euphoric… (music which) could easily rip flimsy souls apart.”
TRACK LISTING
A1. Velvet Belly
A2. The Jeweller
A3. Ivy And Neet
A4. Meniscus
A5. Tears
A6. Tarantula
B1. My Father
B2. Come Here My Love
B3. At First, And Then
B4. Strength Of Strings
B5. Morning Glory
C1. Inch-Blue
C2. I Want To Live
C3. Mama K (1)
C4. Filigree & Shadow
C5. Fire Brothers
C6. Thaïs (1)
C7. I Must Have Been Blind
C8. A Heart Of Glass
D1. Alone
D2. Mama K (2)
D3. The Horizon Bleeds And Sucks Its Thumb
D4. Drugs
D5. Red Rain
D6. Thaïs (2)
This Mortal Coil was the given name of a strictly-studio project that spawned three albums, conceived and produced by one-time 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell.
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
Landing at the start of a new decade, after much had happened in both producer Ivo Watts-Russell’s life and with his 4AD label, the final part of the This Mortal Coil trilogy, Blood (1991), felt like a perfect conclusion.
Meticulously orchestrated, vocalists Alison Limerick, Deirdre and Louise Rutkowski return from the second album with Caroline Crawley (Shelleyan Orphan / Babacar) and 4AD signees Heidi Berry, Kim Deal (Pixies / The Breeders), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses / The Breeders / Belly) and Pieter Nooten all enlisted.
“Shedding some of its chillier post-punk components, blossoming into material airy and gorgeous. Covers — many from the psychedelic era — still dominate the material, but they are largely indistinguishable from the originals, so seamless is (it’s) indelible tone. Blood is a treasure.” Consequence of Sound
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
Landing at the start of a new decade, after much had happened in both producer Ivo Watts-Russell’s life and with his 4AD label, the final part of the This Mortal Coil trilogy, Blood (1991), felt like a perfect conclusion.
Meticulously orchestrated, vocalists Alison Limerick, Deirdre and Louise Rutkowski return from the second album with Caroline Crawley (Shelleyan Orphan / Babacar) and 4AD signees Heidi Berry, Kim Deal (Pixies / The Breeders), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses / The Breeders / Belly) and Pieter Nooten all enlisted.
“Shedding some of its chillier post-punk components, blossoming into material airy and gorgeous. Covers — many from the psychedelic era — still dominate the material, but they are largely indistinguishable from the originals, so seamless is (it’s) indelible tone. Blood is a treasure.” Consequence of Sound
TRACK LISTING
A1. The Lacemaker
A2. Mr. Somewhere
A3. Andialu
A4. With Tomorrow
A5. Loose Joints
A6. You And Your Sister
B1. Nature’s Way
B2. I Come And Stand At Every Door
B3. Bitter
B4. Baby Ray Baby
B5. Several Times
C1. The Lacemaker II
C2. Late Night
C3. Ruddy And Wretched
C4. Help Me Lift You Up
C5. Carolyn’s Song
C6. D. D. And E.
D1. ‘Til I Gain Control Again
D2. Dreams Are Like Water
D3. I Am The Cosmos
D4. (Nothing But) Blood
This Mortal Coil was the given name of a strictly-studio project that spawned three albums, conceived and produced by one-time 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell.
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
This Mortal Coil’s debut album It’ll End In Tears (1984) forged the template; helping to crystallise 4AD’s emerging signature sound whilst shining a light on some of their stable with Cocteau Twins, Colourbox, Dead Can Dance and The Wolfgang Press all involved. The line-up was completed by arranger Martin McCarrick, violinist Gini Ball, Howard Devoto of Buzzcocks / Magazine fame and Cindytalk’s Gordon Sharp.
Pitchfork recently named it one of the best Dream Pop albums ever, a moment which “catalysed 4AD’s ascendance from the stilted poetics of goth rock to the kings of gauzy transcendence.”
Over the span of eight years he, along with Blackwing Studios house engineer/ co-producer, John Fryer, and a rotating cast of musicians, created original works, musical links and reinterpretations of impeccably curated songs; introducing a new audience to the talents of a previous generation including Big Star, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Spirit, Gene Clark, Dino Valenti, Rain Parade, Emmylou Harris, Syd Barrett and Colin Newman, amongst others.
This Mortal Coil’s debut album It’ll End In Tears (1984) forged the template; helping to crystallise 4AD’s emerging signature sound whilst shining a light on some of their stable with Cocteau Twins, Colourbox, Dead Can Dance and The Wolfgang Press all involved. The line-up was completed by arranger Martin McCarrick, violinist Gini Ball, Howard Devoto of Buzzcocks / Magazine fame and Cindytalk’s Gordon Sharp.
Pitchfork recently named it one of the best Dream Pop albums ever, a moment which “catalysed 4AD’s ascendance from the stilted poetics of goth rock to the kings of gauzy transcendence.”
TRACK LISTING
A1. Kangaroo
A2. Song To The Siren
A3. Holocaust
A4. Fyt
A5. Fond Affections
A6. The Last Ray
B1. Another Day
B2. Waves Become Wings
B3. Barramundi
B4. Dreams Made Flesh
B5. Not Me
B6. A Single Wish