"Musick To Play In The Dark"

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About "Musick To Play In The Dark"

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 inter-dimensional. 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.”

Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" package. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra.

Tracklisting

  • 0
    Are You Shivering?
  • 0
    Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night
  • 0
    Red Queen
  • 0
    Broccoli
  • 0
    Strange Birds
  • 0
    The Dreamer is Still Asleep

Formats

  • White In Clear "Moon" Vinyl 2xLP | 200 edition
  • White / Black "Eclipse" Vinyl 2xLP | 400 edition
  • White / Black / Clear Splatter Vinyl 2xLP | 500 edition
  • Clear Purple Vinyl 2xLP | 700 edition
  • Clear Blue Vinyl 2xLP | 1000 edition
  • Clear Vinyl 2xLP | 1200 edition
  • White / Black "Star" Vinyl 2xLP | 200 edition
  • White / Black "Nova" Vinyl 2xLP | 400 edition
  • White / Black "Moon Phase" Vinyl 2xLP | 600 edition
  • Milky White / Clear Splatter Vinyl 2xLP | 800 edition
  • Clear / Yellow Splatter Vinyl 2xLP | 1000 edition
  • Clear Yellow Vinyl 2xLP | 2000 edition
  • Bathed in Silver / Drowned in Gold Vinyl 2xLP | 100 edition
  • Glow in the Dark Vinyl 2xLP | 200 edition
  • Horizon Vinyl 2xLP | 400 edition
  • Purple / Black Smash Vinyl 2xLP | 600 edition
  • Cloudy Purple Vinyl 2xLP | 800 edition
  • Black Vinyl 2xLP
  • Compact Disc
  • Digital

Release date

November 27, 2020

Catalog No.

DAIS155