Moon's Milk (In Four Phases) (2001...c) [Coil...2xCD]

disc 1

01 Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull (Part One)
02 Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull (Part Two)
03 Bee Stings
04 Glowworms/Waveforms
05 Summer Substructures
06 A Warning from the Sun (For Fritz)
Amethyst Deceivers (Unlisted)

disc 2

01 Regel
02 Rosa Decidua
03 Switches
04 The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant
05 Amethyst Deceivers
06 A White Rainbow
07 North
08 Magnetic North
09 Christmas is Now Drawing Near

Notes...

Collects the four singles: Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox, and Winter Solstice.

Review...

Most fans have probably collected each one of the seasonal Solstice & Equinox singles back when they were released in 1998. Now that they're long out of print, a reasonably priced collection takes their place. With one slight addition: a live version of "Amethist Deceivers" recorded somewhere in Europe in 2001. The first phase: the Spring Equinox single, "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull," was their first release with then full-time member, violist Bill Breeze. It's comprised of two drone-a-licious 8+ minute parts which sound pretty much like different takes on the same track. The next single, the Summer Solstice is made up of four vocal songs featuring viola and mad electronics. "Glitch" artists could easily learn something about song composition and using the laptop noise as a piece of the puzzle rather than isolate it and bore the listener. Disc two features phases three and four, with guests like Rose McDowell on the dark masterpiece, "Rosa Decidua" and their version of "Christmas is Now Drawing Near". Autumn's five songs to me don't seem terribly seasonally thematic, not nearly as much as songs "Summer Substructures" and "Bee Stings" from the summer EP and "A White Rainbow" and "Christmas" from the winter EP. I distinctly remember being the most excited about the Autumn release songs. Over three years later, "Switches" and "Amethyst Deceivers" still bring chills to my spine. Here, the group ran the spectrum from electric charges to thunderous percussion holding nothing back. The roar of the dark winter rolls in for the winter EP, which lyrically almost attempts to tie a connection as Balance sings, "Moon's milk spills from my unquiet skull and forms a white rainbow." Once again, the music also jumps around from styles, through glitch and viola vocal tracks to a reverberant sound collage, a serene digital bubblebath with spoken word, ending up on the string heavy Christmas song with Rose. It's a pain indeed to buy these all over again, and Coil have alluded to a live release so the bonus track could very well surface somewhere else. It's nice to have all the songs together without having to switch CDs every 25 minutes. - Jon Whitney

Buy Here (disc 1) [Digital Format + Images]
Buy Here (disc 2) [Digital Format + Images]