A Guide for Beginners: A Silver Voice [Anthology] (2001...a) [Coil...CD]

01 Amethyst Deceivers
02 Lost Rivers of London
03 Are You Shivering?
04 Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)
05 Where Are You?
06 At the Heart of it All
07 A Cold Cell
08 Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)
09 Who'll Fall?
10 The Dreamer is Still Asleep

Notes...

The first of two anthology CDs created to mark Coil's first live performance in Moscow.
This volume features a selection of aggressive and noisy pieces from throughout Coil's career, to coincide with Volume Two - A Guide For Finishers: A Golden Hair, which features more melancholy and melodic tracks.
Both were compiled on one double CD release, The Golden Hair with a Voice of Silver.
The English title given above is a loose translation of the Russian title devised by Ivan Pavlov of COH. The Russian word for "finisher" suggests both suicide and cumming.
The tracks "Are You Shivering?" and "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)" are listed in the wrong order on the cover. The track listing above is the correct one.

Review...

This 2-CD set is a widely available reissue of two Russian collections released by Feelee in 2001: A Guide for Beginners -- The Voice of Silver and A Guide for Finishers -- A Hair of Gold. Only two of the 20 tracks, "A Cold Cell," and "A.Y.O.R.," were previously unavailable at the time ("A Cold Cell" soon turned up on The Wire Tapper, Vol. 6 released by the British magazine The Wire), although some were a bit hard to find. Seasoned fans will feel the repetition (after all, this is not the first Coil "best of" to hit the stores) but newcomers will be treated to a first-class tour of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's realm. Disc one focuses on ambient tracks, the melodic, murmuring, slightly frightening kind Coil do so well. It draws heavily on the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark (including the grippingly beautiful "Batwings"), but also goes back to early efforts like Scatology ("At the Heart of It All") and Horse Rotovator ("Amethyst Deceivers"). Disc two presents the flip side, throwing together more aggressive, noise-based pieces that are often upbeat. The rough industrial stance of "Panic," "The Anal Staircase," "Solar Lodge," and the like, make this disc more difficult to listen to, if only because it leaves little chance to breathe. The set concludes marvelously with "The First Five Minutes After Violent Death." Every fan will have one of his or her favorite tracks missing, but the casual listener will find in The Golden Hair With a Voice of Silver the perfect place to start. There is one downside to this collection though: the total lack of liner notes means that you will have to plough your way through the All-Music Guide database to find where each track was taken from. - François Couture...From Allmusic

A Guide For Finishers: A Golden Hair [Anthology] (2001...b) [Coil...CD]

01 Panic
02 First Dark Ride
03 Further Back and Faster
04 The Anal Staircase
05 Red Skeletons
06 Scope
07 Solar Lodge
08 Blue Rats
09 A.Y.O.R.
10 The First Five Minutes After Violent Death

Notes...

The second of two anthology CDs created to mark Coil's first live performance in Moscow.
This volume features a selection of aggressive and noisy pieces from throughout Coil's career, to coincide with Volume One - A Guide for Beginners: A Silver Voice, which features more melancholy and melodic tracks.
Both were compiled on one double CD release, The Golden Hair with a Voice of Silver.
The English title given above is a loose translation of the Russian title devised by Ivan Pavlov of COH. The Russian word for "finisher" suggests both suicide and cumming.

Review...

This 2-CD set is a widely available reissue of two Russian collections released by Feelee in 2001: A Guide for Beginners -- The Voice of Silver and A Guide for Finishers -- A Hair of Gold. Only two of the 20 tracks, "A Cold Cell," and "A.Y.O.R.," were previously unavailable at the time ("A Cold Cell" soon turned up on The Wire Tapper, Vol. 6 released by the British magazine The Wire), although some were a bit hard to find. Seasoned fans will feel the repetition (after all, this is not the first Coil "best of" to hit the stores) but newcomers will be treated to a first-class tour of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's realm. Disc one focuses on ambient tracks, the melodic, murmuring, slightly frightening kind Coil do so well. It draws heavily on the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark (including the grippingly beautiful "Batwings"), but also goes back to early efforts like Scatology ("At the Heart of It All") and Horse Rotovator ("Amethyst Deceivers"). Disc two presents the flip side, throwing together more aggressive, noise-based pieces that are often upbeat. The rough industrial stance of "Panic," "The Anal Staircase," "Solar Lodge," and the like, make this disc more difficult to listen to, if only because it leaves little chance to breathe. The set concludes marvelously with "The First Five Minutes After Violent Death." Every fan will have one of his or her favorite tracks missing, but the casual listener will find in The Golden Hair With a Voice of Silver the perfect place to start. There is one downside to this collection though: the total lack of liner notes means that you will have to plough your way through the All-Music Guide database to find where each track was taken from. - François Couture...From Allmusic

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]