Coil – Musick To Play In The Dark²

Dais

Closely following the success of Coil‘s first volume of Musick To Play In the Dark came this second helping, a thematic continuum that surfed further out there, saw the group collapsing back with the departure of Drew McDowall to a trinity of players, a fact which made for a tighter, more personally focused beast, on a collection where hindsight haunts your every listen.

The sinistral séance of “Something” burns slowly in there, a simple repeated mantra potently pulling the dark cloak of night around you in daggering synth winds and possessed vocals. A morose-toned dowry that is the perfect introduction, slipping into the sunny disposition of “Tiny Golden Books”, a prisming nouveau of rainbowing random, pendanting shapes pulsing tunefulness in a pleasantly complex wrap of fractal forms and arcing arpeggio. A distinctly Thighpaulsandra flavour visited upon by icy vocodered vocals that have Jhonn Balance vulturing a brief encounter with some “otherness”, vanquished in spectralised stretch and undulating keys.

Two esoterically etched tracks that open out to a few that hint at the personal struggles Jhonn was having. The remoteness of their new residence in Weston-super-Mare (although giving the group fresh impetus and inspiration) maybe feeding the darkness too effectively, a state of mind that weaved its way in there.

A toll the creepy itch of “Ether” has Balance wanting to retire from, his weary voice spiralling that sombre insistent piano dowsed in a broken toy box of luminescent electronics. As with volume one, there’s this moth-like hold to the sonics, a slippery decadence that sequins the scene, attaches itself to the vaporising words trailing the narrator’s ascent upstairs to turn his mind off.

A soporific mirror of dissolving consciousness that bleeds into the semi-confessional “Paranoid Inlay”, its drunken equilibrium and powdered-wig pout wrapping itself around Jhonn’s voice, full of flickering imagery, mirror-balling a sonorous shimmer and sighing maybes as good intentions rupture to this percussive tinfoil / cling-filmed kiss.

A precious window on the psyche on which the brief interlude of “An Emergency” intrudes to find Rose McDowall’s distinctive vocals skating a drone’s shifting dilation, heralded by the creaking timbers of the house. A frost-fringed lullaby that works into the gobsmackingly beautiful “Where Are You?”, an album highpoint hypno-skipping to Jhonn’s self-questioning vocals, curling couriers underlined by Rose’s vocal apparitions and that oriental bite. The lyrics breathe, luxuriate and flourish in that widening aperture of otherness Coil always managed to facilitate.

An elusive magic that the languid exit of “Bat Wings” re-captures as that smoothing see-sawing organ slows your heart rate, bathes you in synth wind and scampering sonars. I’ve listened to this countless times and never tire of the way Balance’s gentle observations narcotically milk your consciousness, poetically tattoo you in double meaning, then dive into a rich multi-tracked Latinised free-fall. A chanted lament that pulls you into itself, flows round the room in smokey spirals and ends this second nocturnal collection so poignantly, as if feeding out into the optimistic dawn of its back cover.

Musick To Play In The Dark² is another masterful exploration that still holds plenty of magic, something that Dais Records are keeping very much alive.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-