Coil
Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)

The art of Coil is a continuously evolving flow: every work, whether "large" or "small," constitutes a fundamental step in the artistic evolution of Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson. A single, an EP, a side project, a remix job, even an abandoned soundtrack, and a posthumous collection are as valuable as the "official" albums: the same commitment, the same inspiration, the same progressive push to craft something new, personal, and original.

Let’s take, for example, the four EPs released throughout 1998 on the occasion of the two equinoxes ("Spring Equinox" and "Autumn Equinox") and the two solstices ("Summer Solstice" and "Winter Solstice"), later collected in 2002 in this splendid double album titled "Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases)".

1998 is the year when "Astral Disaster" was recorded, a work that marked a sharp turn towards the ritual sounds of their beginnings, revisited through a cosmic lens and with greater awareness in managing their creative energies. But in these four episodes, the leap is more significant because the Coil entity further advances its industrial vision, laying the foundations for what would become the "moon music" beautifully developed in the two volumes of the "Musick to Play in the Dark" saga, which will mark the arrival at a new splendid youth (even though, let’s say it, the two have never really been old).

The contribution of composer/multi-instrumentalist William Breeze brings vital essence to the industrial haze always sponsored by the acclaimed Balance/Christopherson company: his violin, his guitar, his Indian sitar bestow Coil’s music with spirituality and humanity, that critical push towards the "pseudo-singer-songwriter" turn that over time will fully exalt, in all its heartbreaking madness, Balance’s hallucinatory poetics.

If the art of Coil was an act of sodomy, if in "Scatology" the act was consumed in a filthy public toilet in the suburbs of London; if in "Horse Rotorvator" it happened in the luxurious bathroom of a contemporary art museum; and if in "Love's Secret Domain" the sodomy occurred in the glossy restroom of a dizzying nightclub, in this new dimension, the act seems to have been definitively consumed, the phallus dematerialized and disintegrated into microscopic dust and scattered into space. The anus is a black hole that sucks us in and leads us to worlds whose rules and laws we do not recognize, but in which we can recognize the dynamics of perverse love, homicidal madness, and the celebration of unknown deities.

And it is beautiful to witness, in these four works, how Coil’s occultism changes, acquires new nuances, incorporates the cosmic music of the seventies, to transform step by step into the characteristic "moon music," hinted at from the very title of this colossal restoration work.

In "Moon’s Milk," gloomy and spatial ballads, oppressive ambient, and the electronic intricacies that have always characterized Coil’s art coexist splendidly: a series of sketches, often characterized by different styles (brushstrokes of disturbing expressionism, refined geometries of a grotesque cubism, odd figures and evanescences of an unwise surrealism, harmonic chiaroscuro of a dreamy romanticism), thrown down without any mediation, yet so effective in capturing the artistic evolution that the two have been able to trace within the space of a single year.

In "Spring Equinox" (which is as far from spring as possible) Coil seems, for example, to return to the time of the very first work "How to Destroy Angels," although the Hammond organ that dances sadly over the drones and stretched, treated vocals of an unrecognizable Balance, rather than to the esotericism of their cousins Current 93, brings us back to the kosmische of the immortal masters Tangerine Dream.

In "Summer Solstice", on the other hand, lunar music begins to take a more defined shape: Balance’s singing surrenders to his blurred visions, leading to that dark monologue that will dominate the two "Musick to Play in the Dark." Everything is still very somber and immersed in the creeping sequences and the arrhythmias of master Christopherson. But there is already the delirious falsetto of "Summer Substructures", where Balance seems like a mad Muezzin weaving its apocalyptic chant from a phallic minaret lost somewhere in space.

But it is in "Autumn Equinox" that we will taste the juiciest fruits of this "metamorphosis in progress" and reproduced in slow motion: "Rosa Decidua" is a cosmic ballad featuring the poignant duet between Drew McDowall (sister of the much more famous Rose?) and an arcane tenor voice; "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant" scares us and plunges us into a new pagan nightmare, dominated by the slow beating of drums, the menacing strokes of Breeze’s viola, and the voices of Balance and McDowall unitedly chanting dark psalms that reek of semen, blood, and Vaseline; a nightmare immediately shattered by the enchantment of one of Coil’s all-time classics, that "Amethyst Deceivers" which will live a thousand more lives, but here enchants thanks to the evocative intertwining between Christopherson’s electronic gusts and Breeze’s inspired acoustic guitar. The sensation is of swaying in a mythical slumber given by the swaying of a soft flying carpet floating in the black-orange of a twilight sky: a masterpiece within the masterpiece within the masterpiece.

The last quadrant, "Winter Solstice" finally opens with that visionary "electro-pop" gem "A White Rainbow, which definitively throws open the doors to the sensational images that will characterize the final stretch of Coil’s career ("The Dreamer is still Asleep" and "Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)" just to give an idea).

To close it all, after the clatter of Christopherson’s machines, "Christmas is Now Drawing Near" : a dreamy lullaby that finally purifies us from evil, sung by the angelic Rose McDowall, ready to board Coil’s bandwagon and spend herself unreservedly in the two volumes of "Musick to Play in the Dark."

Over time, it will be seen, Balance’s artistic vision will prevail over Christopherson’s, also due to the impending breakup of their long romantic relationship. An imbalance that, however, should not in any way harm the figure and charisma of a character like Peter Christopherson: because Christopherson, to be counted among the fundamental authors of contemporary music (to this day, more or less thirty years later, it is difficult for us to explain what Throbbing Gristle truly were in all their artistic value), is a professional who has demonstrated his independence and autonomy, while the unbalanced Balance alone is really hard to imagine. It is known, one was reason, the other madness, but it is precisely in this balance that one of the most sensational realities of the industrial scene of yesterday, today, alas not of tomorrow is founded.

To be listened to until exhausted.