Coil
Musick To Play In The Dark - Vol. 2

The second chapter of the saga "Musick to Play in the Dark" picks up without many surprises from where its good predecessor left off. The material from the two albums, in fact, seems to be inspired by the same songwriting and probably derives from the same sessions, such that the different songs result perfectly interchangeable with each other.

From a strictly stylistic point of view, we find ourselves facing that perverse mishmash of minimal electronics and ambient music to which we have become accustomed ever since the stable inclusion of keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Thigpaulsandra in the lineup, a collaborator of the band since the time of "The Solstice and Equinox singles".

Even from a conceptual point of view, everything is picked up in its entirety: the moon still dominates the cover and continues to constitute the recurring theme of the work, a happy representation of mysterious, cold, visionary, sensual music with a strong suggestive power, which has the programmatic intent of enveloping the listener, skillfully lying on a bed in the dark of their little room, generating suggestive images and visions in their mind, exploiting the vulnerability and mental instability that the state of drowsiness involves.

If one wanted at all costs to find a difference between the two works, one could certainly note a general weakening of the noise/avant-garde component in favor of greater attention to melody, an impression given mostly by the massive presence of Balance's voice, returning to sing, albeit in a rather minimal way, in more than one episode, marking a partial return to the song format. The average duration of the songs is slightly reduced (this time seven pieces for less than an hour), but the scheme remains that predominant in the previous work: free and based on environmental phrasings, on which are grafted the different elements that characterize the band's poetics, be it the voices, the dark one of Balance and the angelic one of Rose McDowall (here called to replace her namesake Drew McDowall), the incursions of digital noise and the sound manipulations of the wise Christopherson, an old industrial fox.

The hissing of the wind and a looping voice that tirelessly repeats "Something" is the ideal calling card to introduce us to the dreamlike and perverse world that Coil have prepared for us. The awkward and lopsided lament of Balance reminds us of whom we are dealing with. As happened in the previous tome, the second track, "Tiny Golden Books", is a long and exhausting ride with kraut flavors, where it seems to hear the most ethereal Orb tussling with the most visionary Kraftwerk, thanks especially to a hallucinated vocal performance, in which Balance's throat is assaulted by a vocoder of Teutonic memory. "Ether" is supported by a discreet piano and constitutes a well-made electro-industrial-ballad that would not be out of place in an album like "Fragile" by Nine Inch Nails. "Paranoid Inlay", another slow melancholic piece, continues in the same vein and closely resembles, in its broken and minimal phrasings, the more introspective Matmos. "An Emergency" is a brief atmospheric interlude in which McDowall delights us with her angelic voice, while "Where are You?", with its detuned banjo and Balance's dark narratives bring us back to the murky and threatening atmospheres that characterized "Musick to Play… 1".

Closing the dances, even in this case, is the most beautiful song of the lot: I'm talking about the beautiful "Batwings (A Limnal Hymn)", which opens in a decidedly hermetic way, picking up the hissing of the wind we found at the beginning of our journey, but which asserts itself in a goosebump-inducing finale, where Balance's sad song first doubles and then multiplies in a beautiful interweaving of a cappella harmonizations with a vaguely Gregorian flavor. A piece that, by itself, is worth the purchase of the entire album. Definitely inferior to its predecessor, it still represents an example of free, personal music outside of any schema. Coil's ability to weave murky and unsettling atmospheres remains undeniable, even if in this case the delirious and perverse side is slightly subdued in favor of a more reflective and melancholic attitude.

In my opinion, the whole is carried forward with less intensity and inspiration than before, with the effect of leaving the listener a bit indifferent on more than one occasion, but still never dissatisfied. Some much prefer this second episode to the first, a matter of taste, and for this reason, in doubt, although in my opinion, it deserves no more than a 3.5, I assign it a nice 4, also to encourage the purchase of the entire pair, which should be seen as a single work whose parts are inseparable from each other.

Good night, and golden nightmares.