Music CD - Coil: Astral Disaster

That said This is one of my favorite CDs by them. It provides what Coil does best. Hypnotic music that will take you on a trip inside your imagination/dreams/nightmares...

For those unfamiliar with Coil, they might take some getting used to because Coil is never a band to compromise. They do what they want wether people like it or not. And that's what makes them so powerful. Truly surreal music. Many times distancing themselves from traditional song structures in an extreme fassion.

That brings us to the content of this album. 6 moody soundscapes with weird hypnotic electronics. Yet there are a few vocals which are equally surreal..
so you may say: 6 songs?!? well consider the fact that these 6 songs amount to over 70 minutes of music.

The Mood on this album is dark yet astral.. (atleast to me) I felt like I had taken a journey through space and time after hearing this Cd.

This is ideal musick(no spelling error here) to listen to before going to bed or when you're relaxing at night.
It will take you on a trip...

So, what's the album actually sound like? Well, the album features a couple long, ambient electronic soundscapes and a couple more traditional songs with vocals and instrumentation and the like (in all, 6 tracks clocking in at just over 72 minutes). The CD begins with "The Avatars", which features whirling synth noises coupled with high-pitched electronic drones. The whirling and screeching builds as the track progresses and then, once the listener is completely engulfed, comes to an abrupt stop. The much slower-paced "The Mothership and the Fatherland" follows and gives the listener a chance to recover from the previous track's aural assault. This starts with a slow, brooding drum beat and slowly progresses into a very light, soothing ambient piece. Eventually, some organ sounds enter the mix, as do a few electronic blips and beeps. This is definitely the kind of track you'd listen to with headphones on and the lights out -- very relaxing. "2nd Sun Syndrome" follows and returns to the electronic weirdness of the first track. Although sonically it's very different from "The Mothership...", it's just as hypnotizing, providing all kinds of strange sounds that seem to swim from side to side within your head. This is definitely another track that must be listened to with headphones.

"The Sea Priestess" and "I Don't Want to be the One" are the only two tracks on this album with vocals, but they do not seem out of place. "The Sea Priestess" starts out sounding like another ambient excursion, but eventually John Balance's vocals enter the mix. These vocals are more spoken than sung and provide yet another texture to engulf the listener. They're also a sort of vocal guide to the journeys that your mind takes while listening to this strangely hypnotic music. Suffice to say, this probably isn't the kind of album you'd put on while going on an afternoon drive or as background music while you do homework -- it's music that you need to surround yourself with to truly appreciate. That said, there is one track on this album, "I Don't Want to be the One", that is fairly straightforward and doesn't make you feel like you're in the middle of some acid trip. It features many of the same sort of strange electronic noises that populate the rest of the album, but it's also got sung vocals and, surprisingly enough, a guitar line. Finishing out the album is "MU-UR", a track which is sort of a reprise of "The Mothership and the Fatherland", featuring many of the same drum and organ sounds. As the track progresses, however, the soothing ambient sounds give way to all sorts of electronic weirdness - mangled vocal samples, a twisted piano loop, shortwave radio squeals and all sorts of other oddities.

Although this album is quite cohesive and definitely a trip to listen to, it doesn't seem to really go anywhere. Coil did the chill-out record thing much better in their 1998 release "Time Machines" and the strange electronic thing much better with 1995's "Worship the Glitch". It also pails in comparison to their spectacular recent "Musick to Play in the Dark" series. I'm not saying this is a bad album or anything, it just doesn't seem to be up to their unusually high standard of quality.

As for the tracks themselves, I like most of them very well, save for "2nd Son Syndrome", which is the closest I've ever seen Coil come to pretentious noodling. I almost always skip over it. The song simply (simplistically?) repeats the same watery noises over and over for four minutes, and is devoid of intrigue or even atmosphere. "Avatars", the opening track, features a selection of very strident sounds which create a very off-putting aural environment, effectively succeeding where 2nd Son failed. It is not unlike the shorter, more "experimental" sounding pieces on the various "Seasons" singles, to give a comparison.

"The Sea Priestess" is one of the more profound selections of the album, featuring John Balance giving a fantasy-tinged narrative to a dreamy, ambient backdrop. I often wonder if the man has ever considered trying his hand at actual written poetry; the material he reads here is certainly good enough to stand alone on the printed page. This is further evidenced by "MU-UR" which, instrumentally seems to be a re-mix of "The Mothership and the Fatherland", the differences being John's voice(altered unsettlingly to sound like woman's) and a few strident, metallic noises that suit each other perfectly.

However, the true gem of _Astral Disaster_ has to be The Mothership, which has quicky become one of my favorite Coil songs; a sleepy, weightless piece of music that I've fallen asleep to many times.

BLD this is not. It actually shares more in common with the aforementioned Seasons singles' less conventional moments, in my opinion, or with _The Angelic Conversation_. It's an off day for Peter and John, but even on their off days they still produce quality.