COIL Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil (Chalice / World Serpent) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This has been a very productive year for Coil, with mixed results coming from so much activity after the long hibernation. "Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil" is a drastic turn for Coil away from their lunar drones and towards a more abrasive sound, with what sounds like manipulated recordings of rumbling diesel engines or malfunctioning amplifier tremolo. The clatter of cutlery and an intrusion of John Balance's seductive voice breaks up (adds to?) the dissonance of this noise production. Definitely better than the last couple of offerings from Coil, but their quality control could still see some improvement overall...
Packaged in one of those plastic clam shell cases (a la the 20' to 2000 series).

COIL Horse Rotovator (World Serpent) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We here at Aquarius haven't agreed with the critical acclaim that's greeted the recent output of Coil; however, we do agree that their second proper album "Horse Rotovator" should still be viewed as one of the great electronic albums of the 1980s. Immersed in Industrial Culture's transgressive ideologies, and thus intended as perversions of contemporary media and politics, Coil produced "Horse Rotovator" in 1986 as a glorification of lysergic apocalypses within Jean Genet's reversed pantheon of Catholic imagery. Within this convoluted narrative, Coil crafted an unsurpassed album of macabre tales gilded with baroque and at times carnivalesque details. Unlike the majority of their Industrial contemporaries (such as their Wax Trax cronies), Coil's plunge into the realm of the abject wasn't hamstrung by technology. As Coil was one of the first ensembles to be well equipped with early sampling technologies (specifically, the Fairlight Emulator), they masterfully hybridized their dark intentions with the synth-based craft of the new wave pop song (it should be noted that Soft Cell's Marc Almond has been a longstanding friend and guest vocalist for Coil).
With bands like Peaches and Trans Am trawling the '80s solely for the purpose of irony, Coil's work from that decade may appear today as excessively bombastic, too homoerotic, or downright dated. However, "Horse Rotovator" and the (no longer!) criminally unavailable "Love's Secret Domain" undeniably stand at the apex of Coil's extensive career.
RealAudio clip: "Anal Staircase"
RealAudio clip: "Who By Fire"
RealAudio clip: "Golden Section"

COIL Live Four (World Serpent) cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A splendid live album! Actually this is the first in a series of four volumes of Coil live recordings - released in reverse numerical order. And if this cd is any indication of the other three, I can't wait! The series 'begins' with the last two concerts (in Prague and Vienna) of their 2002 tour, and features the Coil lineup of mainmen Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Ossian Brown and Thighpaulsandra as well as Black Sun Productions' Pierce and Massimo. As opposed to most of their recent studio recordings, each of which has had a considerably singular - primarily drone-based - focus, this presents a much wider scope of Coil's sound. Incredibly vivid soundscapes, meticulous collages, grand dramatic melodic orchestrations, seething minimal spoken word. Coil expertly traverse through all of these. If you're at all acquainted with their work, you'll hear a number of familiar segments, but they're all wonderfully incorporated into the album as a whole. I'd even venture to say that this live album makes for quite a nice introduction to Coil. That said, the one track that absolutely floored me was "Amethyst Deceivers". Although the audio sample only offers a mere glimpse, please do check it out! Of course it's all beautifully recorded, and the roar of the crowd is kept contained to in between songs - allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the performance that's in turns visceral, whimsical, and totally captivating. Ten tracks: "I Am Angie Bowie", "Last Rites of Spring", "Are You Shivering?", "Amethyst Deceivers", "A Warning from the Sun", "The Universe is a Haunted House", "Ostia", "I Don't Want to be the One", "Bang Bang", "An Unearthly Red". Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Amethyst Deceivers"

COIL Live One (World Serpent) 2cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Attention Coil fans... The fourth and final volume in this series of live documents has finally arrived, and it's a double cd set. A characteristically ever-evolving, dramatic montage with heaving drones, wheezing strings and sputtering electronics punctuated by John Balance's guttural shouts and moans and other ghostly effected voices. Visceral, beautiful and deeply moving. Yet another version of "Amethyst Deceivers" is included on the second disc - a slower, quieter and much more minimal rendering. Furthermore, with the recent dissolution of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's personal and artistic relationships, perhaps this will mark one of the very final releases from this astoundingly groundbreaking and deeply influential British duo. Well... then again, they've probably got a secret vault filled with as yet unreleased Coil recordings.
CD A, titled "The Industrial Use Of Semen Will Revolutionise The Human Race" features three tracks from their April 2000 performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London (please note: this UK live recording was originally released as the Time Machines limited edition cd).
CD B contains six tracks from their Barcelona concert two months later. Coil's perfoming line-up for these dates was Balance, Christopherson, Ossian Brown, and Thighpaulsandra, plus viola player William Breeze joined on in Spain.
MPEG Stream: "Everything Keeps Dissolving"
MPEG Stream: "Elves"

COIL Live Three (World Serpent) cd 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Here is the second release in this series capturing the magic of Coil in the live setting. This one presents their April 2002 performance at the Teatro Delle Celebrazioni in Bologna, Italy. For this performance Coil were Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Ossian Brown, Mike York and Cliff Stapleton as well as Pierce and Massimo of the Black Sun Productions collective. Nine tracks: "Anarcadia/All Horned Animals", "Amethyst Deceivers", "Slur ", "A Cold Cell", "Broccoli", "Paranoid Inlay", "Sick Mirrors", "AYOR", and "Backwards".
MPEG Stream: "Backwards"

COIL Live Two (World Serpent) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yes, we know... although the title of this cd is Live Two, this volume is actually the third to be released in this series of live Coil recordings. To get you oriented, Live Four - the one we have listened to the most so far - was an excellent document of their most recent performances Prague and Vienna in 2002. It very effectively captured the many facets of Coil. Live Three features their Bologna, Italy concert. This is Coil's presentation in DK Gorbunova, Moscow, Russia in September of 2001. It was a much more scaled down affair in terms of personnel (as opposed to their 2002 lineup) with just four men: Jhon Balance and Peter Christopherson; Thighpaulsandra, and Tom Edwards. However in a sense it's the most raw and testosterone pumped of this series so far, and the crowd responded in kind. Six tracks in all: "Something/Higher Beings Command", "Amethyst Deceivers", "What Kind of Animal Are You", "Blood from the Air", "The Green Child", "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil".
MPEG Stream: "What Kind Of Animal Are You"
MPEG Stream: "Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil"

COIL Love's Secret Domain (Threshold House) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The re-issue of "Love's Secret Domain" from 1991 is not unlike unearthing a long lost exquisite treasure. Obsessively coveted and revered over the last decade, it re-emerges still sounding fresh and current. Sadly and strangely, this album was often pigeonholed as an industrial-dance record. Sure, it was licensed to the US on Wax Trax and Coil's longstanding association with Industrial Culture (um, they started it) certainly confused idiot rock critics who aimlessly equated industrial with the militant stomp of Front 242. Clearly, "Love's Secret Domain" is an album that stands way above the standard Wax Trax fare of the time.
During the construction of this album, Coil's core duo -- Peter Christopherson and John Balance -- had immersed themselves in the acid house culture of the UK that flourished around The KLF (I don't care what you think of "What Time is Love," The KLF were geniuses in the art of pop subversion), 808 State, and even the early bleep techno from Warp Records. To Coil, the UK rave culture reflected many of their own ideas of transgression through almost pagan rituals of communities uniting around liberating music, sexual exploration, chemical enlightenment, and the release of hidden dark energies from the body and spirit.
"Love's Secret Domain" embodied a near-perfect harmony between the dark, occultish overtones from their previous albums "Scatology" and "Horse Rotovator" and the technological futurism at the heart of rave culture. Within this synthesis, Coil has not just created a handful of singles (although "The Snow" and "Windowpane" off of this album still make great dancefloor fodder), but has articulated the entire album as a sonic narrative. Swelling through the sampledelic abstraction on "Disco Hospital" (recently covered by admitted Coil fans Matmos) and the surreal tension of "Things Happen" (with Annie Anxiety Bandez' obtuse guest vocal appearance), Coil offers "The Snow" as a magnificient techno track, with creepy cut-ups of choral elements, constantly shifting and reforming melody patterns, and an 808 techno pulse. "Windowpane" in turn is far more seductive in its low slung bassline and downtempo pace. The rest of the album continues through a darkened path of hallucinatory electronics, intricate instrumentations, and occasional bursts of subverted pop sentiment. Unlike a lot of electronica records, nothing on "Love's Secret Domain" ever feels like filler.
This is a marvelous record that even after a decade has very few rivals.
RealAudio clip: "The Snow"
RealAudio clip: "Windowpane"
RealAudio clip: "Love's Secret Domain"

COIL Moon Milk (In Four Phases): The Solstice And Equinox Singles Collected (Eskaton) 2cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
During the past decade, Coil has undergone a drastic metamorphosis that began with the extravagantly dark electronica of "Love's Secret Domain" and continued up to the kosmische ambience of "Musick To Listen To In Dark Vol 2." With all of the albums since "Love's Secret Domain" moving far away from their perverse use of pop structures, these more recent recordings initially had very little immediate impact on us. Yet with the reissue of their solstice / equinox series of singles onto this double CD set, it is clear that Coil's newer "lunar music" requires time for it to settle and perhaps ripen with age. Well, it's taken 3 years for us to really warm up to these recordings, which at the time of their release in 1998 seemed merely adequate.
Coil intended to thematically correspond these songs' droning poetry to the solstices and equinoxes corresponding to when they were made. Mostly they center around a miasmic abstraction of spartan, dirge arrangements for a few instruments (cellos, church organs, spanish guitar), maintaining their solemn pursuit into sonic alchemy. For the most part, Coil's John Balance hushes his voice into mere whispers of his pagan recitations, which barely stand out of the lulling instrumentation, although "The White Rainbow" track from the Winter single stands out as a eulogaic song dominated by Balance's rich singing. The album works much better than as a collection of singles whose original release format seemed far too abrupt for the extended atmospheres that are common throughout the whole series.
And to piss off everybody who bought the original series, Coil included a bonus live track.
RealAudio clip: "A White Rainbow"
RealAudio clip: "Bee Stings"

COIL Musick To Play In The Dark (Chalice/World Serpent) cd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
While Coil has released a plethora of side-projects (Black Light District, Elph, Time Machines, etc.), soundtracks, and limited singles (including the solstice/ equinox series from 1998) since 'Love's Secret Domain' of 1992, they have finally released the fourth 'proper' Coil album. Dark brooding beatless synth chords and field recordings are slowly unveiled as John Balance delivers a menacing voice-over. Thighpaulsandra (Julian Cope's psychedelic sidekick) joins the band for this album, to effective means, with his Conrad Schnitzler-esque arpeggiated synth attack on 'Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night'. There's been much discussion as to whether 'Musick' holds up, as one of Coil's finer moments. But remove the pressure of the 'Coil legacy', taking it on musical merits alone, and you'll find it to be quite beautiful; a dark, brooding record of 'night music'.

COIL Musick To Play In The Dark, Volume 2 (Chalice / World Serpent) cd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"Musick To Play In The Dark, Volume Two" is ... not as good as volume one. Obviously these are all of the newagey dregs that didn't make the cut the first time around. Sure, Coil is said to have put on one hell of show at Spain's Sonar festival with ultraviolet strippers and techno-pagan rituals, but that doesn't give them any excuse to release an album as unnecessary as this. I'm turning in my fanclub badge. More dedicated/diehard fans than I will of course want this, badly.

COIL Queens of The Circulating Library (Eskaton / World Serpant) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The timeless electronic swoop of Coil's "Time Machines" repeats itself in the swelling warm drones of mostly analogue synthesis on "Queens of The Circulating Library." John Balance (without Peter Christopherson) had written a poem to be recited by Dorothy Lewis - the mother of Thighpaulsandra who aids in the breathy swells of sound.

COIL Remote Viewer (Threshold House) 2cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Much of the discussion elsewhere on this list about Coil's Black Antlers applies to Remote Viewer as well. This, too, was an album originally released as a limited cd-r, now reissued with considerable remastering, additional production, and even a bunch of new material, more of their signature spectral electronica. Just like Black Antlers, Remote Viewer's funereal tunes warped through the funhouse of chemicals, alcohol, and occultish leanings nowadays take on an eerily prescient quality, as founding member Jhonn Balance died nearly two years ago leaving romantic and musical partner Peter Christopherson with the task of completing the rough mixes found on the earlier cd-rs of Black Antlers and Remote Viewer.
While not really the "moon musick" of Astral Disaster or Musick To Play In The Dark, the slippery tunes of Remote Viewer are mostly devoid of Balance's voice. Instead, hurdy gurdy drones, electrically tinged violin, and sampled bagpipes spiral into an atonal ragas elegantly shifting into deranged and slightly maudlin melodies. As a whole Remote Viewer is much closer to the devilishly sampledelic breakbeat numbers on Love's Secret Domain. Delirious to say the least.
MPEG Stream: "Remote Viewing 1"
MPEG Stream: "Remote Viewing 2"

COIL Scatology (World Serpent) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

COIL The Ape Of Naples (Threshold House) cd 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The Ape Of Naples marks the end of an era for Coil, as the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, siddereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. In November 2004, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
What's so striking about The Ape Of Naples, especially in light of their recent albums of temporal minimalism, is their return to the song structure, and how Jhonn Balance could deliver his beautiful howlings with all of the poetry of Jean Genet. Throughout the album, Christopherson scores elegaic arrangements with an urgent interlocking for marimba and vibraphone, whose gasping repetition serves as a thematic link between all of the material both old and new. The album also features devilish marches of electronic arpeggiation laced with distant throbbing rhythms and Balance's omnipresent vocals, typified by such tracks as "Heaven's Blade" and the reprise of "Teenage Lightning" -- one of the highlight tracks from LSD. A tragically beautiful album through and through.
MPEG Stream: "Heaven's Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Lightning 2005"
MPEG Stream: "Going Up"

COIL The Ape Of Naples & The New Backwards (Important Records) 4lp 100.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Issued at the end of 2005, The Ape Of Naples marked the end of an era for Coil. It was the grand finale to a tumultuous career of psychotropic electronica, sidereal ambience, and post-industrial occultations. A year earlier, Jhonn Balance died as the result of an alcohol related accident. In the intervening months, his partner -- both creatively and romantically -- Peter Christopherson resurrected many of the tracks from the ill-fated Backwards sessions as well as unreleased recordings that date back to the beginning of Coil in 1982. It should be noted that Christopherson did not intend The Ape Of Naples to be lumped in with the Stolen and Contaminated series of rare and unreleased material; rather, he shaped the album to reflect his grief and melancholy.
The Backwards sessions were originally commissioned as a follow up to their seminal oblique dance album Love's Secret Domain, which emerged out of Coil's obsession with British acid house and rave culture. In fact, Trent Reznor had brought Coil to his New Orleans studio to record much of those sessions in hopes of releasing the album on his Nothing imprint. Unfortunately, more than a decade went by with only false starts and creative dead ends; and Backwards never emerged. While it's not all that clear if The Ape Of Naples is the album that Coil envisioned when they were making Backwards, The Ape Of Naples stands as a mighty triumph in the Coil pantheon of releases, ranking up there with Horse Rotovator and the aforementioned Love's Secret Domain.
In releasing The Ape Of Naples on vinyl some three years after the original cd, Important Records has bundled the 3LPs of The Ape Of Naples with a fourth LP comprised of Christopherson's further revisitations of the Backwards sessions onto an LP called The New Backwards. These tracks found here may be even better than what's found on The Ape Of Naples. The only drawback is that this 4LP set is a bit pricey, and painfully limited to 500 copies, most of which have already been snatched up.
MPEG Stream: "Heaven's Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Teenage Lightning 2005"
MPEG Stream: "Going Up"

COIL The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver (Eskaton) cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
"The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver" collects all of the tracks that been previously released on two Russian compilations, essentially documenting the history of the transgressive British group Coil. Throughout their 20 year career, Coil has defined the pinnacles of both Industrial Culture as well as contemporary electronica through an evolving use of electronics as the vehicle for pagan rituals, apocalyptic languages, plunges into the abject, and celebrations of their homosexuality. While "The Golden Hare" would make for an excellent introduction into the work of Coil as it samples from all of the major periods ("Scatology," "Horse Rotovator," "Love's Secret Domain," "Moon's Milk," "Musick To Listen To In The Dark," etc.), die-hard Coil fans should be intrigued to know that 2 of the tracks ('A Cold Cell' and 'A.Y.O.R.') are rumored to be cuts from their ill-fated 'Backwards' album, which has been long slated for release on Nothing Records since the mid-'90s.
RealAudio clip: "Amethyst Decievers"
RealAudio clip: "The Lost Rivers Of London"

COIL The Plastic Spider Thing (Eskaton) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Music for fans of Coil, made by fans of Coil, and released with the blessing of Coil. "The Plastic Spider Thing" is a remix of Coil's past works by Drazen from Black Sun Productions, a Swiss outfit that follows the Coil's aesthetic with incredible precision (often to the point of losing their own personalities to Coil's spell, when Coil themselves emphasize the necessity for individual expression). Originally, this piece was a soundtrack to a sexually explicit performance between the members of Black Sun Productions. Drawing mostly from the lunar ambience of modern Coil (i.e. post "Love's Secret Domain"), Drazen ran Coil's occultish ambience through multiple delay machines and re-sampling techniques to attain a fractured collage of pulsated loops that point back to the original Coil numbers. The lack of John Balance's whispered vocals (which were once Coil's biggest strength on early albums like "Horse Rotovator," but now are the band's weakest link) is welcome for "The Plastic Spider Thing;" but, this album never strives to escape its orbit around Coil's little black sun. If you love Coil, here's another fine album for you. If you're only curious, try the aforementioned "Love's Secret Domain" first.
RealAudio clip: "Track 6"
RealAudio clip: "Track 8"

COIL Time Machines (Eskaton) 2lp 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

COIL / THE NEW BLOCKADERS / VORTEX CAMPAIGN The Melancholy Mad Tenant (Important) lp 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
In the early '90s, I (Jim) remember seeing a peculiar cassette listed in the RRR catalogue for several years. It was some sort of collaboration between Coil (who I was enthralled with), The New Blockaders (who I was curious about through their work with Organum), and Vortex Campaign (who I thought had a cool name, but knew nothing about). Foolishly, I never picked up that cassette, especially since the damn thing was limited to 50 copies. Oh well. Thankfully, Important Records is doing their best Vinyl-On-Demand impersonation with a hefty reissue of an terminally obscure piece of early noise culture. There's still no background information as to the identity of Vortex Campaign, other than that they are Belgian and that they invited both Coil and The New Blockaders to collaborate on that one off cassette back in 1984. Since then, Vortex Campaign did make an appearance on the Broken Flag 5lp anthology released by Vinyl-On-Demand; but beyond that, they're still a mystery. Coil had gone on to great things in all realms of occult electronics mired in psychedelic darkness; and The New Blockaders had manifested explosive recordings of hellish noise in their pursuit of anti-art.
This lp collects the two sprawling collaborative tracks from that cassette, leaving off the solo Vortex Campaign tracks - just to make me kick myself even more for not buying that cassette back in the day. These are two complex collages of snarling loops, dragged through shit, vomit, and blood leaving a bruised and stained mess of obsessively repetitive growls, blisters, and blurts of industrial noise. The energy on these two tracks is profoundly negative, and could be easily confused with anything that Prurient or Wolf Eyes might muster in this day and age. Supposedly there was a cd version of the cassette, but that too is out of print, leaving this vinyl-only production from Important as a rare glimpse back at these recordings. Limited to 500 copies. We only got a paltry few and that's IT.

COILANS s/t (Threshold House) 3cd + dvd 66.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There's a bright orange sticker on this new Coil release says: "WARNING. Contents may make you spazz out." Definitely not the sort of sticker you would expect to see on a Coil record. And most certainly not this one. Coilans find the extended Coil family, Johnn Balance, Ossian Brown, Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra and Ivan Pavlov, composing for a 1930's mechanical device called the ANS, a machine designed to convert graphic designs into sound. The text describing the machine is quite dense and technical, and some folks here are convinced it's all a big hoax. The liner notes do however reference two works actually composed for the machine, "Flow" by Alfred Schnitke, and Edward Artemiev's music for Tarkovsky's Solaris, which perhaps does lend some credence to the existence of the machine. Whether Coil actually have a version of the ANS machine as they claim, or are merely making sounds that they imagine might be produced by an ANS is still maybe debatable. But it hardly matters, as the results are sublime. Long, slowly evolving pieces spread across three cds. Gorgeous and minimal, hissing distant drones, insect-like shimmers that pulse and throb into warbling sinewaves, and chiming smears of upper register skree spread into keeing sonic ripples of warbling decay. A series of lush minimal mesmers worthy of Coleclough, Mirror, Arcane Device, Sachiko M, Rafael Toral and other practitioners of fragile high end exploration. The DVD is equally as compelling, a series of beautiful and strangely hypnotic animations by Peter Christopherson, that pulse and squirm and slowly shift along with the music. The whole thing is beautifully packaged in a full color box, inner sleeves depicting details of the ANS machine on one side and the images fed into the machine to produce the sounds on the other.
MPEG Stream: "Coil ANS 1"

COLD BLEAK HEAT It's Magnificent, But It Isn't War (Family Vineyard) cd 14.98
A sorta freejazz freakout from members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Heathen Shame, and No Neck Blues Band, featuring alto and tenor action from saxophonist Paul Flaherty.

COLD CAVE Cremations (Hospital) cd 14.98
Cremations is a collection of previously released tracks from the darling noisenik / minimal wave project Cold Cave, the bulk of which had been so painfully limited that they might as well have not been at all. The first three cuts should be familiar to most Aquarius readers, being from Cold Cave's awesome 7" single Painted Nails. The other tracks came from a cassette and an LP, both of which Cold Cave's Wes Eisold released through his Heartworm Press as editions of 100 in 2009 and 2007 respectively. The description we gave to the Painted Nails single is still apt: a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The tracks that follow the Painted Nails single on this collection certainly live up to the hype of that single, standing as lo-fi, scribbled new wave tunes for simple bass-synth lines, eerie-as-hell melodies, tinny drum machines, and alienated vocals with plenty of megaphone noise and 4-track scratchiness embedded into the mix. Cold Cave also tosses in some incidental music tracks which sort of sound like the interludes from Christian Death's Elektra Descending redone for Brian Eno's Music for Airports. It should be noted that none of the tracks here have been fleshed out like the incredible The Trees Grew Emotions And Died 12" which came and went a couple months back, and we don't mean that as a negative. Seriously, how many times have we championed the shittiest recordings on the crappiest media: flexi-disc, microcassette, wire recordings, shortwave, etc. And much of Cold Cave's grit and grime on Cremations appeals to that very aesthetic of ours. In fact a lot of these tracks remind us of some of our favorite electronic punk acts of the new dark age: The Screamers, Primitive Calculators, early Severed Heads, Dark Day, etc. You won't just be hearing it from us: this is incredible!
MPEG Stream: "Sex Ads"
MPEG Stream: "Heavenly Metals"
MPEG Stream: "Gates"
MPEG Stream: "Swallow The Sun"

COLD CAVE Cremations (Hospital) lp 17.98
Now available on (long awaited) vinyl!
Cremations is a collection of previously released tracks from the darling noisenik / minimal wave project Cold Cave, the bulk of which had been so painfully limited that they might as well have not been at all. The first three cuts should be familiar to most Aquarius readers, being from Cold Cave's awesome 7" single Painted Nails. The other tracks came from a cassette and an LP, both of which Cold Cave's Wes Eisold released through his Heartworm Press as editions of 100 in 2009 and 2007 respectively. The description we gave to the Painted Nails single is still apt: a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The tracks that follow the Painted Nails single on this collection certainly live up to the hype of that single, standing as lo-fi, scribbled new wave tunes for simple bass-synth lines, eerie-as-hell melodies, tinny drum machines, and alienated vocals with plenty of megaphone noise and 4-track scratchiness embedded into the mix. Cold Cave also tosses in some incidental music tracks which sort of sound like the interludes from Christian Death's Elektra Descending redone for Brian Eno's Music for Airports. It should be noted that none of the tracks here have been fleshed out like the incredible The Trees Grew Emotions And Died 12" which came and went a couple months back, and we don't mean that as a negative. Seriously, how many times have we championed the shittiest recordings on the crappiest media: flexi-disc, microcassette, wire recordings, shortwave, etc. And much of Cold Cave's grit and grime on Cremations appeals to that very aesthetic of ours. In fact a lot of these tracks remind us of some of our favorite electronic punk acts of the new dark age: The Screamers, Primitive Calculators, early Severed Heads, Dark Day, etc. You won't just be hearing it from us: this is incredible!
MPEG Stream: "Sex Ads"
MPEG Stream: "Heavenly Metals"
MPEG Stream: "Gates"
MPEG Stream: "Swallow The Sun"

COLD CAVE Death Comes Close (Heart Worm / Matador) 12" 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Synthesized Philly gloom pop merchants Cold Cave continue their winning streak here, offering a nice companion piece to the recent (as in, like, "this list" recent) Matador reissue of the unanimously agreed upon Love Comes Close. Curiously, Death Comes Close actually kicks off with the song "Love Comes Close", a cool New Order-esque track, which as we mentioned in our review of the album, is "a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs." Next up is "Double Lives In Single Beds", where CC mainman Wes Eisold waxes gothically over a catchy little synth groove with spacey sustained chords and a simple programmed drum beat. The B-side begins with the upbeat "Theme From Tomorrowland", probably our favorite song here. The title is apt, with its futuristic synth pulses and throbs, with Eisold backed up by catchy girl vocals for a nice ethereal effect. "Now That I'm In The Future" rides with a cool fuzzy synth groove. We were gonna say it's "dramatic", but, uh, that's sort of Cold Cave's thing. Either way, it's awesome, and even without soundclips, we probably don't need to do too much convincing as everyone is going crazy for these guys, with good reason.

COLD CAVE Etsel And Ruby (What's Your Rupture?) 12" 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
On one end of the Cold Cave spectrum, there is the blistering terror of low-fi electronics with sparse hints of new wave flecked through a sound better suited to Wolf Eyes; and on the other, Cold Cave can effortlessly toss out a darkly pop-eyed, minimal wave gem that wouldn't out of place next to Depeche Mode or Gary Numan. So far, Cold Cave (aka Wes Eisold) has not done us wrong no matter what he ends up producing. The hyper limited Etsel And Ruby 12" is of the latter, poppier sensibility, in the footsteps of the terminally catchy single The Trees Grew Emotions And Died from 2008. The production values here are a little higher than the gutter-punk scratchiness found on the Cremations collection; and while punchier drum machines and upfront vocals give Cold Cave a gloss with a broader appeal, we seriously hope that he doesn't leave the nastier sound behind.
The A side "Love Comes Close" is a jangly, jaunty number that could very well be a lost track from The Cure's The Head On The Door, with Eisold's croon almost sounding like Stephin Merritt. The first of two B sides finds Eisold handing over the vocal duties to an unknown female singer, whose detached, cold vocals fit perfectly with the Cure / Joy Division basslines laced around the darkened electronics. The cut is like the best Fad Gadget song you've never heard before, with an insistent electroid melody that builds and builds throughout the track. Great stuff. Limited to 300 copies!!! Available only from the label and right here at aQ!

COLD CAVE Life Magazine Remixes (Matador) 12" 9.98
"Life Magazine" stood as one of the big hits from Cold Cave's incredible darkened synth-pop album Love Comes Close from 2009. With its squelchy synth lines and monomaniacal drum machines, this was also the song that curiously enough, appeared on a Radio Shack commercial shortly after the release of the record. Here, Cold Cave gets remixed by Arthur Baker, Optimo, Pantha Du Prince, and Prurient. The Arthur Baker connection is quite a nice coup for the band, as Baker was the producer who amped up many a New Order track throughout the '80s certainly influencing Cold Cave's retrogarde sound. Baker's remix stays true to the original, maintaining that amazing synth melody and the vocals from Jennifer Clavin. Optimo strips everything except for the vocals on this prickly techno workout. It's hard to pick much out from the Pantha Du Prince remix with his signature bells sliding over the post-Kompakt shuffling drum programs. Prurient has been moonlighting in Cold Cave's live ensemble and collaborated with Cold Cave on the awesomely bleak Stars Explode LP. This is not the sheer hellish noise facade of Prurient, but rather the one who must still be obsessed with Cold Cave's gnarled electronics on Painted Nails and Cremations. A dour two-note melody and mid-tempo galloping drum machine settle above a seabed of distorted gristle and Ms. Clavin's vocals. Gotta say that the Prurient and Arthur Baker mixes, as opposing as they can be, are the reasons to pick this up! Comes with a download card.

COLD CAVE Love Comes Close (Heartworm) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Cold Cave have really been making the rounds as of late, but unless you were one of the lucky few to obtain some of their super limited vinyl only platters or their recent Cremations collection (which is still available), you may have been left out in the... cold. HAHA! But anyway, Love Comes Close is the first official Cold Cave record, though it does include the three songs (re-recorded?) off the band's disgustingly limited Etsel and Ruby 12" which we had for about 5 minutes, as well as the song "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died" from the ep of the same name, all of them winners. We are happy to report that this baby more than ably lives up to all the hype. It's not that the sound of Cold Cave is revolutionary or progressive... nay, in far less skilled hands, this could easily be filed under the "derivative shit" category, but Cold Cave's remarkable melodic sense and keen understanding of songcraft are so expertly handled that their tunes come off more like lost synth pop classics. It's actually a bit unbelievable just how darkly catchy these songs are, and how they will just pop into your head at random moments like they've been there for ages. Cold Cave's music is the perfect combination of everything that is great about '80s synth based music with none of the dated cheesiness, or maybe more appropriately, just the right amount of dated cheesiness. OMD styled melodies and uber dramatic vocals from the school of Ian Curtis meld with throbbing rhythms, awesome life denying lyrics, and a pronounced gothic element, but goth as interpreted by hardcore kids. All of these combined are enough to make Cold Cave stand out from the rest of the pack. Plus, you know it's gotta be good when various folks may *want* to dislike something but can't muster the hate in their hearts simply because it's so great.
The album kicks off with "Cebe And Me", with super minimal percussion and murky, distorted female vocals that weave around a repetitive synth buzz. This sets things up perfectly for the next track, "Love Comes Close," with CC mainman Wes Eisold's deadpan vocals and music that manages to be both upbeat and melancholy as hell. The real kicker with this one, however, is the fact that it is a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs. So now all you dudes can fashion a mangina and prance naked in front of your mirror within the comfort of your own home, just like Buffalo Bill. "Life Magazine" utilizes a blown out buzzy keyboard to hold the foundation while more down to earth programming and amazing female vocals courtesy of one time Xiu Xiu collaborator Caralee McElroy help to make this maybe our favorite track on the album. A reedy little synth melody sits atop everything else, and the dreaminess of it all sends things way off into the clouds... Goddamn, it's so good.
Naming a song "Heaven Was Full" definitely sets the bar pretty high, you're pretty much obligated to make it awesome, and that's just what Cold Cave did with this one. Subsonic oscillations swirl below what sounds like wispy winds made by a synthesizer, accompanied by Eisold's low croon and some of the catchiest and most beautiful melodies on the album. The slow movement of this piece really strikes an emotional chord, it's a real downer, but it's so irresistible it hurts. "The Tree Grew Emotions And Died" features some cool clanky drum machines with staccato boy/girl vocals and an ever present layer of super blown out guitars (we think), with a nice, slightly bouncy keyboard melody carrying the song forward. Album closer "I.C.D.K." is a quirky yet slightly ominous dance number that will certainly keep many an ass shaking all night long, and when it's all over, you first instinct will be to put Love Comes Close on for another round.
Undoubtedly Cold Cave will have trouble escaping comparisons to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, and even the Magnetic Fields at times, and not without good reason. But the band's greatest strength is its ability to go beyond their influences and deliver music that is too amazing and well written to be ignored. If you don't dig it, it doesn't mean people will respect your supposed impeccable taste and appreciation for groundbreaking music... it means you're missing out.
MPEG Stream: "Love Comes Close"
MPEG Stream: "Life Magazine"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven Was Full"

COLD CAVE Love Comes Close (Heart Worm / Matador) cd 13.98
FRESHLY REISSUED ON MATADOR!!! Here's what we had to say about this past record of the week.
Cold Cave have really been making the rounds as of late, but unless you were one of the lucky few to obtain some of their super limited vinyl only platters or their recent Cremations collection (which is still available), you may have been left out in the... cold. HAHA! But anyway, Love Comes Close is the first official Cold Cave record, though it does include the three songs (re-recorded?) off the band's disgustingly limited Etsel and Ruby 12" which we had for about 5 minutes, as well as the song "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died" from the ep of the same name, all of them winners. We are happy to report that this baby more than ably lives up to all the hype. It's not that the sound of Cold Cave is revolutionary or progressive... nay, in far less skilled hands, this could easily be filed under the "derivative shit" category, but Cold Cave's remarkable melodic sense and keen understanding of songcraft are so expertly handled that their tunes come off more like lost synth pop classics. It's actually a bit unbelievable just how darkly catchy these songs are, and how they will just pop into your head at random moments like they've been there for ages. Cold Cave's music is the perfect combination of everything that is great about '80s synth based music with none of the dated cheesiness, or maybe more appropriately, just the right amount of dated cheesiness. OMD styled melodies and uber dramatic vocals from the school of Ian Curtis meld with throbbing rhythms, awesome life denying lyrics, and a pronounced gothic element, but goth as interpreted by hardcore kids. All of these combined are enough to make Cold Cave stand out from the rest of the pack. Plus, you know it's gotta be good when various folks may *want* to dislike something but can't muster the hate in their hearts simply because it's so great.
The album kicks off with "Cebe And Me", with super minimal percussion and murky, distorted female vocals that weave around a repetitive synth buzz. This sets things up perfectly for the next track, "Love Comes Close," with CC mainman Wes Eisold's deadpan vocals and music that manages to be both upbeat and melancholy as hell. The real kicker with this one, however, is the fact that it is a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs. So now all you dudes can fashion a mangina and prance naked in front of your mirror within the comfort of your own home, just like Buffalo Bill. "Life Magazine" utilizes a blown out buzzy keyboard to hold the foundation while more down to earth programming and amazing female vocals courtesy of one time Xiu Xiu collaborator Caralee McElroy help to make this maybe our favorite track on the album. A reedy little synth melody sits atop everything else, and the dreaminess of it all sends things way off into the clouds... Goddamn, it's so good.
Naming a song "Heaven Was Full" definitely sets the bar pretty high, you're pretty much obligated to make it awesome, and that's just what Cold Cave did with this one. Subsonic oscillations swirl below what sounds like wispy winds made by a synthesizer, accompanied by Eisold's low croon and some of the catchiest and most beautiful melodies on the album. The slow movement of this piece really strikes an emotional chord, it's a real downer, but it's so irresistible it hurts. "The Tree Grew Emotions And Died" features some cool clanky drum machines with staccato boy/girl vocals and an ever present layer of super blown out guitars (we think), with a nice, slightly bouncy keyboard melody carrying the song forward. Album closer "I.C.D.K." is a quirky yet slightly ominous dance number that will certainly keep many an ass shaking all night long, and when it's all over, you first instinct will be to put Love Comes Close on for another round.
Undoubtedly Cold Cave will have trouble escaping comparisons to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, and even the Magnetic Fields at times, and not without good reason. But the band's greatest strength is its ability to go beyond their influences and deliver music that is too amazing and well written to be ignored. If you don't dig it, it doesn't mean people will respect your supposed impeccable taste and appreciation for groundbreaking music... it means you're missing out.
MPEG Stream: "Love Comes Close"
MPEG Stream: "Life Magazine"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven Was Full"

COLD CAVE Love Comes Close (Heartworm) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Cold Cave have really been making the rounds as of late, but unless you were one of the lucky few to obtain some of their super limited vinyl only platters or their recent Cremations collection (which is still available), you may have been left out in the... cold. HAHA! But anyway, Love Comes Close is the first official Cold Cave record, though it does include the three songs (re-recorded?) off the band's disgustingly limited Etsel and Ruby 12" which we had for about 5 minutes, as well as the song "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died" from the ep of the same name, all of them winners. We are happy to report that this baby more than ably lives up to all the hype. It's not that the sound of Cold Cave is revolutionary or progressive... nay, in far less skilled hands, this could easily be filed under the "derivative shit" category, but Cold Cave's remarkable melodic sense and keen understanding of songcraft are so expertly handled that their tunes come off more like lost synth pop classics. It's actually a bit unbelievable just how darkly catchy these songs are, and how they will just pop into your head at random moments like they've been there for ages. Cold Cave's music is the perfect combination of everything that is great about '80s synth based music with none of the dated cheesiness, or maybe more appropriately, just the right amount of dated cheesiness. OMD styled melodies and uber dramatic vocals from the school of Ian Curtis meld with throbbing rhythms, awesome life denying lyrics, and a pronounced gothic element, but goth as interpreted by hardcore kids. All of these combined are enough to make Cold Cave stand out from the rest of the pack. Plus, you know it's gotta be good when various folks may *want* to dislike something but can't muster the hate in their hearts simply because it's so great.
The album kicks off with "Cebe And Me", with super minimal percussion and murky, distorted female vocals that weave around a repetitive synth buzz. This sets things up perfectly for the next track, "Love Comes Close," with CC mainman Wes Eisold's deadpan vocals and music that manages to be both upbeat and melancholy as hell. The real kicker with this one, however, is the fact that it is a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs. So now all you dudes can fashion a mangina and prance naked in front of your mirror within the comfort of your own home, just like Buffalo Bill. "Life Magazine" utilizes a blown out buzzy keyboard to hold the foundation while more down to earth programming and amazing female vocals courtesy of one time Xiu Xiu collaborator Caralee McElroy help to make this maybe our favorite track on the album. A reedy little synth melody sits atop everything else, and the dreaminess of it all sends things way off into the clouds... Goddamn, it's so good.
Naming a song "Heaven Was Full" definitely sets the bar pretty high, you're pretty much obligated to make it awesome, and that's just what Cold Cave did with this one. Subsonic oscillations swirl below what sounds like wispy winds made by a synthesizer, accompanied by Eisold's low croon and some of the catchiest and most beautiful melodies on the album. The slow movement of this piece really strikes an emotional chord, it's a real downer, but it's so irresistible it hurts. "The Tree Grew Emotions And Died" features some cool clanky drum machines with staccato boy/girl vocals and an ever present layer of super blown out guitars (we think), with a nice, slightly bouncy keyboard melody carrying the song forward. Album closer "I.C.D.K." is a quirky yet slightly ominous dance number that will certainly keep many an ass shaking all night long, and when it's all over, you first instinct will be to put Love Comes Close on for another round.
Undoubtedly Cold Cave will have trouble escaping comparisons to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, and even the Magnetic Fields at times, and not without good reason. But the band's greatest strength is its ability to go beyond their influences and deliver music that is too amazing and well written to be ignored. If you don't dig it, it doesn't mean people will respect your supposed impeccable taste and appreciation for groundbreaking music... it means you're missing out.
MPEG Stream: "Love Comes Close"
MPEG Stream: "Life Magazine"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven Was Full"

COLD CAVE Love Comes Close (Heart Worm / Matador) lp 14.98
FRESHLY REISSUED ON MATADOR!!! Here's what we had to say about this past record of the week.
Cold Cave have really been making the rounds as of late, but unless you were one of the lucky few to obtain some of their super limited vinyl only platters or their recent Cremations collection (which is still available), you may have been left out in the... cold. HAHA! But anyway, Love Comes Close is the first official Cold Cave record, though it does include the three songs (re-recorded?) off the band's disgustingly limited Etsel and Ruby 12" which we had for about 5 minutes, as well as the song "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died" from the ep of the same name, all of them winners. We are happy to report that this baby more than ably lives up to all the hype. It's not that the sound of Cold Cave is revolutionary or progressive... nay, in far less skilled hands, this could easily be filed under the "derivative shit" category, but Cold Cave's remarkable melodic sense and keen understanding of songcraft are so expertly handled that their tunes come off more like lost synth pop classics. It's actually a bit unbelievable just how darkly catchy these songs are, and how they will just pop into your head at random moments like they've been there for ages. Cold Cave's music is the perfect combination of everything that is great about '80s synth based music with none of the dated cheesiness, or maybe more appropriately, just the right amount of dated cheesiness. OMD styled melodies and uber dramatic vocals from the school of Ian Curtis meld with throbbing rhythms, awesome life denying lyrics, and a pronounced gothic element, but goth as interpreted by hardcore kids. All of these combined are enough to make Cold Cave stand out from the rest of the pack. Plus, you know it's gotta be good when various folks may *want* to dislike something but can't muster the hate in their hearts simply because it's so great.
The album kicks off with "Cebe And Me", with super minimal percussion and murky, distorted female vocals that weave around a repetitive synth buzz. This sets things up perfectly for the next track, "Love Comes Close," with CC mainman Wes Eisold's deadpan vocals and music that manages to be both upbeat and melancholy as hell. The real kicker with this one, however, is the fact that it is a DEAD RINGER for the melody in the infamous mirror dance scene in Silence Of The Lambs. So now all you dudes can fashion a mangina and prance naked in front of your mirror within the comfort of your own home, just like Buffalo Bill. "Life Magazine" utilizes a blown out buzzy keyboard to hold the foundation while more down to earth programming and amazing female vocals courtesy of one time Xiu Xiu collaborator Caralee McElroy help to make this maybe our favorite track on the album. A reedy little synth melody sits atop everything else, and the dreaminess of it all sends things way off into the clouds... Goddamn, it's so good.
Naming a song "Heaven Was Full" definitely sets the bar pretty high, you're pretty much obligated to make it awesome, and that's just what Cold Cave did with this one. Subsonic oscillations swirl below what sounds like wispy winds made by a synthesizer, accompanied by Eisold's low croon and some of the catchiest and most beautiful melodies on the album. The slow movement of this piece really strikes an emotional chord, it's a real downer, but it's so irresistible it hurts. "The Tree Grew Emotions And Died" features some cool clanky drum machines with staccato boy/girl vocals and an ever present layer of super blown out guitars (we think), with a nice, slightly bouncy keyboard melody carrying the song forward. Album closer "I.C.D.K." is a quirky yet slightly ominous dance number that will certainly keep many an ass shaking all night long, and when it's all over, you first instinct will be to put Love Comes Close on for another round.
Undoubtedly Cold Cave will have trouble escaping comparisons to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, and even the Magnetic Fields at times, and not without good reason. But the band's greatest strength is its ability to go beyond their influences and deliver music that is too amazing and well written to be ignored. If you don't dig it, it doesn't mean people will respect your supposed impeccable taste and appreciation for groundbreaking music... it means you're missing out.
MPEG Stream: "Love Comes Close"
MPEG Stream: "Life Magazine"
MPEG Stream: "Heaven Was Full"

COLD CAVE Painted Nails (Hospital) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in print and available again for a very limited time...
Seven inches of awesomely depressive distortion drenched new wave downer pop. Imagine a couple of old school synth pop classics, dipped in a vat of white noise, then rolled around in shards of fractured synth buzz and crumbling distortion, a morose and melodic blast of blown out noise-wave, a corrosive chunk of Cure-meets-Whitehouse or New Order-meets-Wolf Eyes. The surface is a prickly wall of in-the-red lo-fi fuzz, a curtain of soft focus blacknoise, but just below that surface lurks a secret heart of classic eighties new wave, the programmed rhythms, the swirling synths, the deep dramatic vocals, but taken together, this is everything we always wanted new wave to be, harsh and heavy and dark and deliriously catchy, buzzy and brutal and abrasive but still fuzzy and hooky and weirdly melodic. The B side takes CC's noisy new wave even further out, the sound generously doused with heaps of that blissy Tim Hecker-ish blur of which we can never get enough.

COLD CAVE The Trees Grew Emotions And Died (Rais) 12" 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
In listening to the few releases from Cold Cave (to date, just this 12" and the "Painted Nails" 7" on Hospital), we can easily see Cold Cave becoming huge. Maybe not as megalomaniacally huge as Coldplay or U2; but maybe there's a Wire or XLR8R cover for Cold Cave to grace sometime in the future. The Trees Grew Emotions And Died predated the heavily acclaimed Painted Nails single; and like that single, this gem of crunched noise mingling with retro-garde synth pop has gone in and out of print several times. It's still a limited pressing of 500 copies, so be forewarned!
Cold Cave is the work of one Wes Eisold, who fronted a couple of East Coast hardcore bands before starting a collection of thrift store samplers and synthesizers. In wiring all of these half-functioning devices through various effects and distortion pedals, he's arrived at an abrasive minimal wave sound that has two feet firmly planted in the worlds of New Order and Wolf Eyes. Had Eisold added a guitar into the mix, Cold Cave might have ended up not all that far from those brilliant bliss pop mutations from Woodsist (i.e. Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Wavves, etc.), but he's admitted that part of his frustration with hardcore was over his two-decade losing battle in learning the guitar. So, the synthesizer is the instrument of choice for Cold Cave. This three track EP showcases his pop genius with minor key melodies bobbing along insistent drum machines and sinister atmospheres. "Heaven's Gate" and "Our Tears Help The Flowers Grow" start with the minor-key synth melodies which buttress Depeche Mode's Violator and The Cure's Faith, with megaphone distortion crackling the detached male / female vocals. The title track is considerably up-tempo and up-beat with a bouncy melody that WILL get stuck in your head in all the right ways, like those incredible singles which made their way onto the first Adult. album. Very highly recommended!
MPEG Stream: "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died"

COLD CAVE / PRURIENT Stars Explode (Hospital Productions) 12" 19.98
We listed this a month ago, it went out of print right away, and still is, but we just got a handful from a supplier who still had some, unfortunately that means the price has gone up a bit, and when these are gone, they're gone.
Originally released as an insanely limited cassette tape to coincide with a tour, this collaborative recording is now available as a spiffy, and still limited, lp, and includes a bonus track NOT on the original tape.
What might one expect from this match up, some cool cold wave grooves with howling noise drenched vocals, or better yet some heavy harsh noise shot through with dark moody melodies, and cold synths? Well, the weird thing is, this doesn't sound like either band, together or separate. Instead, this is swirling psychedelic synth space drone ambience, a little blissed out, a little brooding and ominous, all starry shimmer and blackly abstract, but plenty dark and definitely a little malevolent. Huge expanses of muted feedback, processed rumbles and whirs, buried melodies, all softly heaving in deep black swells, shot through with ever shifting textures. The B-side though gets downright poppy, still space-y and abstract, but infused with some seriously shoegazey shimmer, melodies much closer to the surface, glimmery and gauzey, with a distant rhythms, skittery and hushed, that over the course of the side, builds to a fairly aggressive industrial pound, while the sounds around it grow more and more bleak and caustic.
And then there's the extra track, which is easily the poppiest of the bunch, a soft focus M83 / Nadja / Jesu bit of blissy pop ambient drift, swirly and abstract, with wordless vocals adding to soft space-y psychedelia until some super strange vocals come in, a little harsh, heavily processed, distorted and menacing, wrapped around distant grinding guitars, and for a few moments it suddenly does sound very much like we imagined it would.
And of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED.

COLD MOUNTAIN (OST) (DMZ / Sony) cd 12.98
The majority of folks out there are probably mostly excited about this soundtrack for the 5 new tracks from JACK WHITE OF THE WHITE STRIPES! Which is fine, but even if that's not your reason for being interested, you'll be pleased to discover that this is actually a really gorgeous compilation of new and old Appalachian folk and gospel. And while we could care less, the surprise here is indeed Jack White, and his creepy crawly blues folk. If he wasn't so intent on ruling garage-land, he'd most certainly be hot on the heels of Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand and Mark Lanegan in the raspy, lonely, swampish, Biblical damnation-and-salvation folk-blues stakes. He's got a sonorous but scratchy whiskey-soaked drawl, that wraps itself seductively around whatever he's singing, and the arrangements, spare and melancholy, are the perfect tattered backdrop. The rest of this soundtrack is no slouch either, with beautiful tracks from Alison Krauss, Cassie Franklin, Sacred Harp Singers, Reeltime Travellers and more.
MPEG Stream: JACK WHITE "Wayfaring Stranger"
MPEG Stream: JACK WHITE "Sittin' On Top Of The World"
MPEG Stream: ALISON KRAUSS "The Scarlet Tide"

COLD MOURNING Lower Than Low (Game Two) cd 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Indeed. The self-proclaimed California underground doom metal kings Cold Mourning present their first full-length cd release. Simple, slow, crushing stuff, almost more punk than metal (they even do a Discharge cover). Definitely one for Saint Vitus fans, although the vocals are a bit...rough. So if you're a stickler for good vocals, take a pass. But if sub-Sabbath heaviness is more your priority, go ahead and check 'em out.

COLD NORTHERN VENGEANCE Domination and Servitude (Bindrune) cd 11.98
Although, from their not particularly atypical name and logo, you might expect just another business-as-usual Nordic black metal horde, corpsepainted and kvlt-y, this is NOT just another BM (or, USBM in their case as they hail from New Hampshire) band. Nosirree. We figured that out right away, when the vocals started up on "A Dangerous Wayfaring" and weren't a grim rasp, but rather a faux-British accented chorus. The more usual sort of guttural gruffness also soon appears, but CNV had piqued our interest, and we kept listening with curious anticipation that was quickly rewarded by this album's unexpected and unusual blend of underground black metal, goth rock, and industrial. Actually CNV also had our attention 'cause this comes from the same label, Bindrune, who last brought us Blood Of The Black Owl's A Feral Spirit, another unique and experimental metal offering.
This isn't quite as weird as that record, but this eclectic effort certainly captivates chaotically with majestically catchy riffage, Gobliny soundtrack synths, clean vocal singalongs, and even all-acoustic mellow moodiness ("The Shores Of New England"). Our favorite element though is what might be termed their Satanic industrial sound, with sampling and sequencing, the best example of which is "The By-Paths To Chaos", a rhythmic exercise in sinister, cut-and-paste percussive clockwork. Very cool. Hail Cold Northern Vengeance!!
MPEG Stream: "A Dangerous Wayfaring"
MPEG Stream: "The By-Paths To Chaos"
MPEG Stream: "A Past Forgotten"

COLD SUN Dark Shadows (World In Sound) cd 24.00
Dark shadows is right, dark shadows from a cold, old sun. Long dark shadows stretching across decades... This legendary 1970 demo recording from Austin, Texas psychedelic rock group Cold Sun has never before been on cd, and only just barely been on vinyl. There's record collectors sitting on desert islands somewhere out there, wishing they had a copy of this to keep them company. It's one of the most cult and obscure and oh so welcome psych reissues in recent memory, that's for sure. Well worthy of its whispered rep, Cold Sun is dark, spectral, tripped out garage-psych in the '60s Texas vein of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Indeed, the guys from Cold Sun went on to back up Roky in his band the Aliens, not much longer later.
Band leader Bill Miller sings, in an fragile yet urgent drawl, sounding rather like Roky himself, and also plays acid-rock leads on an electric, amplified autoharp (that's right, autoharp, a zither that's usually more of a country/folk/bluegrass instrument) which really gives Cold Sun an outsider edge... and while there's also the requisite dose of fuzz guitar here, Cold Sun can't be reduced to the "fuzz monster" category. It's all together weirder and more affecting than that. Aside from Miller's autoharp, part of what makes it so strange and so special are his lyrics. Take for instance the opening few lines of track one, "South Texas" (if we've transcribed 'em properly): "You have seen the eyes of the geko staring out watching from the crack in the wall you were thinking of going right through but it's outside it's not you you have heard the voice of the gekos telling each other here comes another robot it's a swarm of night climbing dragons crawling out searching just walking cross the ceiling..." Except when he says "robot" it sounds like someone else is saying "human" at the same time. And it just goes on and on getting weirder and weirder, its emotional essence aided by the outsiderishness of the delivery, acid-serious and plaintive. Goes so perfectly with Cold Sun's lysergic layers of sinuous sound. Yep, you can see that this is an example, perhaps thee ultimate example, of that unique Texas, desert psych style... they've got their own, otherworldly, feverish tradition of that down there.
The Cold Sun demo (and not even all of it) was pressed to acetate in 1973 in an edition of just ONE copy. And then it was lost to the sands of time, until reissue label Rockadelic did an LP version in 1990 that caused a bit of a stir amongst psych-hounds... and was limited to only 300 copies itself. But THIS cd edition is the definitive one, including all the music from the demo tape -and- two live bonus tracks! (The live tracks, recorded in 1972, are of songs not on the demo, and are quite worthy, being just a bit hissier and lower-fi than the demo itself, and maybe slightly harder rocking.) It's also got enthusiastic liner notes from noted psych nerd Jello Biafra (!), and also from Cold Sun's Bill Miller himself. World In Sound has done a nice job with this holy grail reissue, we're sure they took the responsibility pretty seriously. Now everyone, at last, can hear these truly psychedelic, (cold) sun-baked sounds...
MPEG Stream: "South Texas"
MPEG Stream: "For Ever"
MPEG Stream: "Fall"

COLD SUN Dark Shadows (World In Sound) lp + 10" 60.00
Woah. Now on vinyl, World In Sound's reissue of this lost Texas psych classic. We only got a couple of these 'cause obviously they're kinda expensive, not only due to being imports but also because they're a rather deluxe package. In super solid, thick gatefold jackets, these are heavy. And not only is it double vinyl, but it includes a extra 10" with the bonus tracks ("Live Again" and "Mind Aura") also found on the cd...
Here's our review from when we highlighted that cd version of this:
Dark shadows is right, dark shadows from a cold, old sun. Long dark shadows stretching across decades... This legendary 1970 demo recording from Austin, Texas psychedelic rock group Cold Sun has never before been on cd, and only just barely been on vinyl. There's record collectors sitting on desert islands somewhere out there, wishing they had a copy of this to keep them company. It's one of the most cult and obscure and oh so welcome psych reissues in recent memory, that's for sure. Well worthy of its whispered rep, Cold Sun is dark, spectral, tripped out garage-psych in the '60s Texas vein of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Indeed, the guys from Cold Sun went on to back up Roky in his band the Aliens, not much longer later.
Band leader Bill Miller sings, in an fragile yet urgent drawl, sounding rather like Roky himself, and also plays acid-rock leads on an electric, amplified autoharp (that's right, autoharp, a zither that's usually more of a country/folk/bluegrass instrument) which really gives Cold Sun an outsider edge... and while there's also the requisite dose of fuzz guitar here, Cold Sun can't be reduced to the "fuzz monster" category. It's all together weirder and more affecting than that. Aside from Miller's autoharp, part of what makes it so strange and so special are his lyrics. Take for instance the opening few lines of track one, "South Texas" (if we've transcribed 'em properly): "You have seen the eyes of the geko staring out watching from the crack in the wall you were thinking of going right through but it's outside it's not you you have heard the voice of the gekos telling each other here comes another robot it's a swarm of night climbing dragons crawling out searching just walking cross the ceiling..." Except when he says "robot" it sounds like someone else is saying "human" at the same time. And it just goes on and on getting weirder and weirder, its emotional essence aided by the outsiderishness of the delivery, acid-serious and plaintive. Goes so perfectly with Cold Sun's lysergic layers of sinuous sound. Yep, you can see that this is an example, perhaps thee ultimate example, of that unique Texas, desert psych style... they've got their own, otherworldly, feverish tradition of that down there.
The Cold Sun demo (and not even all of it) was pressed to acetate in 1973 in an edition of just ONE copy. And then it was lost to the sands of time, until reissue label Rockadelic did an LP version in 1990 that caused a bit of a stir amongst psych-hounds... and was limited to only 300 copies itself. But THIS cd edition is the definitive one, including all the music from the demo tape -and- two live bonus tracks! (The live tracks, recorded in 1972, are of songs not on the demo, and are quite worthy, being just a bit hissier and lower-fi than the demo itself, and maybe slightly harder rocking.) It's also got enthusiastic liner notes from noted psych nerd Jello Biafra (!), and also from Cold Sun's Bill Miller himself. World In Sound has done a nice job with this holy grail reissue, we're sure they took the responsibility pretty seriously. Now everyone, at last, can hear these truly psychedelic, (cold) sun-baked sounds...
So, while sixty bucks is a lot for an album, the music here is actually priceless, and WIS certainly have provided it with handsome packaging.
MPEG Stream: "South Texas"
MPEG Stream: "For Ever"
MPEG Stream: "Fall"

COLD WAR KIDS Loyalty To Loyalty (Downtown Records) cd+dvd 21.00

COLD WAR KIDS Robbers & Clobbers (Downtown) cd 14.98
Cold War Kids are like the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Before you or I have even heard a single note of music, we've already read about them in every magazine, every blog, we know we're supposed to be prepared to love them more than any band we've ever heard. It's weird, good bands do deserve to be hyped, but at some point that sort of hype does as much damage as it does good. We were pretty much prepared to hate these guys. But you know what, fuck it. We don't care what we're supposed to do, or like, or think. We threw this on and tried to forget everything we'd heard and read, and you know what, this is pretty darn good. A groovy slinky bluesy indie rock heavy on the piano, guitar jangle, simple shuffling percussion that sometimes builds into a serious thump, but it's the vocals that pretty much define their sound. A gorgeous high wailing croon, a mix of Jack White, Robert Plant, the guys from Wolfmother and Rufus Wainwright. Going from slithery to super dramatic, whispery to campy, but always super emotional, wrapped languidly around any melody that comes its way. You can definitely see these guys getting huge. They're simultaneously a jangly indie rock band and a very theatrical chamber rock performance troop. They probably kill in tiny clubs, they sound huge and flamboyant and wild, but they'll probably end up in theaters and galleries, performing for the upper crust and art elite. But maybe you'll get lucky and see them before that happens. Might already be too late.
Be sure and stick around for the hidden secret track, a killer lo-fi gospel blues jam that sounds like Wainwright via Dylan! Nice.
MPEG Stream: "We Used To Vacation"
MPEG Stream: "Hang Me Up To Dry"

COLDCUT Journeys By DJ Special Release (Journeys By DJ) cd 16.98
In 1996, Coldcut, the UK duo of Jonathon More and Matt Black, ex-radio djs turned freestyle mixers / producers / remixers, released an album called Journeys By DJ, and it has finally been reissued: a 70-minute disc that has many times been called the best mix album of all time. Well... it's pretty inspired and great, that's for sure. Throwing in everything from Mantronix to Photek to Jhelisa, Red Snapper, Harold Budd, Jello Biafra, Junior Reid, and a lot more, Coldcut seamlessly connects everything using a variety or breakbeat tricks, jungle beats, vocal snippets, atomospheric bits. Lesser DJs (I guess that would be everyone else) oughta listen and learn. Pretty great.
RealAudio clip: "The Dusk"
RealAudio clip: "Jam on Revenge"
RealAudio clip: "The Bridge is Over"
RealAudio clip: "African Drug"

COLDCUT Let Us Play (Ninjatune) 2cd 16.98
As if the funkjazztickle tricknology of sampledelia by Ninjatune's scratchtastic duo weren't enough, there's another cd-ROM of Coldcut at play here. The lp version doesn't include this, but the gatefold cover art is supercool.

COLDCUT Let Us Play (Ninjatune) 2lp 17.98
As if the funkjazztickle tricknology of sampledelia by Ninjatune's scratchtastic duo weren't enough, there's another cd-ROM of Coldcut at play here. The lp version doesn't include this, but the gatefold cover art is supercool.

COLDCUT More Beats + Pieces (Ninjatune) cd 8.98
A classic old Coldcut track gets the remix treatment by John McEntire (Tortoise), Kid Koala, Q-Bert, T-Power, and Kid Teeba, as well as Coldcut themselves. This is the cd version of two 12" releases, and you get a CD-Rom Quicktime video as a bonus track.

COLDCUT Sound Mirrors (NinjaTune) cd 17.98
For fans of Coldcut (duh!), Primal Scream, Massive Attack, and those early '90s heady housey club allniters. Coldcut's latest album offers an eclectic selection of tracks that range from funky Euro hiphop ("Everything Is Under Control") to ultra smooth Seal-ish AOR soul ("Walk A Mile In My Shoes" with Robert Owens on vocals) to Tear Garden-esque richly rhythmic, dub-infused looming atmospherics ("Boogieman"). Actually Sound Mirrors quite effectively reflects the incredible breadth of this duo's stylistic pursuits and capabilities over the years.
MPEG Stream: "A Whistle And A Prayer"
MPEG Stream: "True Skool"

COLDCUT Sound Mirrors (NinjaTune) 2lp 19.98
For fans of Coldcut (duh!), Primal Scream, Massive Attack, and those early '90s heady housey club allniters. Coldcut's latest album offers an eclectic selection of tracks that range from funky Euro hiphop ("Everything Is Under Control") to ultra smooth Seal-ish AOR soul ("Walk A Mile In My Shoes" with Robert Owens on vocals) to Tear Garden-esque richly rhythmic, dub-infused looming atmospherics ("Boogieman"). Actually Sound Mirrors quite effectively reflects the incredible breadth of this duo's stylistic pursuits and capabilities over the years.
MPEG Stream: "A Whistle And A Prayer"
MPEG Stream: "True Skool"

COLDCUT & THE GUILTY PARTY Re: volution (Ninja Tune) cd ep 8.98

COLDCUT & THE GUILTY PARTY Re: volution (Ninja Tune) 12" 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

COLDER Again (Output) 2cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Think Section 25 meets Stereo MCs, or the Happy Mondays with a mild case of Chain Reactive heroin house addiction suffused with a bleak monochrome whine. For fans of Suicide, Kraftwerk, Joy Division and other moody new wave darkness.

COLDNESS Poisoned Gift (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another killer release from Australian label Goatowarex, who also released the two amazing Urfaust records and the Planet Aids record reviewed elsewhere on this list. Coldness is ultra sick, ultra raw, ultra grim black metal. Guitars so raw each riff is like having a swath of flesh flayed off and set afire. Thrashy and midtempo, with stretches of doomy dirge as well as burts of overblown vocals and blasts of hyperspeed rrroaaarrrrrr. Insane vocals that go from raw demonic howls to paint peeling shrieks to inhuman squeals. This is some truly weird, super lo-fi black metal for sure. It's not just the music. The cd booklet lists the band "line-up" as "Coldness = Nocturnus Horrendus, Nocturnus Horrendus = one minus one." Huh? Then there are the messages printed throughout: "N.H. bows to P.B.C., alcohol and all the rest that contributes to make life harder to live but no doubt more interesting", and "Lick the joy out of my rotten essence", or "P.B.C. a poisoned gift / grant, a poisoned gift / demand." Huh, again? And then finally there's the photo collage inside the booklet of Nocturnus Horrendus masturbating into a wine glass, then cutting his arm and bleeding into the same glass, and then of course drinking it all down. Weird indeed. For fans of all things brutal and sick and grim and evil!!
MPEG Stream: "I Destroyed The I"
MPEG Stream: "Living A Lie"
MPEG Stream: "That Is All"