Wednesday, January 18, 2006

You Might As Well Listen To The Birds

Coil – Live One

The first in a series of four live Coil albums. This one consists mostly of material from Time Machines; an album I've been repeatedly told is very good, but which I've had great difficulty tracking down, so getting this is a decent compromise. Almost all of the tracks are ambient and very long (fifteen to twenty minutes each), which must have made for an unusual concert. It's a very good album though, out of all the varied genres they've done ambient is probably the one they're best at.

The Time Machines stuff is not too different from other ambient tracks they have done on albums like How to Destroy Angels and Ten Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room, quiet but menacing tracks that build up esoterically themed samples and dirty, distorted synths to aggressive climaxes. While it might be similar to some of their other albums it's definitely nothing like any other band I've heard.

Aside from the ambient tracks there's an early version of 'Amethyst Deceivers', one of their best songs. I've always really wanted to see Coil live, both because they're great and because I'm very curious as to how they'd go about it, but now that Jhon Balance is dead I never will, so this is probably as close as I'll ever get.

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