Coil

Threshold Archives Series 2

Genre: ELECTRONIC

8CD Bundle

Boomkat Product Review:

Gird thy loins for the second Coil bounty from the Threshold Archives - a haul of 8 discs gathered from original releases, plus stacks of previously unreleased demos, outtakes, and era-appropriate ephemera - over 9 hours of material.

Following from the first batch in 2015, Threshold Archives continue with a massive project initiated in 2006 by the band’s core member, Peter Christopherson, seeking to salvage material, which, over time, has been lost or has become scarce due to record label bankruptcies and intercontinental moves, where many masters were damaged, became degraded, or stuck on obsolete devices. The project began two years after the death of Christopherson’s partner and bandmate, Geoff Rushton aka Jhonn Balance, and four years before Peter passed in Thailand, 2010. As both core members have moved on to new dimensions, these posthumous releases are vital to disseminating their energies for further generations of dilated souls.

Spanning decades and myriad aspects of Coil’s oeuvre, each CD variously packs vintage material with unreleased cuts, or simply and handily stacks up loads of dead hard-to-find gear on one disc. For example, their 1994 CD ‘Protection’ is expanded to include the piloerect effect of ‘pHILM #1 (Vox)’ alongside multiple versions of their balletic lecture workout ‘Static Electrician,’ and a haul of haunting offcuts including strange choral elves and a 10 minute acid gunk swill out, whereas ‘The Sound Of Musick’ pulls various soundtrack works ranging from the ‘Theme From Gay Man's Guide to Safer Sex’ to the pulsing disco tricks of ‘Theme From Blue’ and 28 minutes of their soundtrack for 1992’s ‘Sara Dale's Sensual Massage’, and the ’Heartworms’ album focusses on various vocal works, both from Geoff as well as Taylor Mead, John Giorno and William S. Burroughs.

The one that’s striking us most is ‘I Don’t Want To Be The One’, featuring material previously released on Hate People Like Us/Computer Music Journal/Emre comps, and including gems from the ‘Astral Disaster’ and later ELpH sessions, such as the severe warp of ‘Gnomic Verses’ and the 20 minutes of ‘Zwölf’ plus loads of digitally abstract studio gremlins. Factor these in alongside all-time classics in their crushing yet life-affirming classic ‘Is Suicide A Solution?’, and the vaulted, esoteric rarities contained in ‘Copal’, and you have a necessary set for both budding Coil-o-nauts and veteran fiends alike.

8CD Bundle (77)