Coil – Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases)

First compiled as a double CD in 2002, ‘Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases)’ is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super- Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group’s discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness.

Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, ‘Moon’s Milk’ captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. “Moon’s Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull” initiates the proceedings on ‘Spring Equinox’, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, ‘Summer Solstice’ skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice- as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs (“Bee Stings”), purgatorial spoken word (“Glowworms/Waveforms”), sultry chamber pieces (“Summer Substructures”), and falsetto ravings (“A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)”).

‘Autumn Equinox’ exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung neofolk ballad “Rosa Decidua” (“I hear your voice sing near to me / I’ve put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds”) to hall-of-lords hallucination “The Auto- Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic “Amethyst Deceivers,” featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: “Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future.”

The album’s final chapter, ‘Winter Solstice’, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener “A White Rainbow” stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. “North” oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy (“This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour”), while “Magnetic North” is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics (“Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel”). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol (“Christmas Is Now Drawing Near”), rendered like an executioner’s song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice.

The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare ‘Moon’s Milk Bonus Disc’ CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals (“Copal”) to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus Maclise poetry (“The Coppice Meat”) to ominous classical melancholia (“Bankside”). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

Release date: February 26th, 2024.