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Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)
Artist
Display Artist
Coil
ReleaseProduct
Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)
Label
Dais Records
Catalogue Number
DAIS188DIGITAL
Release Date
March 15, 2024

Instant WAV / FLAC download with all Vinyl / CD purchases.

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 folk 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.

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Digital Tracklist

Disc 1

  1. 1 Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 1) 8:29 Buy

    Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 1)

  2. 2 Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 2) 8:11 Buy

    Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 2)

Disc 2

  1. 1 Bee Stings 4:55 Buy

    Bee Stings

  2. 2 Glowworms / Waveforms 5:55 Buy

    Glowworms / Waveforms

  3. 3 Summer Substructures 8:07 Buy

    Summer Substructures

  4. 4 A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz) 16:34 Buy

    A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)

Disc 3

  1. 1 Regel 1:15 Buy

    Regel

  2. 2 Rosa Decidua 4:53 Buy

    Rosa Decidua

  3. 3 Switches 4:43 Buy

    Switches

  4. 4 The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant 5:56 Buy

    The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant

  5. 5 Amethyst Deceivers 6:43 Buy

    Amethyst Deceivers

Disc 4

  1. 1 A White Rainbow 8:52 Buy

    A White Rainbow

  2. 2 North 3:46 Buy

    North

  3. 3 Magnetic North 8:50 Buy

    Magnetic North

  4. 4 Christmas Is Now Drawing Near 3:27 Buy

    Christmas Is Now Drawing Near

Disc 5

  1. 1 Copal 16:54 Buy

    Copal

  2. 2 Bankside 6:55 Buy

    Bankside

  3. 3 The Coppice Meat 10:50 Buy

    The Coppice Meat

  4. 4 Ü Pel (Incense Offering) 12:34 Buy

    Ü Pel (Incense Offering)

Show All Tracks 19

Vinyl Track List

Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet
Skull (Part 1)
Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet
Skull (Part 2)
Bee Stings

Glowworms / Waveforms
Summer Substructures
A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)

Regel
Rosa Decidua
Switches
The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant
Amethyst Deceivers

A White Rainbow
North
Magnetic North
Christmas Is Now Drawing Near

Copal
Bankside

The Coppice Meat
Ü Pel (Incense Offering)

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Coil

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Coil

Dais Records

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Limited Editions

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