Medusa's Coil

The Unnatural History series puts obscure, collectable, and out of print singles, compilation tracks, and soundtracks on CD, making those ultra-limited works available all in one place.
Unnatural History (1990). The tracks were recorded during the 1983-86 timeline and include not only the classic Balance / Christopherson mind bending electronic surreality as Coil but also include three tracks with Boyd Rice when they were known as Sickness of Snakes which released one EP titled "Nightmare Culture"…

Primarily consisting of vocalist/musician John Balance and programmer/visual artist Peter Christopherson, along with various other members and contributors, Coil were one of the most beloved, mythologized groups to emerge from the British post-industrial scene. Initially established as an offshoot of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV in 1982, the band spent more than two decades making uncompromising, often unspeakably beautiful music that explored themes related to alchemy, dreams, the occult, drugs, and sexuality. They have remained a longstanding influence on genres such as goth rock, dark ambient, neofolk, techno, and experimental music in general.
In 2000, Coil shocked their fans by announcing a live concert at the Royal Albert Hall. This was to be, essentially, their first live performance, having had some abortive live shows in the very early 1980s…

Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels… almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back)…

Threshold Archives began as a project by Peter Christopherson in 2006. At the time, Peter was involved in many projects that consumed much of his time including Soisong, a re-launched Throbbing Gristle, and The Threshold HouseBoys Choir, in addition to assembling the final Coil album, The New Backwards, and the massive Colour Sound Oblivion box. With the passage of time, intercontinental moves, and record label bankruptcies, many master recordings and artworks were lost, damaged, or degrading.

With their new album Live From The Apocalypse, which is available June 25 via Century Media, Italy’s gothic metal torchbearers Lacuna Coil have captured an intriguing—and ultimately elevating—spotlight of life in the music community amid the COVID-19 pandemic…

In 1991 Coil released the third of their early classic full-length albums "Love's Secret Domain", seemingly casting aside the gloom and funereal beauty of its predecessors in favour of a painstakingly multi-layered hallucinogenic electronic beast, which unlike some of their fellow ex-industrial contemporaries' releases of the time wasn't an attempt at easy accessibility or (the-gods-forbid) danceability, but a vibrating psychedelic masterpiece unrivalled in their discography and still a landmark album.

Coil's first official full-length album, Scatology, is one of the essential landmarks in the group's discography and, moreover, one of the '80s industrial scene's more vital and influential recordings. This is the first part of the essential Coil trilogy that also includes Horse Rotorvator and Love's Secret Domain. The 1984 album exhibits the group at its early industrial stage, in transition to the undefined genre of astral noise psychedelia that Coil would inhabit for the following decades without peer or precedent. The core duo of Peter Christopherson and John Balance are joined by Clint Ruin (aka Jim Thirlwell), whose role in the production cannot be underestimated, as well as Stephen E. Thrower, Alternative TV's Alex Ferguson, vocalist Gavin Friday of Virgin Prunes, and one Raoul Revere (who is in fact British camp pop legend and Soft Cell vocalist Marc Almond)…

Track 1 originally released on Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 2 is an extended version of the original released on Stolen And Contaminated Songs CD (Threshold House, 1992) and subsequently extended for Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 3 originally released on Macro Dub Infection Volume One comp. 2xCD (Virgin, 1995). Track 4 originally released on Chaos In Expansion comp. CD (Sub Rosa, 1993). Tracks 5-11 are demos, outtakes, and other era-appropriate ephemera.

The use of the word gold in the album title is ironic, since a collection of outtakes and leftovers is generally considered to weigh in well under the gold scale. With a group such as the evolving Coil collaboration, however, there's the chance that a well-conceived collection of archive material could have quite a positive impact, whatever the relative status of individual tracks in terms of what projects they were first created for. Rejected material can become a highlight out of a combination of whatever unusual aspects already exist in a piece as well as the dramatic impact of a newly conceived program flow. Gold Is the Metal is a great example of this since the individual tracks continually present challenges to the listener combined with a sonic magnetism…