Feb 9, 2025
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Coil
Astral Disaster (2000)
Astral Disaster, Coil (1999)
Oft overshadowed by the two Musicks to Play in the Dark, Astral Disaster is a little rougher around the edges with its stark melding of seafaring ambience and mystical raga – yet it stands well on its own, and doesn’t deserve to be entirely forgotten. Weighty, disorienting, ghostly, folkloric and, in large parts (particularly opener ‘The Sea Priestess’ and closer ‘The Mothership and the Fatherland’), captivating.
Pick: ‘The Sea Priestess’
Coil - The Mothership and the Fatherland (Prescription Edition)
Coil - I Don't Want to Be The One
astral disaster
Coil - Astral Disaster [1999; Prescription (UK)]
Originally available only through subscription to the Prescription record label’s releases, this album moves in darker, slower tones and forms than the two Musick to Play in the Dark albums that followed it, emphasizing sustained tones, gradual alterations, and a comparatively small vocal presence to build atmospheric vibrancy. On the CD reissue, the brief starter of “The Avatars” sets the mood with some synths before leading directly into the ~22-minute “The Mothership & The Fatherland”, with soft drones revolving and incidental sounds fading through being.
“2nd Sun Syndrome” picks up from there, accelerating the synth-loops while keeping the soft enveloping, letting echoes and extensions grow with each cycle. “The Sea Priestess” swings back towards longer exploration, bringing in Jhonn Balance’s vocals amid some of the album’s highest and lightest synth-tones to describe a visitation. “I Don’t Want to Be the One” provides another short buffer, this time with string synths and trembling background noises, before “MU-UR” arrives to spread slow percussion, shifting clangs, organ keys, and tone studies over the last ~23 minutes.
One of Coil’s most subdued albums, as the arrangements generally don’t approach the level of complex combinations or direct emotionality found elsewhere in their catalog, but there’s still impressive technical and emotive aspects to the constructions, making this one best suited to being heard on still nights with little to distract from the experience.
Here’s the cover art used for the original limited run.
