Coil - Musick to Play in the Dark - Black Vinyl - Third Eye

Dais

Coil - Musick to Play in the Dark - Black Vinyl

$29.99
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SKU: DAIS155.1

Artist: Coil

Album: Musick To Play In The Dark

Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Music To Play In The Dark.

Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowell. Although the creative process was admittedly "iterative" and "a bit of a drug blur," the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: "This is moon music / in the light of the moon."

What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after it's release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Music is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.

The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: "Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming."

UPC/ISBN: 011586670884

Product Information

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OUR STANDARD

Books without a stated grade will be offered as Near Mint 9.4 or better. We do not guarantee 9.8 condition on any book unless specifically noted.

We use industry-standard grading guidelines from:

If you're new to comic grading, the resources above are a great place to start.

WHY WE DON'T GUARANTEE 9.8

Modern comic printing is an imperfect process. Books are printed in massive
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and that's normal, and consistent with industry standards across every
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A 9.8 grade represents near-perfection, and the reality is that not every printed book qualifies for that grade no matter where you buy it from.

We can absolutely commit to NM 9.4 or better. We cannot commit to 9.8 on every book, because that's not how comics are made.

WHAT QUALIFIES AS NM 9.4

Per industry standards, a book may exhibit the following minor characteristics and still grade as Near Mint 9.4, as long as there's no accumulation of defects:

Bindery characteristics:

  • Minor to moderate corner tears
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  • Covers slightly offset from interior pages (common on cardstock covers)

Printing characteristics:

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  • Wavy paper texture from the printing process

Spine characteristics:

  • 2-3 small color-breaking spine ticks
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These are normal modern production characteristics, not damage from handling or shipping. They are present on books across the industry, regardless
of retailer.

OUR RETURN & EXCHANGE POLICY

We do not accept returns or exchanges on books that meet our NM 9.4 or better standard.

We will replace or refund:

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For premium variants (1:25, 1:50, 1:100, 1:250, 1:500 incentive covers, signed editions, exclusive variants), we apply enhanced QC during pull and packing. If a premium variant arrives outside our standard, contact us within 7 days of delivery and we will work with you on a replacement.

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