Queens of the Circulating Library [Import]

1. (No Tracks Listed)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Music and spoken word release with special packaging released to coincide with their concert at the Royal Festival Hall, London.

Tracks:

(No Tracks Listed)

Album Description

Music and spoken word release with special packaging released to coincide with their concert at the Royal Festival Hall, London.

Customer Reviews:

My least favorite Coil............2005-11-19

but lesser Coil is still worth owning. My advice is buy this toward the end of your collecting.

One of Coil's best works.......2002-08-16

This is one of my favorite recent Coil albums, though it's a slightly unusual album. It is not, as one reviewer claims, a live recording (though a live version did accompany some copies of Musick to Play in the Dark 2), but rather an elaborately processed 50-minute collage of mutating drones. It's connection to Time Machines is clear (Time Machines marked a turning point in Coil's music), but it is no way, as that same reviewer claims, a re-release or remix of that album's music. Time Machines consists of single tones that persist while changing pitch and intensity. The music in Queens is multi-layered and strewn with ambient noise.

Thighpaulsandra's mother does some voice-over in the beginning of the poem. I found it some of the most deeply moving and intriguing of Coil's lyrics in some time. This is one of the few times they actually speak outside the limits of their genre. All that said, I should admit that I'm a literature student and probably predisposed to enjoy what's being said.

If you like experimental music, you'll likely love this. It's one of the few releases by Coil that's fully accessible without familiarity with their intentions and inspirations.

Fifty minutes of pricey almost-excellence........2000-08-09

_Queens of the Circulating Library_ is a live recording of a concert Coil gave about half a year ago, and the performance is somehow themed as a salute or articulation of women.

Instrumentally speaking, it contains one track(which is over fifty minutes long) that is of similiar mood and aural effect as the recent album _Time Machines_. The difference between this and TM that the droning notes and noises form a much less dark, aptly more "feminine" soundscape, there are samples of birds chirping in some segements, and the electronics sound vastly more organic, mimicking rushing water and chanting occasionally. The mysterious "time-loss" effect that made the EP's parent album so legendary is present as well, making for music that draws you in, that eats time like "normal" music, but that doesn't really take you anywhere but into an amnesiac, calming emotionlessness. _Queens of the Circulating Library_ is powerful, complex and unique music.

However, I took off a single star for a reason: the spoken word piece by Thighpaulsandra's mother that occurs in the first ten minutes of the piece. I've not seen the visuals that accompanied the actual live performance of this disc, but speaking from the strictly sound-oriented stance, it's terrible. Imagine an old English lady of about seventy saying this with ambient Coil playing in the background: "I am the Queen of the Circulating Library! Return us! Don't Burn us! The forest is a college, and every tree a university! Your membership has expired! You have passed the expiration date!" Thankfully, this cheesy, needlessly intrusive, and just plain awkward piece of poetry is short, and has ended before the music starts to do anything vastly important, but I am still left to ask: Why?! Coil has always walked the fine line between goth-cheese and well done mysticism and noir, and every time come out triumphant except for this one.