Originally released as a double CD package, Moon's Milk (In Four Phases) brings together four of Cobil's EPs from 1998; Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, AutumnEquinox, and Winter Solstice. The package was first release in 2002, and was never re-released or pressed to vinyl, until now! Described by reissue label Dais as a "tapestry of regal strangeness", this 19-track collection is a must-have for fans of these now sadly departed dark artists. - Flying Out
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'sMilk 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 RoseMcDowall-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.
Tracklisting:
1. Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 1) 2. Moon's Milk Or Under An Unquiet Skull (Part 2) 3. Bee Stings 4. Glowworms / Waveforms 5. Summer Substructures 6. A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz) 7. Regel 8. Rosa Decidua 9. Switches 10. The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant 11. Amethyst Deceivers 12. A White Rainbow 08:52 13. North 14. Magnetic North 15. Christmas Is Now Drawing Near 16. Copal 17. Bankside 18. The Coppice Meat 19. Ü Pel (Incense Offering)
