THE REMOTE VIEWER

A queasy sickening feel permeates 'The Remote Viewer'. It's a beat-less, bass heavy throbbing nightmare. The kind of sounds you hear when you're full of the flu lying in bed feeling like you just wanna die.

A Hurdy-gurgy of all things is at the forefront of this recording and is basically destructured into a pulverised blobby mess. High pitched horns protrude and stab violently in this most melancholic of tunes. There's no vocals present on this one - nor guitar nor drum. Most of what you'll hear is almost like a deformed bagpipe droning sadly amongst a a satisfying deep bass.

Seriously chopped up vocals are intoduced in part II. In a way it's almost like listening to 'Roadrunner' and 'Wile E. Coyote' having a fight . Similar to 'Nurse With Wound's' 'Creakiness' but less repetitive. Splats and throbs of bass noise give things a turn for the worse for my mental well being. Suddenly everything sounds more malevolent and creepy as this tune heads towards its seriously disturbed end.

The 21 minute part III - reprises the sounds of part I introducing middle eastern bongos which are gradually electronically warped into a very distict Coil sound of bloops and bleeps. This is less dramatic and urgent than Part I and does chill out nicely after 10 minutes leaving you wishing you were on a picnic in a forest somewhere. That is... until a of note circular bass line pops up - where you'd expect to see a farmer with a gun stomping towards you. And your picnic! Yikes!

Very odd electronic wails and screeches (tastefully done) envelope the entire track leaving a feeling of malaise as intermittent bass stabs and almost glitch-like high pitched electronica see the album out.

One of Coil's more obscure albums - a stop-gap between a flurry of live albums that would follow and 'Musick to Play in the Dark Pt2' which appeared two years earlier. Strangely it's the first time I've used the expression 'Folk-Drone' as a genre of music. Unfortunately that's the best I can come up with guys.

A good album and one that is instantly recognisable in their catalogue, but is just a bit too morose for repeated listenings.