QUEENS OF THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY

QUEENS OF THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY and its twin companion album 'Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil' were both released in the year 2000 but this one came out first. Although COIL has always been a strange and experimental group, these two releases are strange even for them. While 'Constant'' is a harsh noisefest that taxed the listener's grasp on where the line between noise and music lies, QUEENS' taxes the listener's patience for it is quite the repetitive experience that offers little in sonic variation to sustain the active listener's attention span. The album credits only to Thighpaulsandra and John Balance and is one of the only COIL releases not to include Peter Christopherson. The two releases are also bizarre in that they were both released in transparent pink clam shell cases.

In a nutshell we get one single track of almost 50 minutes of ambient drone noise that is only punctuated by a poem inspired by the film 'Night Of The Demon' as well as a few swirling sounds that bubble up unexpectedly in sparse reaches of this sonic universe. The poem is narrated by Dorothy Lewis who is Thighpaulsandra's mother about how she is the QUEEN OF THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY and how each tree is a university and so on. The poem is all too short and then on to the looooooong and steady road of ambient drone noise again. This is an album i've owned for well over ten years and may have listened to twice. I had forgotten what it even sounded like only remembering i didn't really like it.

Many albums surprise me after a lengthy absence from my consciousness when i put them on after so many years i actually really like, but this is not one of those lost treasures on the shelf. This still remains one of my least favorite COIL releases and although i am one of the hugest fans of this experimental band i don't think this one will ever grow on me. I could see this making good background music for certain occasions but even then there are better ambient albums out there. There just aren't enough subtleties and variations that make this even remotely interesting. Either this works for you or it doesn't. For me it's a miss.