THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION

One of the more awkward releases in COIL's massive discography, the music on THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION included some of the earliest recordings of John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Stephen Thrower around the same time as the band's debut "Scatology." The music was created exclusively for the soundtrack of the 1985 film titled THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION, an arthouse drama film directed by Derek Jarman. The film featured homoerotic images and served as a visual quest that was supposed to represent a dream state and the daily rituals of navigating the violence of the real world in order to transcend into some sort of perceived paradise.

The music eventually found its way onto CD in 1994 but obviously lost a lot of the effect without the intended visuals. COIL mixed various orchestral samples with dark ambient atmospheres and surreal musical soundscapes that merged the world of musique concrète with neoclassical darkwave and nature recordings. The soundtrack also featured recurring spoken word recitations of Shakespeare sonnets read by Judi Dench. COIL also used samples from the debut EP "How To Destroy Angels" and the track "Never" was previously released in a shorter form on the "Unnatural History" compilation.

This is a rather lengthy album at nearly 70 minutes and never seems to really go anywhere. It's primarily an incessant flow of abstract swirlies that float around like amoebas in a petri dish and while the ambience aspects with snippets of orchestral embellishments is a nice way to drone out for an hour's run, the incessant poetic prose of Judi Dench constantly contrasts with the otherwise surreal and detached nature of the musical flow which for my tastes ruins it. Not that the music itself varies much at all as it sounds like the ultimate recycling of snippets and tidbits that never really coalesce into anything other than aimless ambience.

I've personally never seen the film the soundtrack accompanies but usually these types of film scores are only relevant in conjunct with the visual aspects and / or dialogue that they accompany and that is definitely the case with THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION. This is probably my least favorite album in COIL's entire discography but yet it isn't totally awful either. I really only pull this out and listen to it every few years after i totally forget what it sounds like only to be reminded why i didn't care for it much in the first place. The ultimate collector's only edition but since i'm a huge rabid fan of COIL's insanely experimental electronic sounds i couldn't possibly live without this mostly unheard album in my collection. Worthy of hearing once in a while but it really fails to engage in any meaningful way whatsoever.