Coil - Swanyard

If you’ve just heard of Coil and thought now might be the time to jump in and learn more…stop. Do your homework and then, in a few months, come back to this release.

Swanyard consists of almost two and a half hours of unreleased rarities, remixes, and alternate versions from the vaults of Coil collaborator, partner, and friend, Danny Hyde. Most everything on the 2-CD/3-LP album is from the era of Backwards, The New Backwards, Ape of Naples, and the Black Gold bootleg, although the majority of the material is from The Backwards Demos. The first thing worth mentioning is that every track is pristine, with no tape hiss or scratchy copy-of-a-copy degradation which should be enough for most Coil fans to take the plunge.

There are multiple versions of “Heaven’s Blade”, “A.Y.O.R.”/"It’s In My Blood”, “Spastiche”, “Amber Rain”, “Wur CLK Wir”, and so on. “Protection”, an unreleased track from Coil’s Gay Man’s Guide To Safer Sex soundtrack (getting its own release June 21st) sounds like a scrapped dance mix by Einstürzende Neubauten of Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails, “Kusnir Jazz” is a funky little ditty unlike anything else on the record, and "The Test Early mst” is a terrifying, smeared loop of sonic mud. Full disclosure: those last two tracks are the only truly unreleased music on Swanyard.

This is not the Coil release to begin your collection, but it might be the one to end it…unless Danny Hyde can unearth more treasure buried in the dark.