Unnatural History II

by Peter Werner - boe666@u.washington.edu

I just got this in the mail from Soleilmoon this weekend. Not a bad little collection of tracks; I have about half the stuff on it, but only in the form of tape dubs, so I'm glad to have them on CD.

"Red Weather" was nice to hear finally, though a bit disappointing. I've heard that its from the same recording session as "S is for Sleep", and it certainly does have a lot of the same elements, though "S is for Sleep" makes more interesting use of subliminal elements.

The "remixed and remastered" aspect is noticeable in places; "Airborne Bells" is essentially the same track, but there seems to be a subtle difference in the way it sounds, I think due to remastering it for CD. The ending to "'Contains A Disclaimer'" has been altered slightly from the original on the Pathological comp. and "The Hellraiser Theme" seems to have a few new sounds in it as well.

The lost Hellraiser tracks are wonderful, even stronger than the previously released tracks, IMO. I particularly like "Unquiet Rest" which shows Coil in a very Zamia Lehmanni-esque mood; in fact, I'd almost think they were sampling from ZL, except that I think "Hellraiser" was a few years before this. What's with the abrupt ending to this track though?

The "Themes from 'Blue'" were pretty good techno Coil tracks; I got a big kick out of the second one, with its "KC and the Sunshine Band"-style opening. I am curious what these tracks actually had to do with "Blue", however; I have the "Blue" soundtrack and I don't remember either of these tracks as being in there (the only Coil element I recognized in the soundtrack was the oboe from Love's Secret Domain) nor did I recognize any sounds from the movie in this track. Perhaps they were some sorts of "Aphex Twin mixes".

It was nice that they included "The Hills are Alive" (the hidden track), since, completist as I am, I had no intention of picking up an expensive second-rate techno comp just to get it.

UHII is good collection of tracks, but it really had more the feel of a collection of tracks than the more coherent Unnatural History did, perhaps because it was covering a wider period than the first one did;

Beast of Eden