Overall impression: excellent. The 3rd installment of the Unnatural History series, this one covers compilation and outtake material from 1985 - 1996, 6/10ths from the '90s. The amazing diversity of this always intriguing band is again put on display here. The 80's material is similar to the 80's albums, such as "Horse Rotorvator" and the 90's material is much like the "Stolen & Contaminated Songs" cd. A little bit of every style Coil has touched on is represented on this cd; beats, ambience, vocals, noise, misc sounds, orchestral, etc, etc. "First Dark Ride" and "Baby Food" are amazing journeys in sound, "Music for Commercials" are short and interesting, "Panic" is crude, "Neither His Nor Yours" is quirky, "Feeder" is a beautifully stark and noise filled collaboration, "Wrong Eye" is an early sketch of "Windowpane", "Meaning What Exactly" is an extended intro for "Things Happen", "Scope" is noisy and "Lost Rivers of London" is an almost spoken piece by John with intriguing musical backing. I think I like this one better than the previous one, UH II, but both are very good. Really good artwork on this one by Nick Blinko and Coil. It's hard to say if this is a good place to start a Coil collection, due to the diversity of the back catalogue and this collection itself, but it's certainly a must for any devoted Coil fan. Plus, it's easily attainable (but rather price-y) unlike the out of print "Horse Rotorvator" and "Love's Secret Domain" albums. - Mark Weddle, Brainwashed

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;

by Peter Werner - boe666@u.washington.edu