The New Backwards

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The New Backwards is a reworking of material from the infamous Backwards album recorded in the 1990s. The diverse experimental music on The New Backwards is difficult to sum up for this short review, but it often involves chilled rhythms and wild chanting or poems, though some tracks are strictly instrumental. The tracks all run fairly long (five to nine minutes), but not too long, provided you are in an unhurried mood when listening. The opening track "Careful What You Wish For" affirms Coil as the masters of combining the most eccentric and seemingly incompatible sounds into brilliantly unique music, as gentle nature-influenced sounds work hand in hand with mechanical squawking and some grotesquely distorted chanting (which sounds much more frightening here than in the type of music where you'd expect such vocals). The fusion of contradictory elements also plays out across the album as unwavering beats are used as backdrops to the rest of the experimental cacophony, creating an unusual tension, as in "Fire of the Green Dragon. AYOR song sounds much like a bizarre dance mix cousin of Throbbing Gristle's "Vow of Silence." Also traceable back to TG is Peter Christopherson's interest in exotica music, which notably influences other parts of The New Backwards.

via Last.fm