Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels… almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back)…

Threshold Archives began as a project by Peter Christopherson in 2006. At the time, Peter was involved in many projects that consumed much of his time including Soisong, a re-launched Throbbing Gristle, and The Threshold HouseBoys Choir, in addition to assembling the final Coil album, The New Backwards, and the massive Colour Sound Oblivion box. With the passage of time, intercontinental moves, and record label bankruptcies, many master recordings and artworks were lost, damaged, or degrading.

In September 2000 Coil returned to the Royal Festival Hall for their second gig there in the space of a year. They co-headlined with their old pal Jim Foetus, premiering material from their current release, "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil". The set also featured older fan favourites like Horse Rotorvator's "Blood from the Air" and Love's Secret Domain's "Titan Arch", a song they played only one more time after this show, as well as an all new spectacular stage design and brand-new reflective stage costumes for the band. Truly a mind-altering experience available here in pristine sound quality for the first time.

"The New Backwards" was conceived by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn't seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber "Ape of Naples" from 2005, COIL's initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Track 1 originally released on Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 2 is an extended version of the original released on Stolen And Contaminated Songs CD (Threshold House, 1992) and subsequently extended for Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 3 originally released on Macro Dub Infection Volume One comp. 2xCD (Virgin, 1995). Track 4 originally released on Chaos In Expansion comp. CD (Sub Rosa, 1993). Tracks 5-11 are demos, outtakes, and other era-appropriate ephemera.

Half an hour of previously unreleased, heavenly doped muzak from Coil, featuring John Balance vocals including some which have never been heard before.

Recording of Coil's live performance at Megalithomania!, an event which took place on October 12th, 2002 at The Conway Hall in London. Rather than the cathartic onslaught of slowly morphing noise found in the acclaimed Live Two, Megalithomania is quiet and slow. Only about halfway through the album's singular track do vocals appear, and they are distant, primal screams. The sparse vocals that are on this track feel like the band is summoning an ancient rite between ancient farmers and a pagan god, John's timeshifted, relaxed vocals answering to the previous distant screams. The quiet, rippling synths, the samples of running water, the album cover and the use of reverb also all contribute to the music's ancient, cavernous qualities. This disc is an abstract and fascinating peek into coil's neo-pagan aesthetics.

Selvaggina, Go Back into the Woods is a limited-edition live album, recorded on June 11, 2004 in Jesi, Italy. This appears to be the full set of the concert, and contains a new version of every track from previous studio effort Black Antlers. As such, the question of which has more value to the listener is to be considered. Selvaggina is well-recorded and excellently performed, and some of the kinks of the Antlers versions of the tracks have been ironed out. For example, opener "The Gimp (Sometimes)" is here a more vibrant and shorter version than its counterpart, but retains its aura of goofy menace. "Sex with Sun Ra" retains the vibe of the Antlers version, but with more urgent vocalizations from John Balance, and animated work from Tom Edwards on the marimba…

A sly and nasty riposte to domestication, Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil is a bloody-minded record, at times sounding like a cattle-prod surge delivered directly to the spine. A stocktaking of the previous four decades of outsider blare - from La Monte Young, to Metal Machine Music, to even the earliest Butthole Surfers - Coil soils their pawn-shop electronics in blood and sweat, a muscular return to industrial roots. The nominal normal track, "I Am the Green Child," stumbles along like Krautrock coupled with the Exorcist soundtrack. Singer John Balance intones a pretentious and portentous text, voice almost drown in a thick gauze of processing. After this wheezing discourse crawls to a halt, several tracks follow like the lament of a dying washing machine…

Available only on dates of Coil's Even an Evil Fatigue tour in 2004, Black Antlers is a stopgap release that consists of early studio and live versions of songs that were being worked on for the next official studio album. Due to John Balance's accidental death, most of the tracks on Black Antlers would become final yet unpolished versions. Sounding particularly unfinished is the opener, "The Gimp (Sometimes)," a ballad that never quite comes together over its 11 minutes, failing to mesh the dark, ambient instrumentation with Balance's beautiful and haunting vocals. The second track, however, "Sex with Sun Ra (Part One: Saturnalia)" is a classic late-period Coil track. Balance intones a fictional tale of a conversation between himself and the free jazz legend over a pulsating backing track punctuated by bell tones and sparse industrial percussion…

The conclusion to the 1998 season series (actually released in January 1999) certainly lives up to the title billing, in that things do sound awfully cold and gloomy this time around. Opening track "A White Rainbow" does it brilliantly, though Balance's upfront, softly echoed vocal backed by viola from William Breeze and buried background chants result in an unstable, fascinating blend. Enough randomly crazed distortion comes in at the end to send everything just enough over the top…

The third installment of the season EPs from 1998 found William Breeze returning to add more viola as well as mandolin, while Rose McDowell, Louise Weasel, and Sorrow's Robert Lee are among the various guests. Coil worked initially with treated vocals and synth, then built up the arrangements of the five tracks from there. The feeling at many points is very much in line with the Coil/World Serpent tree of modern mysticism. Certainly Balance and McDowell's chants and pronouncements on the exquisite "Rosa Decidua," backed with descending chords on organ and further murky waves of noise, feels like a centuries-old ritual returned to life…

Summer Solstice: Bee Stings is part two of the four part Seasons collective created by Coil.
With guest electric viola from William Breeze adding to the unearthly strangeness of the release as a whole, Summer Solstice continues the seasonal series of EPs from 1998 in fine style. John Balance is in excellently haunting voice throughout, and on the opening title track his mysterious, husked singing, sometimes slightly overdubbed or echoed, blends perfectly with Breeze's work and the clipped percussion making a slow pace. "Summer Substructures" contains more of the chaotic side of Coil, Balance repeating a series of questions and statements over a backwards-run rhythm loop that rises and fades along with any number of other drones and strange noises…

Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull is part one of the four part Seasons collective created by Coil.
This disc continues in the same vein musically as the preceeding Coil oriented release, "Time Machines". The music is essentially instrumental drone based pieces, Parts 1 and 2 being much alike, except that Part 2 has the wonderful addition of electric viola melodies.

…And the Ambulance Died in His Arms is a live recording of Coil performing at the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands. On this date, Coil were John Balance on vocals, Peter Christopherson on sequencers, Thighpaulsandra on keyboards, and Tom Edwards on marimba. This combination of musicians appeared on Live Two, recorded two years earlier. Where that set was abrasive and loud, this one is largely subdued, very different from the other recordings of Coil that appeared over the course of the Live series. Balance takes the mic to explain the subdued nature of the material, "We're doing a quiet set today. We've had too much shouting over the past year." Of the five lengthy tracks, four are completely new and one is a radical reworking of "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep" from Musick to Play in the Dark…