Queens of the Circulating Library in Bloomington, MN

On this limited-edition CD, packaged in a pink C-shell with no other inserts,
Coil
is stripped down to just
John Balance
and
Thighpaulsandra
, with the addition of
Dorothy Lewis
, a retired
opera
singer and
's mother who adds some
spoken word
material written by
Balance
. Released on Mother's Day and dedicated to mothers everywhere,
Queens of the Circulating Library
represents a lighter, softer version of
. The single 50-minute track starts off with
Lewis
' voice speaking about the wonders of libraries, books, knowledge, and trees over some warm,
ambient
drones. Loops of her voice become electronically manipulated to add some weird textures to the drones, but even these fade out about a quarter of the way in, and the remainder of the disc drifts off in the shifting drones until it finally fades into silence at the end. The analog synths lend the piece a very organic sound that is quite similar to the early albums of
Klaus Schulze
and other
kosmische
music and less like
's previous work,
or otherwise. Though the music is very relaxed, there's enough variation, especially one moment in the middle where it gets tweaked out with what almost sounds like laser gun bursts, which keeps it from sinking into
wallpaper. Not your typical
album, but certainly an interesting release nonetheless. ~ Rolf Semprebon