This Mortal Coil

This Mortal Coil were never a band per se. From song to song and album to album, this studio-only entity rotated into its changing lineup musicians primarily from 4AD label acts (including Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Colourbox and so on). The itinerant nature of their roster no doubt helps account for the bewildering diversity of This Mortal Coil's output. Though they produced only three albums, each one cuts a wide swath of musical styles, from tremulous ambient pieces to icily futuristic drum machine oddities. Some of their best-known pieces, however, are actually covers of songs by such neglected artists as Tim Buckley, Colin Newman and Chris Bell. This has perhaps been the act's finest legacy: pointing their listeners to Goth's many roots, tapped as they are into soil far afield of that infertile ground tread by gloomy art school dropouts disconsolate over having just missed the Punk bandwagon.