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	Yipe!  TMC is my favourite "band" of all time!  I use quotes
because it's not really a fixed-lineup band, more of a collaborative
artists' project.  Basically, the deal is this:

	Ivo Watts-Russell created his 4AD recording label to sign
the sort of elegant, elegaic, artistically-unique bands he liked,
e.g. Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses, Pixies, Lush,
Pale Saints...  Furthermore, he created This Mortal Coil as a
side project where artists could indulge musical interests which
fall outside of their regular band's parameters -- collaborations,
experiments, and a lot of fantastically elegant and accomplished
cover versions.  Ivo oversees each TMC album project, tying the
whole thing together with consistent ambience and original interludes,
so the whole thing comes out sounding like some sort of cohesive
underground rock opera (albeit one with an inexistent libretto).

	I recently bought the TMC box set, which contains four CDs,
one for each of the three albums with a fourth containing the original
versions of some of the more obscure songs TMC has covered.  It's
really shocking in some cases to hear the original versions in comparo
to their intoxicatingly lavish, haunting remakes by TMC.

	My favourite TMC work is _Filigree & Shadow_ which sounds
*exactly* like its name suggests -- richly detailed, mysterious,
haunting, artful, a balance of bright delicacy and dark weight,
expressive and evocative, yet obtuse and perplexing...  This music
is just *so* hard to desribe adequately, let alone accurately, truly
in a class alone.  It has this timeless, eternal quality which
transcends musical eras and genres, and seems to be both ancient
and perfectly modern.  You've got strings and choral elements and
classical influences combined with some synths and electric guitar
and experimental techniques and all *sorts* of things, and it all
fits perfectly together like the parts of an old, well-maintained
pocketwatch.  Really, the only way you can know if you like TMC
is to listen to the whole 70-odd-minute album in one sitting, and
see what sort of emotional odyssey you feel like you've been through.

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___    A     "Monseignore Laszlo C. Tinker, esq." laszlo@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu
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