The Royal Festival Hall, London
1 October 2002
Following an introduction which emphasizes the psychedelic nature of the selection of musicians and bands from Glenn Maxx, the South Bank Centre’s mastermind for the Mind Your Head season, Coil emerge on stage bathed in UV light, their white costumes stark as the sine waves of their opening number, traces of the music projected visually on the giant screen behind the band. They are joined by Massimo and Pierce of Black Sun Productions, who stand to the front as nude statues in deliberately-paced motion, palms out and impassive as the chaos of noise and light builds behind almost as slowly. The strobes kick in at brain-bending frequencies to match the electronic whirlwind, subliminal texts flicker across the screen, and John Balance dusts his hands, declaring “Electricity has made angels of us all”, as the emergent bass rumbles rhythms into the hall.
Squitters and gurgles of Burroughsian synths and words in his honour pull matters further back and faster, as Balance informs the audience; Stravinsky strokes creep out to a watchful ring of fire wreathing incensed scents and cranked-down rhythms, and the sight of lemurs and millipedes in timeless struggle fills the wall behind. The music ascends into squeaking arrhythmia and escaping vocalisations echoplexing into insanity – “We are feral…we are animal… we are horses,” declares Balance, staring around the rest of Coil, at the projections and the crowd as if unsure that any or all are really there, jerking and spasming to the screech and snitches of the electronic abyss.
The cacophony of sound which follows is matched by colourful blotches in motion: the nudes raise arms as Romanesque pillars bracketing Balance’s itchy Pan-led restlessness. “The Sun is coming” he warns, accompanied by sonic sunspots sputtering and erupting in a solar windstorm around the trio which the technicians of Starship Coil work their mysterious electronic machinations behind. Darkness falls to a shimmering scatter of trebly tones, and it doesn’t seem certain if Balance considers the sun’s arrival is an entirely beneficial event as the title “Warning From the Sun” perhaps indicates.
A short poetry reading from Massimo to the accompaniment of amplified and enhanced insect chirrups precedes a mournfully-slow rendition of “Ostia”, Coil’s homage to the visionary Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pictures of the man himself and still images of empty rooms and ominous towers flick past while the Black Sun boys pass out apples from the bountifully-laden baskets on stage among the rows of seats. The cyclical swirl of the song finds new levels of sad reflection on a murdered artist, and the ending comes in digital snowflakes, chilly and elevating at the same time, the Festival Hall shrouded in a respectfully weird atmosphere. The fruit distribution continues during the screeching anguish of “I Don’t Want To Be The One”, as Balance’s heartfelt, rending flow of distracted anti-Messianic self-denial and almost piteous excoriation of connection with worldliness pours into the gathering strobes and spears of coloured lights, bringing forth a primal electronic storm screams.
So it’s quite a surprise when the next piece is a strange cover of Sonny and Cher‘s “Bang Bang”, slowed to a torch song croon with Thighpaulsandra‘s piano accompaniment, exposing both the limits and range of Balance’s voice in the process. This is probably the high point of high camp of Coil’s live performances thus far, and one which, while not entirely overcoming (or maybe even surpassing) the saloon-bar misery of the original, they bring off with considerable dignity. The finale of what is a shortened set for their current live tour combines Throbbing Gristle with Tangerine Dream, as the rolling ethereal synth chords and wobbly pulsations of “Are You Shivering” ooze out while a virtual yellowed sea washes in the gravitational fields of the bright white moon on screen. This is one of a magickal band’s most spellbinding moments, the gurgling electronic voices floating through the disquieting ambient ocean bringing incandescent life to the stage as bats fly from the lunar surface in hyperreal loops. While the nudes breath deeply to the rhythms, the auditorium of the Festival Hall seems almost frozen in time by an apparently endless song of sub-zero lunar collapse, completing the trip with a nagging question from Balance circling in the mind – “Are you loathsome tonight?”
-Words: Richard Fontenoy-
-Pictures: Mink Pelican-
