An illuminated hum, ending on a previously unreleased lop-lop mash-up of bird song, a possible remix of "Strange Birds" that would never re-surface on their live radar ever again. Live One is a seriously essential disc that documents a strong re-birth for Coil that over the ensuing years would never falter.
Coil
24 posts
You get glimpses of what might have been and also an insight into how good at editing their own ideas Coil were. John Balance might have been canonised as the archetypal wide-eyed soul-in-flames, but here we can see the amount of revision he put into his work. Drugs and drink may have been a part of his stream of consciousness, but there’s more lucidity in here than you’d expect and a lot better editing. He’s more James Joyce than William S Burroughs.
Retractor Persistence Is All After putting up with muffled audience recordings of this memorable experience for over twenty-odd years, this recent instalment from Thighpaulsandra’s Coil archive is a total godsend. Considering the strictness of the staff on the night in question, capturing a personal memento of the gig was nigh-on-impossible, so this crystal-clear souvenir of Coil’s second Royal Festival Hall appearance is way beyond expectation. Persistence Is All […]
Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil Dais As Coil albums go, Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil is an assault on the senses, as was the first time I saw them live. “Persistence is all” couldn’t have been a better expression of the fact, that skin-shredding noise / strobe fest of a finale still scars me with satisfaction twenty-two years later. One of those gig experiences that has yet to […]
Dais Closely following the success of Coil‘s first volume of Musick To Play In the Dark came this second helping, a thematic continuum that surfed further out there, saw the group collapsing back with the departure of Drew McDowall to a trinity of players, a fact which made for a tighter, more personally focused beast, on a collection where hindsight haunts your every listen.
Timeless Editions There’s a lot to unpack. Visually, The Universe Is A Haunted House is a beautifully presented book, too big for comfort, like an ancient Bible, waiting for its lectern. Images tumble out and over each other – like Peter Greenaway’s books, Pillow and Prospero. It overwhelms at every turn, each giant page ceding new sight and deepening the spirals. Further down. Furthur. You won’t find out […]
Dais Moon’s milk was flowing strong with Coil’s transition from London to the Weston-lands. An eerie musicality crept over them on 1999’s Musick To Play In The Dark as future and past co-existed, the altar of white rainbows and unquiet skulls soaked up the coastal mists of their new shoreline residence, the tidal purr no doubt whispering new secrets into Jhon Balance‘s ear. A dark and immersive path, […]
Timeless Editions are publishing The Universe Is A Haunted House: COIL through their art and archives, a new 400-page full colour hardback book compiled from the personal archives of John Balance and Peter Christopherson. Conceived not only as a showcase of Coil’s much-admired album artwork, but also to offer a rare glimpse into their world
Prescription The first volume of Coil‘s unreleased Astral Disaster sessions was a revelation, chocked with new perspectives, and even introduced us to some fascinating freshness straight from the cutting room floor.
Dais A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room Nestled between their experiments with acid house and the esoteric Time Machines identity, Black Light District (and ELpH before it) were temporary monikers in which to tinker, delve deeper into what made Coil tick without being overshadowed by the crippling claw of context. An elemental approach that vividly paints possibility, seems to be pawing a significant other.
Prescription So let’s just get this out of the way first. This is going to be a horribly biased review. Coil almost single-handedly squeegied my third ear open. They lit up the left side of my musickal brain like a flare going off in a broom cupboard. I am hopelessly partisan, unutterably in love, deeply impressed by and unashamedly in awe.
Dais Intended as a psychedelic thoroughfare that cures you of time, if only for its duration, this was one of Coil‘s many crowning glories for me. Along with the Spring Equinox EP “Moon’s Milk”, it opened the floodgates towards a richness that is still sorely missed, even all these years later.
Black Mass Rising The music on this album feels quietly all-encompassing; you can tell immediately that it’s Sleazy because over time he’s developed true signatures; there’s sounds here that are indistinct and yet unmistakable. I mean, we know that sometimes Coil’s music was just Sleazy don’t we? We know that Balance is on this album in a way he was on every track that Coil produced and that […]
Infinity Land Press John Balance dies and becomes a kind of saint. This is a hagiography of sorts, though it doesn’t attempt to smooth edges or unwrinkle ravages; it’s clear in these beautifully-presented pages that he was a complex, maybe difficult man. It’s also clear that he was a flame that attracted people to him, a person so out there that he was able to continually make them […]
Label: Threshold House Format: CD The last Coil album proper, The Ape Of Naples marks a tragic end point, a conclusion to one of the more remarkable groups to grace the annals of electronic and deviant music. Completed under the direction of his longtime collaborator Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and bringing together tracks recorded in many locations over the last decade or more, this album marks the last such […]
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 […]
Label: Threshold House Format: CD Assembled by John Balance and Peter Christopherson with the early 2002 tour line up of Ossian Brown (from Cyclobe), Cliff Stapleton and Michael York and initially only available at those gigs, The Remote Viewer marks an intriguing shift in the scope of Coil‘s hyper-psychedelic sound. Running on a foundation of Lovecraftian electronics and the sinuous drones of Stapleton’s hurdy gurdy and York’s Breton […]
The Barbican, London 27 April 2002 Part of the Only Connect series of live events, tonight was self-described thus: “The history of computer games has also been a parallel history of the development of electronic music . . . this evening’s performances are less illustrations of these sounds and more works informed by this history.” Well, Plaid set the scene well. They lived up to the computer games […]