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All Music Guide reviews
The following reviews are taken from the website www.allmusic.com - the copyright belongs to AEC One Stop Group. Please visit the All Music site for more information.
SCATOLOGY:
Coil's first official full-length album, Scatology, is one of the essential landmarks in the group's discography and, moreover, one of the '80s industrial scene's more vital and influential recordings. This is the first part of the essential Coil trilogy that also includes Horse Rotorvator and Love's Secret Domain. The 1984 album exhibits the group at its early industrial stage, in transition to the undefined genre of astral noise psychedelia that Coil would inhabit for the following decades without peer or precedent. The core duo of Peter Christopherson and John Balance are joined by Clint Ruin (aka Jim Thirlwell), whose role in the production cannot be underestimated, as well as Stephen E. Thrower, Throbbing Gristle's Alex Ferguson, vocalist Gavin Friday of the Wolfgang Press, and one Raoul Revere (who is in fact British camp pop legend and Soft Cell vocalist Marc Almond). "Restless Day" is a haunting rumination that defies description, other than being an utterly essential self-defining moment in the Coil paradigm, with an atmosphere hanging in the tense space between harsh noise and harmony that apparently causes time to cease. "The Tenderness of Wolves" features the vocals of Friday in one of the more poetic moments of the '80s post-industrial sound. At the album's somber end, this outstanding work finishes with a rendition of "Tainted Love" featuring Almond, who had made the track a new wave hit with Soft Cell. Here, however, the tune is given a bleak slow-motion version that could be read as a tragically suggestive commentary on the AIDS epidemic of the era. The album was originally released on Force & Form/Some Bizzare, and was the subject of numerous bootlegs and illegitimate versions. For the record, the 2001 version on Threshold House/ World Serpent is the only version authorized by the group. Maybe the numerous LP and CD versions that have appeared since its original release are suggestive of just how vital the album is, not only in the Coil discography but to the industrial electronica scene as a whole. Scatology is nothing short of essential. — Skip Jansen
TRANSPARENT:
This is a historical tome in the Coil discography that the pioneering U.K. industrial group released as a cassette-only album on Nekrophile Records. Performances of early Coil as a harsh industrial noise/performance art group are captured in various live settings during 1983, including Berlin and London concerts, as well as studio/rehearsal room sessions that predate the Coil of the legendary 1984 album Scatology, which subsequently became a massively influential recording in the post-industrial movement. Here are the earliest Coil recordings, exhibiting the band as it develops a fierce noise music that later became some of the most poetic and elegiac of the era. Whether reshaping electro, new wave, hyper-minimalism, or futuristic folk, Coil remained one of the most vital groups of the '80s post-punk movement. For fans of the group, this early archival material is essential listening. The disc is packaged in a mini-LP-style cardboard slipcase, and includes a booklet with photos from Coil/Zos Kia performances. A text of the Coil manifesto penned by John Balance and a transcription of a conversation between founders Balance and Peter Christopherson are included in the booklet. Newcomers to the group are advised to explore first the albums Scatology, Horse Rotorvator, and Love's Secret Domain, though Coil fans and collectors will not be disappointed by this obscurity. Transparent provides a much-needed insight into the very early work of the extraordinary industrial music institution. — Skip Jansen
HORSE ROTORVATOR:
The title Horse Rotorvator is explained in the liner notes as a device large enough to "plough up the waiting world," created from the bones of the horses of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Bay City Rollers this isn't. On the group's second full album, Coil continue the refinement of brute noise and creepily serene arrangements into a truly modern psychedelia, from tribal drumming and death march guitars to disturbing samples and marching band samples and back. Balance shares the same haggard, mystic vocal delivery common to fellow explorers of the edge like David Tibet and Edward Ka-Spel, but he has his own blasted and burnt touch to it all. His lyrical subjects range from emotional extremism of many kinds to blunt, often homoerotic imagery (matched at points in the artwork and packaging) and meditations on death. As a result the cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who by Fire" isn't as surprising as one might think. Past guest Marc Almond appears again on the track with backing vocals, as well as adding them to "Slur," which is composed of an unsettling mix of harmonica, bells, percussion and whatever else can be imagined. Other guests include Almond's then-musical partner Billy McGee, adding a haunting, sometimes grating, string arrangement to "Ostia," which is about the murder of radical Italian filmmaker Pasolini, and Clint Ruin, aka Foetus, adding his typically warped brass touches to "Circles of Mania." Paul Vaughan narrates the lyrics on "The Golden Section," creating a stunning piece that in its combination of demonic imagery and sweeping, cinematic arrangements holds a common ground with In the Nursery. All the guests help contribute to the album's overall effect, but this is Coil's own vision above all else, eschewing easy cliches on all fronts to create unnerving, never easily digested invocations of musical power. — Ned Raggett
GOLD IS THE METAL:
The use of the word gold in the album title is ironic, since a collection of outtakes and leftovers is generally considered to weigh in well under the gold scale. With a group such as the evolving Coil collaboration, however, there's the chance that a well-conceived collection of archive material could have quite a positive impact, whatever the relative status of individual tracks in terms of what projects they were first created for. Rejected material can become a highlight out of a combination of whatever unusual aspects already exist in a piece as well as the dramatic impact of a newly conceived program flow. Gold Is the Metal is a great example of this since the individual tracks continually present challenges to the listener combined with a sonic magnetism. Pieces seem kooky, out of shape, or severe, but no desire to skip any of the offerings results. In contrast the music is consistently engaging, the performers projecting a kind of lust for gorgeously sound-packed tracks as well as moments of eccentric distraction. — Eugene Chadbourne
LOVE'S SECRET DOMAIN:
Though Coil's Balance and Christopherson were inspired by the acid-house revolution of the late '80s, their drug-inspired "dance" album isn't quite as indebted to the style as the contemporary work of Psychic TV. The influence comes through mostly in the deranged effects and vaguely surreal air, though several tracks do increase the rhythmic wattage. For the most part, the duo retained the gothic synth-pop of Horse Rotorvator, but with a special emphasis on stuttered cut-and-paste sections rather than organic instruments and environmental sublimation. — John Bush
THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION:
This album is an extraordinary chapter in the Coil discography, a soundtrack to the 1985 film by Derek Jarman, The Angelic Conversation. Coil took the approach of remixing and reconfiguring orchestral samples; the sound of an orchestra tuning up is used frequently, expanding on the bleak and desolate sound as a perfect accompaniment to Jarman's film. Incidentally, Coil's Peter Christopherson worked as a leading sound designer in the film and created its incidental music — much of which is included here to fill out the CD. Given that the film's sound was made with the Coil touch throughout, the album stands as an entirely cohesive work. The Angelic Conversation features the gorgeous Coil anthem "How to Destroy Angels," a song that becomes a central theme and diverts the largely ambient atmospheres. — Skip Jansen
WORSHIP THE GLITCH:
Officially, this is released by ELpH vs. Coil, which only makes sense since ELpH is in fact Coil, the name having been adopted for work where unplanned results come out of the musical equipment in use — a technological collaborative effort, one can say. Whatever the exact origins, the results are even more on the edge than many Coil pieces, eschewing formal song structures for exploratory efforts in sampling and instrumental rhythm. Having previously released three singles under the moniker, Coil went ahead with the full album in 1995, another interesting twist in their involved discography. Beginning and ending with murky pieces featuring the voice of Leah Hersig, wife of longtime Coil touchstone Aleister Crowley, Worship the Glitch profiles the use of random chance and possible mistakes right from the title. The exact membership is unclear — presumably it's Peter Christophersen and John Balance at heart as always — but whoever participated, the emphasis on machine-created sounds and results is prominent. Anyone expecting glitch/laptop techno à la Kid 606 won't find that here, but there certainly is much use of heavily distorted and treated sound throughout, which will sound awfully familiar. The overall combination of tweaked instrumentation and weird, flat atmospheres, especially in the strange use of echo, clearly had an influence on the IDM crowd in later years. An intriguing homage to an earlier gay lit figure surfaces with "The Halliwell Hammers," three versions of which are scattered throughout the record. Kenneth Halliwell was the ex-lover of noted playwright Joe Orton, who in a final fit killed him with hammer blows to the head before killing himself. For all the violence this would imply, the songs themselves are weird, jittery numbers in keeping with the album as a whole, with odd string or pseudo-string loops and mournful bell tones. — Ned Raggett
BLACK LIGHT DISTRICT:
The Coil project Black Light District debuted with an album of broad, minimalistic textures and beatless ambience. Though the vibes are similar to the duo's past work, there are no vocals and few beats; what remains is the restless exploration of sound which Coil have always made a prime concern. — John Bush
TIME MACHINES:
Although Time Machines wasn't precisely credited to Coil, upon its arrival in early 1998 the CD was the first full-length of new material Balance, Christophersen, et al., released in nearly seven years. An hour-long meditation on drone ostensibly inspired by the psychophenomenological properties of hallucinogenic drugs, Time Machines is constructed entirely from cycling, oscillating synth tones, and continues in the vein of shapeless experimentalism established with Black Light District and Worship the Glitch. Enjoyable, if a mite limited in scope. — Sean Cooper
MUSICK TO PLAY IN THE DARK:
From the opening pairing of "Are You Shivering?" and the gorgeously titled "Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night," it's apparent that Coil was making a return during 1999 that would prove to be as influential on the post-industrial scene as its 1984 debut, Scatology. The group never really went away in the ensuing period, of course, but had maintained a cult status underground for the better part of the '90s. The duo consistently produced stunning albums, but the recordings were often in scarce limited editions that usually reached only hardcore fans. The Musick to Play in the Dark CD and LP were available through mail order only, and featured the core duo of Peter Christopherson and John Balance joined by collaborator Thighpaulsandra. The CD is the first full-length album Coil released on its own Chalice label as a subscription only release. Later in 2000, the album was thankfully re-pressed by Word Serpent, assuring wider availability. The album is a masterpiece of the caliber of the classic '80s trilogy Scatology, Horse Rotovator, and Loves Secret Domain, which gave Coil the highest stature in the post-industrial music scene as one of the most inventive, original, and courageous groups of the genre. Musick to Play in the Dark is an utterly mesmerizing work, and is nothing short of brilliant. The album's scope takes in the music of the '90s, the bleak digital processing and glitch music (Oval, Coh, and Nurse With Wound all spring to mind), but here these often sterile sounds are married to a human warmth that is inimitable Coil — a sound that carries through the group's career as one of the most distinctive in the post-industrial canon. Along with the essential Coil '80s recordings, Musick to Play in the Dark cannot be recommended highly enough. It represents a chapter in British music that goes beyond the term industrial and into untapped realms of experimentation that place Coil, along with Current 93 and Nurse With Wound, among the '90s British groups more deserving of attention than their obscurity may ever permit. — Skip Jansen
ASTRAL DISASTER:
The initial 1999 version of Astral Disaster on Prescription was an ultra-limited release in a symbolic edition of 99 copies on vinyl only. The CD reissue of what must be one of Coil's more collectable cult items has been slightly remixed, and includes an extra track not on the original as a consolation to the fanatics who missed out on the Holy Grail LP version. The tracks featured are "The Sea Priestess," "2nd Sun Syndrome," "I Don't Want to Be the One," "The Avatars," "The Mothership & the Fatherland," and "MU-UR." Not comparable to the sublime brilliance the group achieved on Musick to Play in the Dark, Astral Disaster mines different territory altogether, and is a strong album that features a notable folk influence. With this approach transfigured through industrial and electronic means, the album bears striking similarities to Current 93 in its exploration of esoteric and mystical themes. — Skip Jansen
MUSICK TO PLAY IN THE DARK 2:
Two types of records usually have the highest potential for embarrassment: "comedy" records and "scary" records. Unlike an awful pub rock mistake or a tuneless ambient workout, there seems to be nothing more obnoxious than listening to a record that tries — and fails — to be either funny or frightening. Coil's Musick to Play in the Dark 2 takes the latter stab into forbidding, blood-velvet territory and consistently bungles it up. "Ether" ends with a magnificently processed, sincerely unsettling chant, but it takes almost 11 minutes of "cats + piano" melodies to get there. Elsewhere, opener "Something" takes a deeply effective, goth Gaia heartbeat and polishes it with cartoonish "menacing" swooshes and sirens that probably could be found on a two-buck "Boo! Halloween Hits!" supermarket CD. The sincerity of Coil should not be undervalued — as work here and in the past can easily attest to — it's the failure to harmonize it with a minimalist instinct that gets in the way. Because no matter how much somebody tries to tell you a joke or scare you, only the gifted can do it without sounding like a moron. — Dean Carlson
QUEENS OF THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY:
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 Thighpaulsandra'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 Coil. 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 Coil's previous work, ambient 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 ambient wallpaper. Not your typical Coil album, but certainly an interesting release nonetheless. — Rolf Semprebon
CONSTANT SHALLOWNESS LEADS TO EVIL:
A sly and nasty riposte to domestication, Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil is a bloody-minded record, at times sounding like a cattle-prod surge delivered directly to the spine. A stocktaking of the previous four decades of outsider blare — from La Monte Young, to Metal Machine Music, to even the earliest Butthole Surfers — Coil soils their pawn-shop electronics in blood and sweat, a muscular return to industrial roots. The nominal normal track, "I Am the Green Child," stumbles along like Krautrock coupled with the Exorcist soundtrack. Singer John Balance intones a pretentious and portentous text, voice almost drown in a thick gauze of processing. After this wheezing discourse crawls to a halt, several tracks follow like the lament of a dying washing machine. Finally, in a curious silence thrown into even sharper relief by what follows, Balance sings a few more lines about death and all hell breaks loose, a torrential downpour of upended machine jabber. From the opening of gallows sine waves to the final 16 minutes of revolving noise loops, Coil are implacably devoted to proving their aphorism "persistence is all." — Jess Harvell
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