owen

Well-known member
are a group i have always previously dismissed because of certain connotations- 'magick', wire articles every bloody month, the misapprehension that there is anything interesting about charles manson, david bloody keenan- apart from being mildly intrigued by the fact that they'd used a Soviet ANS synth and that Penman wrote about them I'd seen no reason to investigate further.

anyway, i have recently been made a compilation of their stuff that totally blew me away. itchy, slithery sexual, sudden moments of pomposity and grandeur, huge darkcore riffs, songs about pasolini...so, now having recanted, do any dissensus crew want to suggest where, in this vast and terrifying catalogue i should be looking? ta...
 

john eden

male pale and stale
They are held back their supposed baggage, it's true.

Horse Rotorvator is the best LP for "songs".
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Stick to the equinoctial / solsticial EPs if you're a magic skeptic :)

Scatology's still a fave, very focused work.

If you can get a good copy of How to Destroy Angels it's worth a go.

But I lost touch after about 1990.

I've still got the letters somewhere.
 
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francesco

Minerva Estassi
Sadly everything is out of print after the demise of World Serpent and the dead of John Balance.

There is a double cd compilation that is good for starter, if you can find it is called "the voice of silver"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...80501/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_8_2/026-3918772-4581208

the Coil discography is a bloody mess, and even if i am a fan, i know that every coil release can contain incredible stuff and so-so stuff in totally inconsequence.

Best releases:
Moon milk (the equinox singles) 2cd
Black light district present A thousand light in a darkened room
Music to Play in the Dark
Scatology (hi Effay!)
Time machine
Worship the Glitch

every of those albums is totally diverse from the other

also from their brief but incredible great techno period try to download:
the snow
windowpane
nasa arab
first dark ride
the hills are alive
further back and faster

or buy "love secret domain" and "stolen and contaminated songs" from witch those are taken

visit:
www.brainwashed.com/coil

"there you are jhon balance"
"costant shallowness lead to evil"
 

Loki

Well-known member
Coil are a little mired in magick and the bad associations that go with it but they are a resolutetly un-gothic band in the conventional sense... most of their music is bursting with light and there's a rich vein of black, bleak humour running through all of their best work: even the death rattles of Horse Rotorvator has a thick seam of hope and absurdity... and they made the only kind of lysergic / mushroom music which actually accepted that taking drugs might be a frightening and funny experience at the same time... their attention to detail in the squelches and tumbles and cut-ups and effects and associated accidental micro-melodies work in a way that no one else to my mind has come close to, certainly none of the kinds of people who often cite them as an influence (i.e. everyone 'dark')

I mean, they really aren't that dark and never have been.

Still, everything requires the kind of listening that would arise if CDs could only ever be played once - there's so many levels in the music (fuck the symbolism) itself it takes a whle to drag them all together...

Almost everything they've done is touched by genius (apart from the occasional crappy jesters hat - and even that was invested with a certain delirium) but some highlights:

Nasa Arab - music for Dream-machines made thick and real and slurred beyond belief
Further Back and Faster - the only record to understand that digeridoos might actually have a mythic root beyond Rolf Harris hamming (though he himself had a thrash on Kate Bush's The Dreaming - itself a sort of weird Jane Eyre relative to Love's Secret Domain)
Teenage Lightning exactly describes the sound of two teenaged boys being rubbed together
First Dark Ride takes all kinds of techno nonsense on a ride into black holes where The Butthole Surfers should have lived but never really could be arsed. I wanted Acid House to sound like this but it never did.
AYOR - sounds like the music made by the younger, more benevolent cousins of that little dwarf chap at the end of Roeg's Don't Look Now - music made by pulling light cords on and off.
Chaostrophy - what ambient house might have been if The Orb hadn't come along and done Rasta jokes and Laswell had kicked the bass into touch... the most beautiful piece of music I've heard.
Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night - they add in Thighpaulsandra only for him to start fucking things up before they start fucking him up... almost accidentally awesome
Circles of Mania - the nasty orchestral jazz played by the other, cooler, unseen, underground fetish bar in Mos Eisley played by aliens who've stared too long into the sun - and the best vocal gulping performance ever - this was the opening track on my never-lamented lunchtime DJ slot at Swansea University radio...

oh, to hell with this pointless nonsense, buy everything they've released and exterminate the brutes... but watch out for the ones in which Balance talks rather than sings... they can get on your tits a little...
 

Helen

Tumbling Dice
Astral Disaster Limited. I was reading about this being one of their least accessible albums but on first listen it became one of my favourites ever. That and Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 2, both make for excellent listening in these darkening Autumn days.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Loki said:
Further Back and Faster - the only record to understand that digeridoos might actually have a mythic root beyond Rolf Harris hamming (though he himself had a thrash on Kate Bush's The Dreaming - itself a sort of weird Jane Eyre relative to Love's Secret Domain)
Geoff was a big Kate Bush fan, the Dreaming in particular.
 

nonseq

Well-known member
coil vs elph 'worship the glitch'
esp the track 'opium hum'

'musick to play in the dark' is depressingly out of print.
i still regret not buying when it was in shops..
.. for the same magick-hating reason as others in this thread.
actually this is a good one for the 'denial of pleasure' thread.
 

owen

Well-known member
2stepfan said:
Geoff was a big Kate Bush fan, the Dreaming in particular.

interesting you say that, things like 'ostia' really remind me of the lushness and drama of 'the 9th wave' on hounds of love...
(i must follow up some of these recommendations dammit, maybe i'll have to get a job...)
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
owen said:
interesting you say that, things like 'ostia' really remind me of the lushness and drama of 'the 9th wave' on hounds of love...
Yeah, told me direct. Clear influence, innit.

paul "not at all put off by Coil being into magic, quite the reverse actually, and getting a bit pissed off with the condecension of the anti-gnostics" meme
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
Can't believe I only just noticed this thread. It's Musick to Play in the Dark for me (both volumes).

I have some issues with Coil, mainly around Sleazy's antics and proclamations towards the end of his life. But the music keeps drawing me back in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

you

Well-known member
this story has surfaced from time to time, how mike tyson used a coil track from "time machines" as his infamous intro music as he came into the ring against spinks (although it's disputed on the internet, of course!). a great story if true, and either way it's a pretty nuts and intimidating way to enter the ring.

http://www.theawl.com/2014/06/a-man-walks-into-a-boxing-ring


leo on dat mythopoiesthesizing tip - "just noise" "everyonce in a while you hear the clanging of chains" - lolz. No doubt MT chose well tho. Gd spot.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty

not a lot of coil talk around these parts. sometimes they're exactly what the dr ordered. the bit half way through when it becomes Amethyst Decievers just sent me. Have to listen to it as a whole

that tyson video tho...

trumps cameo in the full fight vid at the bottom of the awl link around the 6min mark, too
 
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WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Coil freak here. Didn’t know about the Tyson association, that’s genuinely nuts. Only saw them live once in Barcelona. White fluffy suits, mirrors, the sonic range of sub bass alone is something you never forget. Sadly missed and irreplaceable.

If you trim away the baggage they’re among contemporary music’s modern greats, true sound innovators with a huge range of styles. Musically I prefer what came after Scatology and Horse Rotorvator, there’s so much to choose from. Add Cyclobe, Unica Zurn, Thighpaulsandra’s work (Queen Elizabeth collaborations with Julian Cope are surreal) and Christopherson’s work post-Coil.

Losing patience with a few of the recent Danny Hyde ‘releases’. There really is no need.
 
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