On A COIL BENDER
While I read Everything Keeps Dissolving in 2023, I went on a bit of a Coil bender, not only revisiting their catalogue chronologically, but looking out the releases that I was unfamiliar with.
I’ve listened to Coil as long as I’ve listened to any industrial music, but I never particularly went in for the obsessional following they garnered. Early on I was a Throbbing Gristle devotee, yes, angry & insular, but as I grew up and my mindset turned outwards, I was looking elsewhere for my cosmic music. It was only in recent years that I realised Coil had discreetly become one of my favourite artists, although even this was based on only a handful of their later albums.
Coil did have a habit, along with their immediate contemporaries, of releasing an awful lot of music, and not all of it of the same quality. It was interesting to see how some of these less essential tracks became the joining threads between their different eras of work, and that those threads were the ones that made the whole thing hang together across twenty-odd years.
So these mixes are what I put together for myself, for when I next want to go On A Coil Bender. Obviously they have therefore been selected and sequenced according to my own tastes, and I may have left out your favourite later-period ritual drone opus, but nevertheless I hope others find them useful and enjoyable, particularly in this era of only renting your music from streaming platforms. Not all of this material is available there.
Mixcloud does not allow mixes with multiple tracks from the same artist, so On A Coil Bender will live here. File size limitations have meant I need to split the first mix in two, but at the time of writing I’m still finalising the second volume so this shouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps in time I’ll add my other mixes here too.
ON A COIL BENDER Volume I : 1983-89 : Black Sunrise
ON A COIL BENDER Volume II : 1990-95 : Out Of Light Cometh Darkness
This was perhaps the most interesting period to investigate - the supposed acid house period that every know-it-all industrial fan likes to harp on about. Their third album Love’s Secret Domain does indeed contain a few tracks where you can see that influence, the singles The Snow and Windowpane being the most obvious, but at least half of the album is closer in sound to what had come before. Once again it was the non-album singles & compilation tracks that helped tell the whole story.
Part one was sequenced in audio software and mainly features the more familiar Coil sound, part two is the more beat-driven and was therefore mixed live. I included one track from the bootlegged demo for the original Backwards album that would have been released through Trent Reznor’s Nothing label, but decided not to include any of Coil’s excellent remix work for Reznor’s group Nine Inch Nails. For similar reasons I eventually decided to remove the erotic new age lounge jam that is the theme from The Gay Man’s Guide To Safer Sex, as it just stuck out too much like a weird thumb. We at least have the theme from Derek Jarman’s Blue as a brief amusing interlude. My favourite discovery here is the single-only track Protection that closes this volume.
ON A COIL BENDER Volume III : 1994-96 : Born Again Pagans
During this period, a number of works were released credited to other entities ‘versus’ Coil - ELpH and Black Light District. Different working methods and the emergence of new influences created a stripped-back sound that on first listen seems somewhat removed from the work compiled here on Volumes I and II. The move out of London to the seaside town of Weston Super Mare was approaching, and Coil were transitioning from their solar phase into a lunar phase. Alongside the digital tones of the abstract album Worship The Glitch, there is a distinct sense of the element of water here on the pieces taken from A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room.
ON A COIL BENDER Volume IV : 1998-2000 : Moon’s Milk
Among the final releases before their aforementioned move out of London to the seaside, and for me the phase during which Coil’s later ‘lunar’ period really begins, were four EPs released to mark the occasion of each equinox and solstice in 1998. These were recorded in improvised sessions the year before, again on each of the equinoxes and solstices. John Balance’s vocal presence, which almost seemed to have been fading away in previous years, here makes a striking return, along with the voice of Rose McDowall and the viola of William Breeze.
This is a shorter mix than previous volumes and is basically an abridged version of the compilation of the same name that coil released in 2002, to which I have appended the startling cover version of Howard Blake’s Walking In The Air from the beloved Christmas animated film The Snowman. There are a few non-album pieces from around this period, notably the long-form ritualistic works that were released on a bonus disc that came with a mail-order version of the Moon’s Milk compilation, but I have decided to include these on the next volume.
At the time of writing it is December 2024, and having been sidetracked for the last few months with preparations for my live performance in November, only now have I found the time to put this one together. The timing seems right however as this is very much a winter-heavy sound, and the cover art seems to have come out looking rather festive.
