Coil week was last week on
the blog so I'm crossposting here for posterity.
Coil - The Golden Hair With a Voice of SilverI first got into Coil the way that a lot of people have (though they might be reluctant to admit it) - through Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor counted Coil as a major influence and for his Broken and Downward Spiral releases he enlisted Coil for extensive remixing of his work, the results of which showed up on the albums Fixed, Closer to God and Further Down the Spiral. Those remixes were certainly more in the noisy industrial vein of Coil's output at the time, and they were so removed from Reznor's pop sensibility that I found myself immediately intrigued by them. However, even at the time, during the advent of filesharing, it was exceedingly difficult to find Coil albums, and it wasn't until a trip to Paris in November of 2004 that I actually found a physical Coil album, and this is the one I found. Along with Aphex Twin's I Care Because You Do... it was the soundtrack to my Paris excursion. It only occurs to me now that Jhonn Balance likely fell to his death shortly before or during my discovery of this album.
As the AMG review indicates, this is an exceedingly good "entry level" compilation for would-be Coil fans. The first disc entitled The Silver Voice collects some of Coil's more contemplative cuts from early releases but mostly leans on Coil's late-period output, which featured a lot of drone and folk. Most of the songs feature Peter Christopherson and company's pretty and dark melodies (and weird tape effects) behind Jhonn Balance reciting poetry and singing. The first disc is unassailable as far as I'm concerned. Every track is excellent and different. My favorite tracks are probably the mournful almost-jazz of "At the Heart of It All", and the hymnal-esque "A Cold Cell".
The second disc (A Golden Hair) contains Coil's more avant-garde output from the 80's and early 90's. Along with some loud industrial-punk ("Panic", "The Anal Staircase") there's some indelibly weird acid house cuts ("First Dark Ride", "Further Back and Faster", "A.Y.O.R.") that some might find disagreeable, as well as some more subdued instrumental cuts that are nonetheless too dirty and disturbed for the spooky, blue-tinged Voice of Silver ("Red Skeletons", "First Five Minutes After Violent Death") and then there's "Blue Rats", which is almost synth-pop.
While it doesn't cover everything, this is as perfect a primer to Coil as I've found. It gives a good impression of the weird, dark, cultish sensibility of the band.
This 2-CD set is a widely available reissue of two Russian collections released by Feelee in 2001: A Guide for Beginners -- The Voice of Silver and A Guide for Finishers -- A Hair of Gold. Only two of the 20 tracks, "A Cold Cell," and "A.Y.O.R.," were previously unavailable at the time ("A Cold Cell" soon turned up on The Wire Tapper, Vol. 6 released by the British magazine The Wire), although some were a bit hard to find. Seasoned fans will feel the repetition (after all, this is not the first Coil "best of" to hit the stores) but newcomers will be treated to a first-class tour of John Balance and Peter Christopherson's realm. Disc one focuses on ambient tracks, the melodic, murmuring, slightly frightening kind Coil do so well. It draws heavily on the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark (including the grippingly beautiful "Batwings"), but also goes back to early efforts like Scatology ("At the Heart of It All") and Horse Rotovator ("Amethyst Deceivers"). Disc two presents the flip side, throwing together more aggressive, noise-based pieces that are often upbeat. The rough industrial stance of "Panic," "The Anal Staircase," "Solar Lodge," and the like, make this disc more difficult to listen to, if only because it leaves little chance to breathe. The set concludes marvelously with "The First Five Minutes After Violent Death." Every fan will have one of his or her favorite tracks missing, but the casual listener will find in The Golden Hair With a Voice of Silver the perfect place to start. There is one downside to this collection though: the total lack of liner notes means that you will have to plough your way through the All-Music Guide database to find where each track was taken from.
A Guide for Beginners: The Silver Voice (Disc 1)
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?jujo3twzl0eA Guide for Finishers: The Golden Hare (Disc 2)
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?aqgmrmzjxdw 
Coil - Ape of Naples / The New Backwards LPThe very last Coil album is, perhaps ironically, the best entry point for neophytes into Coil's cohesive works. Made over the course of nearly a decade, The Ape of Naples marked what would have been a progression of Coil's sound further away from the abrasive industrial noise of their early career, deeper into electro-acoustic composition in the band's middle age. The Ape of Naples is a beautiful record, a far cry from the glitch experimentation of albums like Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil, released only a few years prior to this album. There's always a sadness hanging at the edges of the music, perhaps informed by but not entirely because of the circumstances of the band at the time of release.
The material here is made up of some new material and live favorites but also many revisions of past songs and demos, some drastic some not, but all good. "The Last Amethyst Deceiver" strips away the original version's digital sheen in favor of a more organic feel, to the song's benefit. "It's In My Blood" slows down the acid house gatecrasher "A.Y.O.R." to a pulsing crawl, and "Cold Cell" likewise stretches its namesake out, making it more plaintive. "Heaven's Blade" takes its name from a song recorded during Coil's time working with Trent Reznor, but is otherwise unrecognizable, a woozy piece of post-industrial groove music (it's a good song but truth be told, I favor the original) My favorite track is probably "Triple Suns", which as versions of the song goes is indeed criminally short, but the mixing is incredible. And then there's the epic closer "Going Up", which is an incredibly sad rendition of the song, befitting its status as the last song Jhonn Balance ever performed. The only song I don't personally like is the Gallic and sort-of-cartoonish-to-my-ears "Tattooed Man". But a lot of people really seem to love that song, and even as I dislike it doesn't detract from the sad brilliance of this album.
The New Backwards LP is the most recent and possibly last Coil release even as it isn't really a proper album, per se. It was an extra LP bundled with a vinyl edition of Ape of Naples (a record store near me has a mint condition copy and Christ I want it) It's made up of finished versions of demos created during Coil's aforementioned studio time with Trent Reznor, and they're a bit harder-edged than the often-delicate cuts from The Ape of Naples, drawing more from Coil's past forays into acid house. Most of them are muscular instrumental pieces (the average song length is 6-8 minutes) but Jhonn Balance contributes a shamanistic vocal performance on "Nature is a Language". Aside from that track, there are two I really love - "Careful What You Wish For", which features a sinisterly altered vocal sample and some interesting programming, and particularly "Princess Margaret's Man in the D'Jamalfna", which features evocative strings and brass, and guitar over a propulsive rhythmic loop. As a gestalt unit it doesn't work quite as well as Ape of Naples, but it certainly comes from the same space as that album, and they compliment each other well.
Actually in researching New Backwards on Discogs it appears that there's a CD release with other unreleased songs. I'll have to track it down!
It’s perhaps unavoidable, but every single phrase here comes steeped in prophecy; every melody line leads the listener inwards towards reflection. The first line of opener “Fire of the Mind”: “Does death come alone or with eager reinforcements?” Its chapel-organ-like tones bring an immediate air of finality, hanging heavy over this final Coil studio album. Ian Johnstone’s gorgeously funereal white card packaging, striking photographs, and his stark cover artwork (which is either an angry ape or a figure post-castration, depending on which way you look at it) gives a quiet, contemplative, eerie, peace to the contents, which veer from maniacal lunacy to spiritual deliberation.
It’s unclear what the late Jhonn Balance’s completed vision would have been for the posthumous The Ape of Naples, and this album is a gathering of unreleased work from his last days and earlier material culled from uncompleted sessions. It was an odd combination of Balance’s deterioration, Promethean genius, and human warmth that made him one of the most unique frontmen ever; this LP stands as a testament to those qualities. There’s something slightly peculiar about the album in that at times Balance doesn’t seem fully visible even when he’s in full voice. On several occasions, his vocals sound somewhat shrouded. Is there lassitude in Balance’s voice, or is there a purposeful remoteness on the performances of “Triple Sun” and “Amber Rain”? Or is it just the hindsight of what happened investing his vocals with foresight?
Some of the material here will be familiar to Coil fans from live releases and gigs, and “The Last Amethyst Deceiver” (as near an official Coil classic as its possible to get), “Triple Sun” (the version here is criminally short but elegantly detailed) and “Teenage Lightning 2005” are already well known in Coil circles. But their place on this album and excellent production cannot be undervalued, as each helps to show Balance at his visionary best. The many Coil affiliates (Ossian Brown, Tom Edwards, Cliff Stapleton, Mike York, Danny Hyde, and Thighpaulsandra) that have helped Sleazy to realize these performances into gorgeously disturbed beds of music should receive praise, too; The Ape of Naples sounds truly out of time and delicately beautiful in places. The poise of electronic sounds and beats with warm live instrumentation (such as marimbas) gives the music a human heart, making the atmosphere of loss all the more conspicuous. “Tattooed Man”, either a song of love for his current partner or a piece of ugly self loathing, features a hurdy-gurdy, lending the track both a Gallic and sea-faring feel. How did these so-called Industrialists end up somewhere as charmingly sweet as here?
In contrast, they punch out a version of “Heaven’s Blade” that is as untethered, drugged, coherently dark, and deliciously vehement as anything they’ve done previously, even during their Ecstasy-overdosing era. A track from their aborted Backwards sessions at Trent Reznor’s Nothing Studios, this is a jilting, buzzing, jittery furrow which wolves whisper, swirl, and snarl around in hopes of fresh blood. Balance is slyly conspiratorial and loosely clings to the thin line between angelic transformation and madness; coupled with a magnificently understated backing track, this is likely to be seen as one of their pinnacles.
“I Don’t Get It” is creepily damaged, sounding like the unwinding of some sick child’s melted toy as organic twisted sounds bubble under the surface. Balance’s torn up, sped up, and fucked up vocals are cast into the mix without a thought for their malign influence on the sweet string and horn arrangements. Like some sleep-deprived remake of Randall and Hopkirk: Deceased, this foggy detective-thriller theme shows glimpses into a mangled psyche through the spitting, screaming, snarling Balance. The song attempts to pulse and strain under its own tight structures, but somehow remains in one piece to its creaking, rubber-gagged end.
His vocals also strain at the walls of sanity on “It’s In My Blood,” where his yodeling screams and elongated, tortured vowels manage to speak up for the whole asylum ward with the high pitched whine of the title. An oil drum beat, war horns, and Thighpaulsandra’s descending string derangements lead to an off-mic quip from Balance (“Is that enough, Sleaze?”), as if his howls were as normal to him as fish and chips.
Ending with one of the most unlikely songs for anyone to cover, never mind Coil, who’d of predicted the theme to UK cheesy camp sitcom Are you Being Served? being used for anything other than a UK Hip-Hop sample? “Going Up” takes the original’s theme and loops it under a slow waltz, turning it into a very gentle, tongue-in-cheek, open-armed welcome to Death. Balance’s words are dropped low into the mix and Francois Testory’s choirboy vocals are a prayer to the bric-a-brac of everyday life and the escape skywards.
This album catches Jhonn Balance’s many guises in amber and traps them for a generation of explorers to swallow, follow, and then take down their own path. As one of their most unmagikal-themed releases, there might have been commercial avenues for this album that will never be followed up. The summing up of twenty-three years of Coil will be left for the future’s sure-to-come “best of” collection; The Ape of Naples stands as one of their finest albums ever, making it all the more gutting that this is their last.
The Ape of Naples:
http://www.mediafire.com/?hkzdfwz1u25The New Backwards LP:
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?vymgzdnwath
Coil - Horse RotorvatorHorse Rotorvator is Coil at the apex of their industrial-noise period, or at least it's as close as Coil got to what we normally think of as "industrial rock". It's an album that launched a hundred (a thousand is kind of pushing it) industrial-goth bands. The drum machine stomp of "Penetralia" sounds just like Ministry's Land of Rape and Honey yet it predates that particular watershed album by two years. This is Coil at their loudest, and according to Jhonn Balance at least the album's apocalyptic mood was largely informed by the horrific suffering that was being felt by Balance and Peter Christopherson's friends and the wider gay community that Coil was a part of, due to what was known at the time as GRID (Gay-related Immune Deficiency), now known as AIDS. The weird big band music of "Herald" is inspired by the Mexican Festival of the Dead (the reliably transgressive Balance sought to make Coil's "death album" celebratory, as well as mournful). Even at this early stage in Coil's career with all their blasts of abrasive industrial noise, they indulged their passion for folk music, as evidenced by the superb "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)". Oddly enough the track known as "The First Five Minutes After Violent Death" on the A Golden Hair With a Voice of Silver compilation is identified here as "Ravenous" (the mix is slightly different as well) while a spoken-word piece is labeled as "The First Five Minutes After Death", which is somewhat confusing. An important album, and a good one if you're any fan of industrial music in general. Otherwise it might be more difficult to get into.
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 RollersBalance 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 AlmondAlmond'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.
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?5ojdfzvmmnz
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