sweet effay

http://www.thresholdhouse.com/index2.html

(photo by diego tran)

Gobsmacked by this one. I guess we all knew that something like this would happen eventually, but it still comes as a shock.

Coil have been a major part of the soundtrack to my life ever since 1986 when I first read a review of 'The Anal Staircase' in The Lamp of Thoth, the house magazine of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The review made Coil sound like they produced the sort of music that Psychic TV promised but never managed to deliver (bizarrely, it was several years before I discovered that Balance had been in Psychic TV or, indeed, that Sleazy and Peter Christopherson were one and the same person); the sort of stuff I could imagine in my head; music of a genuinely and intensely magical quality. Coil delivered exactly what they promised: I managed to obtain Scatology, and was instantly hooked. Their music formed the backdrop to my final year in London during which time I undertook some very extreme experiments in sense derangement via the usual suspects and an intense engagement with Austin Osman Spare. In the end, I moved to the West Country for the sake of my health and personal life, but I can’t say I regret any of it.

I continued to be obsessed with Coil until the early Nineties when they moved into what I thought at the time was really bad dance music (I don’t care what Loki and just about everybody else says, Love’s Secret Domain is definitely their weakest album). At that point, I lost interest and just kept playing the albums I already owned.

I became interested again when I heard about the Equinox and Solstice EPs, but never actually heard them at the time as Coil material seemed to be impossible to get hold of. Later, on a trip to London, I bought Musick to Play in the Dark Volume 1 and was absolutely blown away. I swiftly made strenuous efforts to buy everything I didn’t own (at last, the Internet proves its usefulness!) and was amazed by the quality of some of the stuff I’d missed. I’d list my favourite albums, but it would encompass nearly all of them. LSD might be a bad Coil album, but that still means it’s better than a lot of other stuff.

Looming large over all this is the figure of Balance; even more so since they started playing live. Watching Balance on stage, the closest comparison one could think of were descriptions of Artaud’s performances. Balance never put on an act he allowed himself to become possessed, carrying the audience with him into his delirium. Happily for us though, we could divorce ourselves from it after the event, whereas Balance frequently existed at this level of intensity. I only saw Coil twice and both performances were very different, but they are the only act of whom I can say that their performances were as good as I hoped they would be. It goes without saying that my expectations were very high.

It would be wrong to describe Balance as my hero. Who would want to put themselves through the sort of things he did to himself? I gave it a go in London, but had to beat a hasty retreat. Still, I’m glad that he did. Music shouldn’t just be a pleasant diversion; it can be dark and magical; Coil are the most dark and magical of all.

Bye Jhonn
'Pay your respects to the vultures, for they are our future'