COIL
While their "contemporaries" seem to be releasing average LPs every other week, Coil still seem to prefer to spawn more highly crafted pieces every three or four years. Every Coil record is an EVENT, rather than something to put on your turntable occasionally and then forget about. In the past, their music has leapt between genres as diverse as ritual music, primal electronics, dance music, semi classical pieces and advertising jingles. All of these were carried off with a unique air of refined deviance.
We met Coil a week after the release of their third "proper" LP, "Love's Secret Domain".
Band Members: John Balance (J) Stephen Thrower (T) Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson (S)
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What are the underlying ideas behind the LP? J: Electricity and Drugs. Energies. We started off with the LP three years ago and had the idea of doing a sort of decadent early electronics cabaret album, like Tesla - the inventor, would have done in Berlin. A weird idea. It started like that and evolved.
J: Yeah, I mean we've been recording it on and off for about three years, not because it takes that long, but because we've had so little money to finish it. And messed around. T: It's changed its title about three times and we've got about three times as much material than is actually on there. The other two-thirds we got sick of and threw away. J: When we did Horse Rotorvator, we had enough material for a double LP. We left the other material, and we were going to do one called 'The Dark Age of Love', deliberately like a twin or a follow up to that and as time passed, we changed our minds and ditched most of that, and started new things.
J: I don't know where he's from and I don't know where he's going. He's called Otto Avery. He's a child, about 18, I think. A mad acid kid. He doesn't do anything on the record, he was just there when we did it and he wanted to be a member, so we let him. He's disappeared again. He's probably in prison or something.
J: Well, we just thought we needed a younger person in the line-up, so we just grabbed the nearest one.
T: Gosh! It is, isn't it?
It's a very acidic album, obvious Acid House influences. T: I think the tracks without what you might call "acid beats" are actually best experienced in a state of complete mental drug derangement. J: It was made in that spirit and is designed to be listened to in that spirit. T: Although it was just cups of coffee..... J: .....and Guarana. The whole album hallucinates as far as I'm concerned... it bubbles and warps every time I listen to it. "Windowpane" is an acid song. You get windowpane acid and I saw a guy doing it in a club and I thought it was a good idea because the visions he'd got came through seeing. I was just playing off on the words and how he may see the sky as gold and power, energies. All coming back to energy and electricity again.
J: That's
partly due to us working and reworking everything. This is what I mean
by "psychedelic", something that has more layers, that's interactive with
the listener. The best, proper psychedelic music does that, you know.
You have to work towards it, it doesn't come and get you immediately.
All these 60's revivalist groups are just copying a style. That's not
psychedelic at all. Psychedelic music expands and you expand with it.
I think it's in the spirit of Can and a little like the early Throbbing
Gristle. We were going back and using old tape techniques, like cutting
up quarter inch tape and everything we felt like using.
J: Yeah,
you let the future leak through. you let things through that you're not
sure about, you're just opening the door.
J: No, it's
not just Acid House. I mean, we were doing Ecstasy back in 1982 when it
was legal. So we've never bothered to be obvious about it and having explored
more portentous or solemn music, like "Horse Rotorvator", big funeral
echoes and stuff, it was decided it had to be more raw sounds, much rougher.....
J: Well
yeah, fed up of being doomy and gloomy.
J: As usual.
That's partly the thing, because we'll work for a year or so and we have
a lot of ideas and they all happen to go on one record, so that's why
you get the diversification, I think.
T: There's
a problem with some bands who try to absorb acid house influences, that
they tend to get absorbed by the format, rather than them absorbing the
format. Often what's left is is hardly recognisable as them at all; while,
with this album, there are bits of it that bear absolutely no relation
to anything ever played in any club I've ever been to. So we've kept control
over it, rather than it controlling us.
J: That's
a bad question for Stephen, I know he hasn't.
T: I hate
people. I can only stand 2 or 3 at once. If I see large numbers of people
enjoying themselves, I automatically start having a bad time.
J: But we
did (him and Sleazy). Around the time of Horse Rotorvator, 3 or 4 years
ago, I started going to "Shoom" and "Confusion" (seminal early London
Acid House clubs). You just want to reflect what your interests are. I
mean, we haven't gone totally House, there's only a few tracks where we
let it...dance.
T: You listen
to Cabaret Voltaire and you could be forgiven for thinking they get up
in the morning and they're sort of...(does wild impression of a Rave)...as
soon as they get out of bed, that's what they do all day. There's no trace
of the other things they used to do in their work.
T: Yeah,
he's a crap singer, but he's a friend so we let him do a song. (laughs
cruelly)
S: I like
his voice.
J: He wants
to sing on more things, but we won't let him.
J: (Smiling)
Yeah, unfortunately. Once a week. He comes round for his tea on Sunday.
S: No, Rose
McDowell was, on Windowpane.
J: But we've
known Annie since Crass days. All these people are like...really early
on. Like, Marc we've known since "Non Stop Erotic Cabaret". He worked
with PTV and things. When you come to do something, you look around to
see who'd be interesting, like he played guitar on one of our tracks before
called, um, 'Restless Day'. He's playing feedback guitar on it, and he's
done vocals before. We've got a lot of ideas about projects, we were going
to do a mini album with him. He fits in. I wrote the lyrics, he liked
them...
J: Magickal
what? Groups?
J: Yeah,
only things with initials I put on there.
J: Well,
I must be into magick, then.
J: I like
gold, I like the idea of gold, how it is a symbol. "Windowpane", again,
is another acid song. You get windowpane acid, and I saw a guy doing it
in a club, and thought it was a good idea because the visions he'd got
came through seeing, and "the eyeis the instrument of the soul", as it
were. And I was just playing off on all the words, and how he may see
the sky as gold and power, energies... all coming back to energy and electricity
again.
J: No Stephen
can, but we can't.
T: Well.....
J: Well,
we say we can't, but when we get down to it we find we can, to our horror.
We do little bits, go into the studio, improvise around it.....
T:... and
then study the improvisations, and you...
J:...build
around that, and improvise around that...
T:.. and
then think about what you've done and take bits off...
The new album is a lot more as if you've left a lot of the improvisations
in, weaving in and out, and not as structured as "Horse Rotorvator" which
didn't have much room for improvisation. J: Horse
Rotorvator was as near to "songs" as I wanted to get and I had that deliberately
in my mind this time... no way did we want verse - chorus - verse - chorus,
so it's more open ended...
T: There's
a lot less specific pointers on this album.
J: Yeah,
every time we came across something specific or obvious, we'd cross it
out, or fold it up, or harmonise it or flange it, and fold it in again.
T: With
a record like "Scatology", with extensive sleeve notes, and quotes from
all sorts of sources...
J: Which
were ironic, I don't think people...
T:... and
then you do another record, where you don't actually want to point to
the sources as much and everyone goes, "Well what's this one about?"
J: "Where
are the sleeve notes, where are the sleeve notes?" Yeah, for the first
time, there are actually tracks on this album, where if I was asked what
they were about, I could proudly say "absolutely nothing". I like that.
You tell me.
J: The first
bit ("electricity pulses") is from "Performance". Some of it is from Andrea
Feldman, one of the Factory/Warhol crowd, who jumped out of a window and
committed suicide shouting "I'm going for the big one!" (much laughter
all round). She's the only person who was clinically addicted to LSD,
and it's her going "I need acid". There's a lot more...
J: Oh, right.
There's a film called "Night of the Hunter" which had Robert Mitchum in
it, black and white. American gothic kid's story, really good film, directed
by Charles Laughton, who was the hunchback in "The Hunchback of Notre
Dame.". It's his voice narrating on a record of the film.
T: He only
directed one film.
J: He was
a gay actor, who ended up living in Bridlington or something, with a 16
year-old boy. But he was really a good guy, amazing film. The bits from
the record of the film were taken completely at random when we were off
our heads, and tried to make sense of it; agonising process. I had about
15 fingers trying to play these keyboards with the samples. Certainly
heavy going.
J: We were
speeding then, when we were angry young men.
T: We were
speeding this time as well!
J: Oh shush,
shush!
T: (Banging
fist on the table) ... and we're STILL angry young men!
J: Smart
drugs, yeah. What are they called? Cognitive enhancers. This is what we're
into.
J: They're
pussies compared to what we're into! Battle of the smart drugs with them.
We swap smart drugs with the Shamen. You can buy these things legally.
You get them shipped into the country.
J: Absolultely.
Though it's not a high of any sort. It's more... over a long time. In
Thailand I was taking Pertican, the Neutropill, and you just get... everything
gets clearer, you wake up and you feel wittier, you're probably not, but
you feel it, you talk better and remember better. You can remember things
from your childhood, it all suddenly floods back. You think, "God, I haven't
remembered that person for ages", so they do work.
S: There's
no reason why chemicals shouldn't have that effect on the brain, considering
the chemical basis of your brain. If you just find the right chemicals,
you could do anything.
J: It just
speeds up the working of your mind by 10% or 20%, and you can take some
that work on different parts of the brain, like memory. Vasoprecin works
on the process of memory.
S: They
all work by increasing the blood flow between left and right brain, increasing
the amount of oxygen that actually gets to the brain cells.
J: More
going to the clubs than listening to it, the whole experience, not just
the music. And not all the music, either, because I hate a lot of it.
(to the others) What other influences do we have?
T: I don't
know, I've stopped listening to music now. I used to listen to lots and
you never used to listen to any.
J: Our so-called
contemporaries? No. Nurse with Wound, I do.
T:Yeah,
"Journey Through Chese" is one of the greatest compositions of the last
twenty years! (laughs)
J: The twentieth
century.
T: That's
the kind of thing I like. You wouldn't immediately think of Napalm Death
as closely linked to us, but they like us and we like them. And yet we're
a million miles apart.
J: Mark
Stewart likes us. (laughs) That was a real shock for me to find out.
T: He's
so diplomatic. (laughs)
S: I think
English people in general tend to be incredibly blase, and lacking in
momentum. But once you get them going, they're okay, and will riot as
good as the next man. But, they don't generally generate their own enthusiasm
for things, in the way that the Dutch and the German and the Belgians
and the French people do. Certainly we get far more letters out of the
country than we do here.
T: I was
reading this wretched wretched New Age magazine a few days ago. They were
talking about sex, and saying "Sex is for evolutionary purposes and for
love, and any lust driven animalistic drives are so 80's". I thought,
great, like new conservatism sneaking through the back door again.
T: It's
like John Waters said about the 60's. When everyone else was wandering
around talking about peace and love, he was fantasising about starting
the hate generation. (laughs)
S: If we
didn't live in such an expensive house.
J: It'll
be more uptempo, but I don't know about absolute dance - loads of baggy
kids dancing about....
T: Why not?
J: Well
they can if they want, I'm not going to stop them. It'll be more beat
orientated, more physical. I don't think we'll go for the pastoral, quieter
bits because I don't think that's for live, you know?
T: But if
our aim was any better, we would! Particularly passing people on the streets
and saying "I wouldn't mind aiming my product at that person there!"
J: We have
always done what we want to do. You can't tell. you just do it and hope
people like it.
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