worship the glitch
This is Eric Mortensen's blog. He works @ Blip and lives in Brooklyn.
“The regularity with which this otherworldly nonsense (“Sleazy and Jhonn are waiting for us in Heaven, guys!”) is posted on Coil’s videos amazes me. Have you ever actually listened to Coil? Have you not heard the unthinkable oblivion of death that awaits us all? Human existence is an accidental catastrophe that ends in silence. The beauty of Coil’s music is how they enlist accident, chaos, and even silence in a symphonic conspiracy that exposes us to the gaping maw of the void.”
Pretty sophisticated, as far as YouTube smackdowns go.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
“Love’s Secret Domain,” Coil (Love’s Secret Domain, 1991)
Only a little bit because: it’s twenty years old this summer, and then ten years ago this summer, I somehow saw them, so it was mostly accidentally that I was in New York at all then, and taking in this scene and wondering if I deserved it: a slab of sheet metal rippling behind two skinny boys in only underwear — and bloodied from the neck down — that were very memorably brought out on stage at the end of their performance, and all the while, with a few reverent exceptions, the crowd ignored them, dripped their lace in their beers. It was my first brush of what made me stop going out to these things (foreshadowing: the music scene bottomed out, and instead of making more and better, people just started knitting yarn into their hair). I couldn’t walk out when I had the chance to be turned on to whatever the five most obsessive people in the room were still standing there waiting for. So I stayed to the end, and I went off after to Limelight with the rest, retreated to the chapel where they sell fancy soap now, and probably threw my cheek into my shoulder anyway when the DJ inevitably went for this.
But the real story is what minimally prepared me: friendship books. Some of the girls I was writing to had gone pro. They had printed their own custom address labels from this company everyone seemed to know about without asking. Instead of kittens and rainbows, in the upper corner they’d ask the printer to put in high-contrast b&w photos tore from what I imagined must be a secret repository I’d get called into eventually but was actually just Propaganda magazine, and beside those, where you might put your name and address, lyrics and your name and the pen-name of the girl you wrote to that you loved and wanted to be the most. These would get pasted into handmade paper booklets, stapled and glued, and you’d pass them on in your letters. Inside, each page was claimed by a different person you could choose to write to, too, sending off a blind introduction to them based on how much of yourself you saw in their pseudonym and the bands they scribbled around their name and address — in black puffy paint, with glitter smooshed in, or photocopies of Tarot cards, or little hearts and pentagrams. Front 242 (glitter star) Current 93 (lipstick kiss) (swirl of blood red nail polish) Neubauten. This one girl’s pen-name is long lost to me, but I woke up today almost feeling the groove of that too-deep way she bore into her notebook paper, could smell and pass a little leftover judgment on the unsuitable ballpoint she used to etch every “thee” and “ov.” Tiger Beat crossed w/ ceremonial magic and carried out quietly under your desk in study hall. It made all the strobes and stage blood, the handmade packaging and secret codes, even over-populated with boys as it was, just seem like our idea.
Coil’s Love’s Secret Domain is 20 years old! If you’ve never heard it, you should remedy this imeediately via some good headphones, then read Brainwashed’s retrospective. Here’s the weird part, though. The record appears to be unavailable for purchase. No digital versions seem to be available and the used copies on Amazon are prohibitively expensive. With the loss of both Peter and John in the last few years and the subsequent disappearance of the music store from the Threshold House site, the future of this record, and countless others, seems uncertain.
Find a copy somewhere. Listen closely. In the meantime, you can see/hear/read more Coil posts here.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
The Threshold HouseBoys Choir - Be Happy
\via: heilige
The first of Peter Christopherson’s hypnotic post-Coil work. I’m not sure where this track comes from or where it can be purchased. My guess is that it was released on an extremely limited edition disc in 2008. If you like it, go spend a few dollars at Threshold House. Lots of great music there.
Roy Orbison, “In Dreams”
(via sippor, who, god, has it been ten internet years since I first found your blog? twelve? fifteen?)
This video was made when David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” was released in 1987. This re-recording of the 1963 original is, presumably, what led Coil to mashup the “In Dreams” lyrics with William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” on 1991’s “Love’s Secret Domain”.
Coil’s Peter Christopherson about HTDA’s bandname and chances for a cooperation.
Read the full interview here.
(via howtodestroyangels)
But this is another version of Amethyst Deceivers. The version on the Autumn Equinox never really clicked with me, or to some extend it did, but the live versions are just far superior to it due to the horrible vocal treatment on the studio version. A Warning from the Sun has the same flaw in the studio version, but luckily the live version on Live Four is perfect and intense and oh and oh.
Coil - Horse Rotorvator (1986): #19 Best Industrial Album Art.
The front cover of the album really set this band apart for me from other groups within the goth and industrial gallery at the time, as — not unlike Throbbing Gristle — the band avoided clichés as much as possible, which the group confirmed often. (One of the members, Peter Christopherson, was a former member of Throbbing Gristle.)
Even though the picture is seemingly really sanguine and calming, the title and the disturbing white text below made it seem something horrible happened wherever this album cover was photographed. The text reads:
On the Eve of the Apocalypse - the Four Horsemen betray their steeds - slitting open the animal throats - and in doing so release the Second Great Deluge - Horsegore - (The air choked with horsehair) - Infinite Divisibles Split - An infinity of open sewers.
The Four then fashion an immense earth-moving device from the collective jawbones - The Horse Rotorvator - with which to plough up the waiting world - (ROTA turns through 180 degrees to TARO) - Wheels replace Horses - Dark Horses Run - Dark Horses Run Deep (We plough the fields and scatter Our Dead Steeds on the land) … and Hell is paved with horseflesh
Well, at least it wasn’t difficult to figure out what the album title Horse Rotorvator meant — some supernatural mega machine that uses horse jawbones drill and spread about the earth and stuff. Oooh, what a nice thing.
Doing some research on the album cover, thanks to this interview with Coil in 1986 with AbrAhAdAbrA - issue #10, the album title and quote were a product of a dream Coil member John Balance (R.I.P.) had.
Now about that album cover seeming “wrong”, my intuition was right all along. Having just discovered the near 25 year old article in the link above only a day ago, Coil had written this about the album cover (relevant excerpt used):
The front seems innocent. It’s again distorted and is Hyde Park - and a bandstand that was rebuilt after being blown up by the IRA - along with the band! Around the same time the IRA also bombed the horseguards along with their horses. We believe that this minor catastrophy has a meaning and a significance that is more than it appears. It is a portrait. The first manifestations of the explosive power of the ‘Horse Rotorvator’. There were great ariel view photographs of dead horses and blood all over the Royal pavements and roads - the horses that survived became heroes! - while everyone forgot the men.
In a later interview with Coil in 1990, Peter Christopherson confirmed that the inspiration for the photograph (taken by John Balance, according to the Horse Rotorvator CD) was a bombing that had occurred at this location. Doing some research, there is a wiki page (I know, I know) on the Hyde Park and Regent’s Park bombings from July 20th, 1982, nail bombs set up by the IRA.
While the phrase “the horses that survived became heroes! - while everyone forgot the men” may be an exaggeration, there is truth to the memory of one of the poor horses named Sefton who had survived the Hyde Park blast, despite serious injuries.
Out of curiosity, I wondered if the pavilion pictured on Horse Rotorvator still exists. Thanks to Google Maps, I looked for Hyde Park and Kensington in London, and found this snapshot of Hyde Park with an overhead view of something that looks mighty suspicious, if you note the dark nipple on the left side:
The road to the nipple’s right (south) is called Serpentine Road.
IT’S JUST A COINCIDENCE!
Horse Rotorvator was a game changing album in relation to what Industrial “meant.” Loud drum machines and gargling evil vocal deliveries weren’t necessary. There are quiet moments on the album, such as “Ostia”, “Who By Fire” (a cover of Leonard Cohen), and “First Five Minutes After Death” that complement the more weird and chaotic tracks like “The Anal Staircase”, “Penetralia”, and “Circles Of Mania”. Obviously, Peter Christopherson’s involvement brought along many of Throbbing Gristle’s disciplines (sorry couldn’t resist) to the table, however all three members, Peter, John, and Stephen Thrower, along with many guests, put together one of Industrial’s best albums ever made. It’s a rough, sad album recorded at a time when AIDS was already globally known, while the disease was claiming its first peak of victims. Many friends of Coil’s band members had died or were dying while they were recording the album, so the mixture of violence and calm in something more produced and akin to a horror movie soundtrack was a brave step. Coil have released dozens of rarities since, and a few notable albums too, such as 1991’s Love’s Secret Domain. However, Horse Rotorvator is timeless.
Coil - Tattooed Man
(via monochrome23world)
Coil - Box Theme
The Unreleased Themes for Hellraiser
Clive Barker commissioned the score from Coil but the results were deemed “not commercial enough” by the studio. Clive Barker is a fan of the work and has described it as “bowel churning”. He is said to gladly sign copies of the Coil release during publicity events. The original release is no longer available but most of the music is included on Unnatural History II: Smiling in the Face of Perversity.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Coil - “Fire of the Mind” [From The Ape of Naples]
