COIL "Love's Secret Domain"

Surpassing Beatle's L.S.D. for sure, this legendary COIL album is brilliantly haunting. By hearing this record, you can recognize how their self-induced madness aims [at the listener] are achieved.
It's an astonishing collection of despair-flavoured tracks, that only make the listener fall more deep into COIL's audible abyss.
This album contains 13 tracks:

1. "Disco Hospital" – 2:18
2. "Teenage Lightning 1" – 1:49
3. "Things Happen" – 4:22
4. "The Snow" – 6:41
5. "Dark River" – 6:27
6. "Where Even the Darkness Is Something to See" – 3:05
7. "Teenage Lightning 2" – 5:09
8. "Windowpane" – 6:11
9. "Further Back and Faster" – 7:55
10. "Titan Arch" – 5:02
11. "Chaostrophy" – 5:37
12. "Lorca Not Orca" – 2:04
13. "Love's Secret Domain" – 3:52

The ones I prefer are: "Chaostrophy", "Dark River", "Love's Secret Domain" and also "Windowpane".
This is for certain a must have for any COIL or industrial / experimental eelctronic music fan.
The cover work seems to look like an abandoned door carved with awkward drawings, being a forbidden entrance to a social taboo path.
Comparing this one to other COIL records, I don't think it's the one with the darker mood.
Released in 1991 (although it was recorded during January 1988 to October 1990) its lenght is 60 minutes and 34 seconds. Pierro Scaruffi, an Italian-American culturan historian, rated it 6 out pf 10; All Music rated with 4.5 out of 5 stars. I'd rate it as 7 out of 10 though.
Get the album here.

Next is "Dark River"'s videoclip:

COIL "Spring Equinox"

Pure magick. Released in 1998, this was part of COIL's releases during solstices and equinoxes. Predictably, they release other three records of this unusual collection: "Autumn Equinox", "Winter Solstice" and "Summer Solstive".
According to my perspective, this one is much more dark than the other ones. It's hypnotic in its own way, dragging you to an infinite field filled with melancholic thoughts. As the other releases of this sort, during 1993 to 1998, COIL were in a more experimental side, evolving to a different stage. They made music with drones, glitches, noise and other awkward methods of self-induced auditive madness (for example, when they made the drone album "Time Machines" I think they didn't sleep for several days). According to wiki: "In March 1998, Coil began to release a series of four singles which were timed to coincide with the equinox and solstices of that year. The singles are characterized by slow, drone-like instrumental rhythms, and electronic or orchestral instrumentation.^[13] The first single, Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull, featured two versions of the same song, the second version of which included a electric viola contribution from a newly inducted member, William Breeze. "
There are two tracks in this release 2 tracks (as mentioned before): "Spring Equinox part 1" and "Spring Equinox part 2". This cd's lenght is around 16 minutes and 37 seconds. I advise you to hear "Spring Equinox part 2", although both songs are, for sure, marvelous. COIL made celestial music, that didn't transcend beings at the same time. Like Jhonn Balance said when speaking about religious views: "spirituality within nature."
You can download this audible piece here.

Spring equinox record

Below I've put the "Spring Equinox part 2" song:

COIL's discography

Ok, if you don't know COIL, you better kill yourself... No wait, please don't do it! Ok, speaking more seriously, this band started with Peter Christopherson and Jhonn Balance in 1982, following their departure from Genesis P-Orridge's industrial group called "Psychic TV". First, they started working on a project called Zos Kia, which had only 4 live performances and one release (a cassete tape called Transparent, in 1984).
Later, Jhonn and Peter would meet Boyd Rice and the ecletic band Current 93. This just shows how stable the relationships among this esoteric movement were.
Their first record as COIL was "How to destroy angels". That same year, 1984, they also made the album "Scatology", with was their most "industrial" album, according to fans and critics and myself. They got their name album derived from the word "scatter", hence the name "Scatology".
Next was release "Horse Rotorvator", an album that speaks about death and existential dilemmas: listening to this one was like feeling the last seconds before you were stomped by the horse on the album's cover (shot with fisheye lens). It's my favourite album so far. It was released in 1986.
Love's Secret Domain- L.S.D.- was the next album launched into stores. Also quite "industrial" and now with more influences of the genre "Post-Punk" this album was well succeeded and even one of its songs, Tainted Love, was featured [and still is] on The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As the wind of time blew, they got more experimental and got swallowed by drone influences (see their album "Time Machines" here- pt1 and pt2), noise (like in the album "Constant Shallowness leads to Evil") and many, many times, their characteristic 90's style: melodramatic harmonies, lullabies that could haunt many humans.
With Jhonn Balance's death some years later, the band had found its end. Their last album- Ape of Naples - was an amount of songs they recorded more than one decade ago (e.g. amethyst deceiver) and songs they recorded some months ago. The album is so fluid, so coherent, it depicts the band's efforts to express themselves (particularly, Jhonn...). Inside this album, there are some photographies that are a metaphoric representation of death: there's a beautiful sunset, a hanged man, a lamb with its legs amputated, a zoomed dark crow and a dead seahorse (semi-preserved in a similar state of a fossil). The name "Ape of Naples" comes from a time when Jhonn and Peter worked on a shop of gay bootleg videos: they invented names for those items and one of them was "Ape Of Naples" (there's also one which is "Black Antlers" that's an album released by them).
If you want most of this band's albums you can check this spot or this one, if you prefer torrents.
This is the infamous "Tainted Love" videoclip:

Next, I'll show you one of COIL's few live videos on youtube:





Their official myspace is this one here. If you really enjoyed this band, there are super-limited editions available on their online shop, some of them very rare...and some album downloads, if you want to. Go to Threshould House and check it out.Please, promote the artists- they deserve it.

"England's Hidden Reverse"- a book not to be missed

When reading "England's hidden reverse" you'll feel like diving into an underground esoterical pool of nihilistic artists [COIL, Current 93 & Nurse With Wound]. This piece relates the history of these 3 bands and their original tracks through their musical experiences along time. The synopsis offered by the (now dead) John Ballance is: "It was a nihilistic little group of people. Yet we've all developed and changed and our creativity has been long-lived when it could have gone the other way and everybody could have committed suicide."
A book not to miss, it relates the influences of these groups, their roots. Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, Thomas Ligotti and Louis Wain. It's a fine way of stepping into these peculiar minds, giving you an awesome interpretation condensed by the bag of thoughts you'll collect while reading this masterpiece written by David Keenan.
I still haven't read it and it's a book that's really hard to get hold of. Nevertheless, it's a book that's really worth it.


I haven't read the book, like I've mentioned before, so you could also annalise some other reviews (which I've also read):

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/book_review/englands-hidden-reverse.htm

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/981522.England_s_Hidden_Reverse_A_Secret_History_of_the_Esoteric_Underground

COIL "Triple Sun" videoclip

I made a videoclip for COIL's "Triple Sun" song, from their album "Ape Of Naples". I used some psychedelic effects: a kaleidoscope reproduction, with color blends; a true "coil" effect with the name "COIL" and short clips of a road at night and by day, at a beautiful island (Azores, in Ponta Delgada Island). I made a video for this track because it's a miscellaneous sound wielding melodramatic effects offered by their electronic music with acoustic instruments sometimes. COIL's music can be categorized like a fractal of existential dilemmas, a coil of their emotions and moreover. Their lyrics on this album are [I think] as usual, kind of misterious, like their occult influences. Go have a listen on their latest album "Ape of Naples", if you can- it is really worthwhile.

If you are interested in the album that features this song (which is the band's final album, kind of it's epitaph), you can download it here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=z86yn843