COIL

THE UNRELEAASED THEMES FOR HELLRAISER EP

HELLRAISER is a British paranormal horror film that was released in 1987 and directed by Clive Barker and produced by Christopher Figg. Based on the 1986 novella "The Hellhound Heart," the film tackles the realms of the supernatural that involves a mystical puzzle box which summons a group of extra-dimensional sadomasochistic demons called the Cenobites who cannot differentiate between pain and pleasure. According to the novellas they are a religious sect in Hell known as the Order of the Gash and sort of like the fairy godmothers of granting wishes to those seeking sadomasochistic pleasures.

Like almost all films, this one required a musical score and Barker's love of COIL's creepy electronic music seemed like the perfect match however the funders of the film, New World Pictures found that COIL's dark ambient horror synth mixed with industrial neoclassical darkwave wasn't commercial enough for a big ticket film and was rejected. The score was finally awarded to the established Christopher Young who had already proven himself with "A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge" and "Invaders From Mars" scores.

COIL has always been staunchly antiestablishment and therefore it's no surprise that their music was just too weird for the masses which is exactly why i have always found it so appealing! Despite not being commercial enough for a major movie studio, the rejected music that would be released as THE UNRELEASED THEMES FOR HELLRAISER features some of the most accessible sounds COIL crafted in its multi-decade career no matter how dark and forbidding they are. COIL's entire canon is a confusing labyrinth of tracks on various releases and other releases having multiple titles. This one is no exception.

While the original 1987 vinyl 10" was titled THE UNRELEASED THEMES FOR HELLRAISER, the 1988 cassette release was named THE CONSEQUENCES OF RAILING HELL.. The 1990 CD version was truncated to simply HELLRAISER THEMES. As it turns out though, all of these original EP releases have become somewhat irrelevant since the first side of the original vinyl and cassette titled THE UNRELEASED THEMES FOR HELLRAISER would find themselves on the 1995 compilation "Unnatural History II" and the second side titled "Music For Commercials" would end up on the 1997 compilation "Unnatural History III."

Musically this soundtrack that never was is divinely wicked sounding. With creepy haunting backdrops in conjunct with abstract atonal electronic noise, music box sounds reminiscent of the "Rosemary's Baby Theme," and a keen sense of rhythm, dynamics and grating contrapuntal elements. It's an electrifying hair raising musical score that deserved to find itself on some strange occult themed film for sure. No matter where you find this one, either in its original format or as part of the compilations, this is one of COIL's most disturbing and menacing musical performances and the perfect macabre set of tracks for the perfect soundtrack to a nightmare.

One of COIL's flotsam and jetsam releases, the 2015 compilation THE ANAL STAIRCASE in a way is a reissue of the 1986 THE ANAL STAIRCASE EP however for whatever reason this combo pack of the original EP with other lost material didn't find a catchy title like "Unnatural History Part Whatever" or some other cryptic referenced title but rather borrowed from an existing early release which makes it a bit confusing (such is the case of COIL's entire canon actually.)

This collection of 17 tracks features the original three tracks on the EP in their entirety as well as the "The Anal Staircase (Relentless Mix)" track from the 1991 various artists comp "Total Volume One." The rest of the tracks are basically unreleased demos, remixes and other versions of tracks from various other releases as well as some that never made it on to any official COIL release. While these types of comps may seem superfluous, they do provide fans a glimpse of how dedicated the team of John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Drew McDowall were in their relentless pursuit of experimental electronic eclectic weirdness.

Like any COIL release, this one features the usual experimental electronica with many creepy instrumental neoclassical darkwave tracks sitting side by side with electro-industrial all fortified with atonal noise and the occasional brutal poetry. The tracks are fairly amorphous in how they simply drift on from one to the other in an unrelated fashion but the comp does showcase this act's perfection streak with various versions of the same track that often sound completely unrelated. These guys had a relentless work ethic that bore enough fruit to find new compilations still springing up two decades after the band officially folded.

While many of these tracks will sound familiar in terms of style, others like the two "Greensleeves" on synthesizers tracks will offer a surprise but not one that i particularly like as they sound way too happy and upbeat to be on any COIL release. Overall this is an interesting side show for hardcore COIL fans but not exactly an essential compilation to my ears like many of their collections of unreleased material which often proves to be some of the most interesting recordings these guys ever put to tape. This will also be the only place to find the original ANAL STAIRCASE EP on CD as the original 1986 EP was only released on vinyl.

THE ANAL STAIRCASE EP / single

THE ANAL STAIRCASE was COIL's second EP to be released after 1984's "How To Destroy Angels" but despite the EP designation is more like a single because the tracks on it were also featured on the "Horse Rotorvator" album released in the same year of 1986. The only differentiating factor is that the title track on this one features Rico Conning's dystopian remix of "The Anal Staircase" that featured a harsh electro-industrial danceable beat that plodded on for nearly 6-minutes long.

The remaining two tracks "Blood From The Air" and "Ravenous" were both featured on the "Horse Rotorvator" album only the former on all formats whereas the latter on the later CD issues. Both of these tracks are completely different and offer a gloomy darkwave psychedelia with depressive vocals and strange sounds that decorate the background. Somewhat of a collector's item, the first UK pressing on Force & Form was limited to 500 copies and this EP was only repressed one more time on vinyl on Relativity.

This three track 14 1/2 minute release has pretty much been made irrelevant with the 2015 compilation CD THE ANAL STAIRCASE which features all three tracks from this original EP plus 14 extra tracks taken from early mixes for tracks from the "Gold Is The Metal (With The Broadest Shoulders)" album which was released in 1987. This first three-track edition of THE ANAL STAIRCASE will really only be of interest to collectors of vinyl since the 2015 compilation was only released on CD. Musically speaking, the three songs are OK but not the period of COIL that appeals to me the most and nothing to get overly excited about.

One of the most experimental electronic artists to haunt the 1980s and 1990s, the British experimentalists that made up COIL were relentless in their constant pursuit of innovating the strangest and most alienating sounds that were possible to eke out of as many unexplored avenues as humanly possible. The results added up to a huge expansive canon of some of the most bizarre and unorthodox musical statements that blurred the distinctions between what music properly is considered and what many would consider to be nothing more than random noisy gibberish. By the 1990s the eccentric team of John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Drew McDowell seemed utterly limitless in how many directions it could pursue the experiments with one album after another delivering a sonic experience that stood apart from virtually anything else ever laid down to recording. Everything COIL released was utterly unlike what came before and a testament to the fertile minds that tapped into strange worlds where no one else dared tread.

By the mid-90s COIL was also adopting strange pseudonyms for various projects with names like ELpH, Time Machines, Sickness of Snakes and The Eskaton popping up randomly throughout the band's run. Yet another one-off moniker was BLACK LIGHT DISTRICT under which the COIL team released this sole album A THOUSAND LIGHTS IN A DARKENED ROOM. Characterized by the group's love of dark ambient bleakness and electronic free form texture building, this release showcased a new approach to the COIL playbook by offering a series of rhythmic underpinnings accompanied by a litany of overlapping electronic textures, sound effects, vocal samples and the occasional lyrical output halfway sung and halfway spoken as well as simple poetic prose. The album which featured 11 tracks was a bit on the long side well exceeding an hour's playing time at nearly 73 minutes but provided a stream of consciousness continuity which allowed the tracks to slowly ooze into one another all the while providing a diverse palette of experimentation to keep the album from resembling the more more monotonous undertakings such as performed as Time Machines.

The album begins with the short "Unprepared Piano" which is a tribute to John Cage and establishes a precarious balance between the chaos and order approach that COIL made all their own. While utterly inaccessible from a traditional popular music point of view, the avant-garde approach allows the album to proceed in a similar manner which finds the electronic-oriented tracks like the following "Red Skeletons" creating a consistent rhythmic flow of sound courtesy of strange loops, sonic patterns, scattered sequences and sound effects that seemed to have been sampled primarily from industrial soundscapes and processed through the arsenal of sound-altering devices that COIL had amassed during its career. The entire album flows accordingly with different rhythmic jingles, blurbs, pulsations, beats, bangs, freaky loops or whatever the band could cleverly conjure up in the midst of whatever they did to channel such strange and hypnotic flows of consciousness. The difference between A THOUSAND LIGHTS IN A DARKENED ROOM and other COIL releases is the fact that group really put a lot of effort in crafting a diverse roster of tracks that implemented a wide array of sonic textures, timbres, dynamics and unorthodoxies as humanly possible.

Overall this is one of the most playful COIL releases that offered surprises at every juncture with stranger than life sonic textures, beyond bizarre effects, delicately designed rhythms and other musical elements including the occasional melodic touches to interact in some of the most peculiar unconventional methodologies imaginable. Tracks like "Blue Rats" even harken back to the group's more industrial dance days from albums like "Scatology" and "Horse Rotorvator." As BLACK LIGHT DISTRICT i have to say that COIL crafted one of its most diverse sounding albums of its beyond eclectic career and is somewhat comparable to the "Unnatural History" compilations which featured a similar continuity yet scattered with unbridled creative prowess. This is certainly the kind of music only electronic avant-gardists crave and will be completely unintelligible to those who have not conditioned themselves to the COIL universe. This has always been one of my favorite COIL releases but as i listen again currently paying attention with an intense scrutiny like never before i have to conclude that this album displays the perfect balance of detachment, engagement, melodic interplay, human connections, bouts of chaos and atonal freakery. A THOUSAND LIGHTS IN A DARKENED ROOM is without a doubt the perfect display of an avant-garde electronica masterpiece.

The English experimental electronic act COIL was so very, very innovative and always thinking outside of the box with seemingly every album they released. While woefully misunderstood and beyond the the comprehension of most listeners of established musical genres, COIL continued to dabble with new equipment, new concepts and new musical expressions that were hitherto never associated with certain concepts and yet the creative triumvirate of Peter Christopherson, John Balance and Drew McDowall never ceased to meld music and electronic timbres with esoteric concepts such as philosophy, theology and spiritual practices.

1998 was a very productive year with not only the "Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)" set of four EPs each representing one part of each season (equinoxes and solstices) but also found the band conjuring up yet another pseudonym, this time the moniker TIME MACHINES. This one-off released an album of the same name and featured four psychedelic drone pieces each named after a hallucinogenic drug. The titles were presented with a partiality of their scientific organic chemical name thus the opening track "Methoxy-β-Carboline: (Telepathine)" was basically a truncated form of the preferred IUPAC name 7-Methoxy-1-methyl-9H-pyrido[3,4-b]indole but given that the fanbase most likely weren't trained organic chemists, it's doubtful anyone really cared.

The album of 73 1/2 minutes playing time featured four lengthy tracks, the first and last well over 23 minutes in length with the second over 13 and the third only slightly over 10. The album mixed long drones with binaural beats and psychedelic electronic embellishments. The idea of the album was to create temporal slips which were known to occur while ingesting the chemical compounds referred to in the track titles. The inspiration actually stemmed from the hypnotic states created in Tibetan spiritual music only presented in more of a shamanic rainforest leader's way of ingesting psilocybin mushrooms or DMT and telpathine which are both components of ayahuasca. The album was intended to be a 5-disc box set but that idea was scrapped as was another plan to release a 2-disc version later on. A "Time Machines II" has been released archivally only as a Peter Christopherson solo release.

Musically the drone is the primary element but the release also uses binaural beats which refers to the auditory illusion perceived as the listener hears two separate frequencies in each ear leading one to interpret the difference between the the frequencies as one tone thus more effective on headphones. This alone is purported to affect brain waves and in some cases has been promoted as a healing mechanism by various record labels. Psychedelic sounds were created with modular synthesizers and above a consistent tone of a drone, oscillating electronic sounds pulsate like a heartbeat or other rhythmic flow. There are no traces of melody or orthodox compositional musical structures here whatsoever. This is purely experimental electronica designed to alter consciousness through hypnotic trance inducing waves and monotonous tones.

The album was actually performed live at London's Royal Festil Hall in a show called "Time Machines From The Heart Of Darkness" in the year 2000. The positive feedback found the band continuing such performances until COIL's demise in 2004 after the death of John Balance. Overall anyone adverse to non-melodic drone albums will not enjoy this one bit and while such minimalistic music isn't my primary passion, when done correctly it can be mesmerizing and indeed transcendental and the requirement of ingesting the chemical compounds is not a prerequisite in the least. COIL just had a knack for making seemingly boring concepts pulsate with life although one has to meet it halfway and accept it on its own terms. TIME MACHINES has gained a loyal cult following and although not every release in the COIL playbook is a doozy, for some reason this really does resonate on that energetic and subliminal level in a way i can neither comprehend or explain. All i can say is that when i'm in the mood for an effective drone album, TIME MACHINES really does deliver what it promises.

This is certainly one album i got the right introduction to. In fact i can't think of a better way to become acquainted with one of COIL's most mind-blowing and alienating freakfests of its entire career. Back in my party days i let my naughty friends influence me into the occasional night of overindulgence where i didn't hold back and went for it with all the youthful nonchalance and gleeful intoxication that one would expect from someone in their early 20s. One fateful night my friend who prided himself on trying and turning everyone on to his favorite new intoxicant of choice gathered his friends for a drunken drug-fueled night of excess. Oh yeah! Those were the days :D

Having always been a lightweight in the drug and alcohol department i ended up passing out on the couch with the party still in tact only to wake up after most guests either puked their guts and and passed out elsewhere or just went home. Upon waking up in the pitch dark only with the music still playing, bizarre sounds were oozing out of the hi-fi speakers and exposing me to one of the absolute strangest sound journeys i had ever encountered at that period. This was the music of a friend who introduced me to the vast array of electronic music that i was rather clueless about at the time being a metalhead primarily at that age. To make it even more transcendental my buddy who worked at a hi-fi music store in the San Francisco Bay Area had one of the best sound systems that existed in the early 2000s.

Upon awakening my mind was blown into a million pieces as i sat there and listened to the most uncategorizable musical sound clips which in the morning i discovered was coming from the album WORSHIP THE GLITCH under the moniker ELPH VS COIL. Laying there soaking in the album in my state of mind with nowhere to escape i merely became one with the music that was specifically designed to showcase an unthinkable array of sound effects that can only be heard on the absolute best recording systems. While no album sounds as good on a YouTube video or regular stereo system, this was on a whole other level with an entire spectrum of sound effects that could only be detected on a hi-fi sound system that offered a wider spectrum of sound than the average.

Of course this experience affected me profoundly and although i had already known of COIL, nothing sounded like this one except perhaps a few early tracks that were compiled onto the first compilation of "Unnatural History." The ELPH VS COIL in reality refers to COIL itself given that ELPH was a pseudonym that John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Drew McDowall used for two releases that utilized computer mistakes from their own equipment and used as the sound effects that were organized into creepy, ethereal and eerie melodies that excelled at taking your mind on the wildest journey possible in the context of experimental glitch electronica. Following in the footsteps of the 1994 EP "Born Again Pagans" which itself was released under the moniker COIL VS ELPH rather than ELPH VS COIL, WORSHIP THE GLITCH polished the imperfections of that production into a serious gem of mind [%*!#]ery.

By mixing the sounds of computer glitches and forging them into bizarre samples and instrumental rhythms, the album is almost exclusively instrumental except for the rare vocal samplings of Aleister Crowley's wife Leah HIrsig which adds an even more bizarre sense of esoteric abstruseness to the mix. These guys even managed to include the track "Mono" which is a highly processed and unrecognizable cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down." Esoteric references lurk around every corner but nothing is really more relevant than the music itself which represented some of the most creative expression of sound mistakes ever recorded and taken to such extremes. The holographic cover art pretty much symbolizes what you get as the bizarre worlds of dark ambient and glitch mix and meander with sound collages and electroacoustic psychedelia. Easily the most influential glitch album to spawn the genre that followed.

While it may be tempting to conclude that the album is only good under the conditions of my first exposure, i have often revisted this one over the years to see how it holds up on its own without the ample use of a drug high experienced in the dark on the best stereo system of the day. I'm happy to say that the ingenuity alone guarantees that for anyone seeking the most wildly experimental and creative fertile soundscapes conceivable, WORSHIP THE GLITCH more than holds up under the scrutiny of my now completely sober brain primarily judging its qualities on intellect rather than emotional impact. For me it works on multiple levels and although this is hardly the place for COIL newbies to begin their journey, for those well indoctrinated into the COIL cult who crave their most wild and unapologetic visions of true sound freedom, this will surely please them immensely if they take the time to really examine this beyond the initial alienation effect. Personally this one ranks very high in the mighty COIL's canon and although a bit too abstract to pull out on a regular basis, totally hits the spot like no other when such musical excess is needed.

One of the more awkward releases in COIL's massive discography, the music on THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION included some of the earliest recordings of John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Stephen Thrower around the same time as the band's debut "Scatology." The music was created exclusively for the soundtrack of the 1985 film titled THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION, an arthouse drama film directed by Derek Jarman. The film featured homoerotic images and served as a visual quest that was supposed to represent a dream state and the daily rituals of navigating the violence of the real world in order to transcend into some sort of perceived paradise.

The music eventually found its way onto CD in 1994 but obviously lost a lot of the effect without the intended visuals. COIL mixed various orchestral samples with dark ambient atmospheres and surreal musical soundscapes that merged the world of musique concrète with neoclassical darkwave and nature recordings. The soundtrack also featured recurring spoken word recitations of Shakespeare sonnets read by Judi Dench. COIL also used samples from the debut EP "How To Destroy Angels" and the track "Never" was previously released in a shorter form on the "Unnatural History" compilation.

This is a rather lengthy album at nearly 70 minutes and never seems to really go anywhere. It's primarily an incessant flow of abstract swirlies that float around like amoebas in a petri dish and while the ambience aspects with snippets of orchestral embellishments is a nice way to drone out for an hour's run, the incessant poetic prose of Judi Dench constantly contrasts with the otherwise surreal and detached nature of the musical flow which for my tastes ruins it. Not that the music itself varies much at all as it sounds like the ultimate recycling of snippets and tidbits that never really coalesce into anything other than aimless ambience.

I've personally never seen the film the soundtrack accompanies but usually these types of film scores are only relevant in conjunct with the visual aspects and / or dialogue that they accompany and that is definitely the case with THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION. This is probably my least favorite album in COIL's entire discography but yet it isn't totally awful either. I really only pull this out and listen to it every few years after i totally forget what it sounds like only to be reminded why i didn't care for it much in the first place. The ultimate collector's only edition but since i'm a huge rabid fan of COIL's insanely experimental electronic sounds i couldn't possibly live without this mostly unheard album in my collection. Worthy of hearing once in a while but it really fails to engage in any meaningful way whatsoever.

As a huge fan of 80s-90s Swans, Throbbing Gristle, and Bauhaus, I'm surprised that I never gave Coil much thought before.

The instrumentation is industrial in parts (think TG's 20 Jazz Funk Greats), and in other parts reminds me of Jarboe era Swans such as Soundtracks for the Blind.

The singing style and negative lyrics feel somewhere between Throbbing Gristle, Neurosis, and Bauhaus. They are unmistakeably English in style, with little of the American drawl or low register associated with Michael Gira.

This album would have been a difficult sell back when I listened to 70s-derived prog, but it very much clicks when starting from a love of no-wave, industrial, and avant-garde.

Five stars from me - this is an instant essential within my library.

I have never actually listened to any works of Coil. I have heard of them and I definitely seen their album covers, but I never actually listened to their albums, at least not fully. But on one day someone on Discord recommended this album to me since I liked more weird music. I thought, why not, how about I listen to something new for a change. I didn't know what to expect from the album, but I was eager to find out. One thing I have noticed with the album is that it had a very morbid and almost grief like sound to it (probably enhanced after the death of John Balance). It also has a really pretty experimental edge to it in the vocals and production value. It really feels like a album for the dead and for those beyond the grave. But the album also feels like a sort of 7 stages of grief in it's sound where some songs sound like they are sad, in denial, angry, and soon, accepting. This is definitely an interesting album and definitely one worth checking out if you like more experimental music.

COIL's ambitious recording work ethic led to many tracks being rerecorded, remixed or completely reinterpreted over the years and one of the first of these collections of new inspirations emerged with the 1992 version of HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS only with the tagged on subtitle "(New Remixes and Recordings)" to distinguish it from the 1984 EP of the same name.

While the original EP only consisted of the 17 minute title track and the one second of silence at the end titled "Absolute Elsewhere," this remix album contains six tracks that reimagine the same track in various different ways. This album was the collaborative effort of COIL itself meaning John Balance and Peter Christopherson along with Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound.

Balance remixed "The Sleeper," "The Sleeper II" and "Tectonic Plates," Christopherson remixed "Remotely" and "Dismal Orb" and Stapleton remixed "How To Destroy Angels II." "Absolute Elsewhere" remained the same unmixed silence as on the original EP :D Generally speaking the tracks are so radically different from one another that's it's almost impossible to tell that they are indeed spawned from the same source.

HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS Remixes is an extremely dark and bleak journey through the deep darkened harshness that evokes the chilling sounds of some terrifying underworld. While it may be difficult to even call this music due to the incessant industrial droning effect and the wild and unpredictable synthesized sounds that simulate everything from beastly breathing to hydraulic systems having a very bad day, this collection of reinterpretations does hit the spot if you are seeking some of the most sadistic sounds possible.

This 1992 Remix album is almost always one of the lowest rated and under appreciated COIL releases when you gaze upon the lengthy canon list that spans four decades of releases and i can totally understand the reason for this. Firstly, there's relatively little to grasp on to and much less to relate to in any sense of musical structures or patterns. This one is all about freaky unnerving sounds that are designed to terrify.

For that it works quite well but even though COIL is one of my favorite artists of all time, i have to admit that i rarely play this one but when i do i am utterly in awe as this instantly makes me feel as if i'd been transported into a virtual reality set of an H.R. Giger scene from Necronomicon and although my desire to go there often rarely occurs, when i do have the urge to experience the bleakest existence possible in terms of sound then an album like HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS is exactly what Dr Evil ordered.

3.5 rounded down