MUSIC
Sacred, Psychedelic & Disciplined
Hermetic, homemade feel of “Musick to Play in the Dark”
BY STEVE ERICKSON
While Coil’s roots lay in
the industrial scene,
their music quickly
became more identifi
able by its esoteric atmosphere
than any genre ties. It conjures up
a vibe of occult ritual, with nonetoo
subtle references to psychedelic
drugs (take their album title
“Love’s Secret Domain” or the fact
that each of the four songs on “Main
Themes” was named after a different
substance) strewn around.
Coil began as a solo project of
singer/ producer John Balance, but
his partner Peter Christopherson
joined in 1982. A former member
of Throbbing Gristle, the band who
gave industrial music its name and
much of its sound, Christopherson
was also an accomplished photographer,
designer, and music video
director.
“Musick to Play in the Dark” reissue
has a hermetic, homemade feel
Although Christopherson started
off as a proud non-musician, he
worked with a proto-sampler using
tape loops before the instrument
became widely available and affordable.
Both Balance and Christopherson
participated in Throbbing
Gristle singer/ bassist Genesis
P-Orridge’s band/ cult Psychic TV
— P-Orridge started identifying
publicly as a trans woman late in
life — in its earliest manifestations,
sharing her spiritual interests but
growing disturbed at P-Orridge’s
use of her growing Thee Temple Ov
Psychick Youth as a genuine control
mechanism over her fans.
Coil’s fi rst decade occasionally
Dais Records releases Coil’s 1999 “Musick to Play in the Dark” on November 27.
fl irted with the mainstream. Their
pained, dirge-like cover of “Tainted
Love,” released soon after Soft Cell’s
version, was a benefi t for the Terrence
Higgins AIDS Trust, and its
video (directed by Christopherson,
with a cameo by Soft Cell singer
Marc Almond), which depicts a gay
man watching his lover die, may be
the fi rst major acknowledgement of
the disease in popular music. Without
changing a word of the original
song, fi rst recorded by soul singer
Gloria Jones in 1964, Coil made
the new meaning of “tainted love”
in 1985 hit home.
Later, Trent Reznor, who cited
them as an infl uence on Nine Inch
Nails, hired the group to remix
NIN (fi ve of these long-distance
collaborations are compiled on the
ep “Recoiled”), got Christopherson
to direct the suppressed pseudosnuff
fi lm “Broken,” and signed
the group to his Nothing label, although
their album “Backwards”
DAIS RECORDS
went unreleased for years.
Coil composed the scores for
gay directors Derek Jarman’s “The
Angelic Conversation” and Clive
Barker’s “Hellraiser,” reaping the
honor of having Barker’s studio reject
their work as too menacing for
a fi lm in which a man returns from
the dead as a skinned but horny
body.
After the rave scene’s infl uence
on “Love’s Secret Domain,” their
music became more hermetic and
private, refl ecting their home in the
countryside by the southwest coast
of England. While they worked
with outside musicians — thighpaulsandra
and Drew McDowall
contributed to “Musick to Play
in the Dark”— feels homemade.
While the band released much of
their music in limited editions on
their Threshold House label while
together, “Musick to Play in the
Dark” is one of a fl urry of recent
reissues, following Dais Records’
edition of the 1992 “Stolen and
Contaminated Songs” last year.
“Are You Shivering?” ushers in
a new period for the band; at the
time, Balance claimed they were
turning toward the moon for inspiration,
which is refl ected in the
cover art. According to author David
Keenan, the title refers to the
side effects of ecstasy, but the lyrics
are full of sexual allusions — “I
lie down and shiver in your silver
river” — enhanced by the heavy
breathing looped throughout. It
never becomes vulgar, instead refl
ecting a view of semen as a sacred
substance. The song builds
upon glitchy, chopped-up vocal
samples toward more direct and
straightforward passages using a
droning melody.
Against a sequencer pulse halfway
between Donna Summer’s “I
Feel Love” and Philip Glass, whirring
sound effects come in and out
of “Red Birds Will Fly Out of the
East and Destroy Paris in a Night”
for its fi rst two minutes. The song
gradually builds on top of its original
rhythm without ever letting it
go. Running 12-and-a-half minutes,
it’s carefully composed, even
if many of its elements, once again,
are based around distorted and
heavily processed vocals.
Afterwards, “Musick to Play in
the Dark” heads to the cabaret.
“Red Queen” begins with two minutes
of sped-up voices before turning
into a piano ballad. It’s the most
conventional song on the album,
with Balance delivering a critique
of the media’s power to create reality
in a bleary, distanced voice.
Given the band’s reputation for
chemical excess, “Musick to Play in
the Dark” sounds surprisingly disciplined.
The mix has a pointillist
detail, where every noise is carefully
positioned. The lengthy songs
were carefully structured, inspired
by lesbian composer Pauline Oliveros’
concept of “deep listening.”
“Musick to Play in the Dark” reemerges
into a much different
world, where music is often used as
background while we do three different
things on a laptop, albums
get chopped up into playlists, and
short songs that try to grab the listener
immediately get the most attention.
The long intros and outros
and slow builds here are alien to
that ethos, but Coil was making
their own occult version of sacred
music. Even if the specifi cs of their
belief system don’t always come
across from the album itself, “Musick
to Play in the Dark” carves out
a special space.
COIL | “Musick to Play in the Dark”
| Dais Records | Nov. 27 release
November 26 - December 2,30 2020 | GayCityNews.com
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