Coil is responsible for some of the more varied and prolific experimental music ever created (okay, fine, John Zorn still has more albums). Even today, the main duo — consisting of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and John Balance — accomplishes something rare when they’re at their best: they give you the creeps.
Coil has ventured into ambient, noise, and the straightforwardly bizarre; not all that surprising for a group that kicked off an album with a track called “The Anal Staircase” (which is actually a pretty good place to start for the uninitiated).
Dais knows all this; that’s why they’re behind a new reissue of a pair of the band’s 1995/1996 releases. Accessibility be damned; this is vintage Coil, an altogether steamy cross-section of what this group is all about. First, there’s ELpH vs. Coil, immortalized in Worship the Glitch. The “ELpH” was (is?) an inexplicable entity that was introducing errors into the studio’s creative processes, so much so that Sleazy and Balance believed they were collaborating with another band member (cue the X-Files theme). It would have been counterproductive to not embrace these chaotic elements; hence the worshiping of said-glitch.
Coil’s Black Light District project, on the other hand, includes REAL person Drew McDowall. Coming just on the heels of Worship the Glitch, A Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room hosts degraded chirps, reversed gongs, and all sorts of other aural abnormalities.
Get your Coil pre-orders on right here, and check out the cover art and tracklistings for both releases down below.
ELpH vs Coil - Worship The Glitch Tracklisting:
01. Dark Start
02. Opium Hum
03. Caged Birds
04. The Halliwell Hammers
05. Clorax Hurd
06. The Halliwell Hammers (2)
07. We Have Always Been Here
08. Manunkind
09. Bism
10. Hydlepark
11. Hysteron Proteron Jewel
12. Decadent & Symmetrical
13. Mono
14. The Halliwell Hammers (3)
15. Anything That Flies
16. Ended
Coil Presents Black Light District - A Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room Tracklisting:
01. Unprepared Piano
02. Red Skeletons
03. Die Wölfe Kommen Zurück
04. Refusal of Leave To Land
05. Stoned Circular I
06. Stoned Circular II
07. Green Water
08. Cold Dream of an Earth Star
09. Blue Rats
10. Scratches And Dust
11. London’s Lost Rivers
12. Chalice
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