Coil

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this blog. There may be some re-ups, there may be some Youtube clips for newer releases, as I don't like to post whole albums until they've been out for a couple of years. Maybe I will edit my hissy fit below. (Maybe not, as I stand by everything in it.)
In the meantime, here is a re-upload of my personal selection of Coil favourites - it may differ slightly from the last one I posted, as I deleted that playlist from my itunes.
This is music that has consistently blown my mind and transported me every time I have listened to it over the years. Balance and Sleazy were two wizards of aural delight, and are still sadly missed, I'm sure, by many around the world.

You can download and unpack these files separately. Depositfiles is the host.

Part 1
Part 2

4E - 4E4ME4YOU

Back to Cologne for another freaky dose of the mighty Khan. Released in 1998, this is actually by Khan as his alias 4E 'introducing DJ Snax'. I'm not sure exactly what Snax contributes to this (just looking at the liner notes: co-wrote 2,3,10; additional keyboards and trumpets on 5 & 9) but this has Khan's personality stamped all over it.
This album is made up of the murky, granular and acidified instrumental hip-hop beats that were being released on the Pharma label, and by some of his compatriots who had moved on from the more bleepy spaced out techno of the early/mid 90s. Air Liquide pursued a similar path, but to be fair, they were doing it pretty early on. This loses none of the trippyness of the earlier work, but achieves the mong-factor through different methods. The beats are insistent and thuggish, and overlaid with freeform acidic splurges, manipulated vocals and a kind of lurching, drunkenly woozy danger; like a possibly scary dude looming in and out of your face speaking a loud foreign language at you in a strange club at 4am, when your eyes aren't focusing properly and you keep having to remind yourself where you are.
It's not all menacing weirdness - there are some cheeky tunes, like the perky 'Smoke Me Up I'm A Cigarette' and 'Stay Fresh', and 'Sleep Taster' and 'Swamp Foot' hit danceable speeds. My favourites, tough, are the slow moody numbers - 'Sonog' weaves some strangely manipulated Polynesian-sounding female vocals aroung a chugging fist of a beat, with some growling analogue. Probably the best of all is 'Iglesia Pentecostal De Electronica', which has Tie Fighter samples added to completely mashed vocals and disconcerting out of time industrial percussion.

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Blue - Mexican Church

A dark and classy electronica album from 1996. This was released on the venerable Andrew Weatherall's Emissions Audio Output label, and other than that I know very little about these chaps.
This draws heavily from industrial (and) dub sources, which is perhaps why it has dated better than most of the electronic music from 1996 - foregoing the crispy drums machines and crystalline synths in favour of a more murky and sludgy concoction. Some of the melodies remind me of Coil, which is probably why I like this album so much: the synths at the end of 'Gorgon', for example. There's nice use of backwards sounds, and slightly pitch-bent lines which inject that element of queasy psychedelia. They don't entirely abandon danceability, though - there are some squelchy bass breakbeat groovers ('Dark Blue', 'Lower') for the more mogadon discoteques. Weirdly, last preoper track 'Sand Stone' is a decent example of the more chirpy IDM sound of '96, and although it's good, I prefer the darker areas the rest of the album deals with.

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Phantomsmasher - Phantomsmasher

Phantomsmasher is the pet project of avant guitar master James Plotkin, who has collaborated with a large and fine array of weird-beard musicians, including harrowing mega-doom merchants Khanate. This album couldn't be further from Khanate's crawling, crushing music: it's often hyper fast, with the beats ranging from metallic blast beats to splattercore drum & bass style, played by grind master extrodinaire Dave Witte. It's severely ADHD, manic and brilliant. Smeared across the top are harshly edited and scratched vocal loops, and Plotkin's spangly clanging guitar and bass - often heavily processed, playing queasily grating riffs, and chords that tremble like metal pylons in an electrical storm. It's pretty harsh, and totally unhinged, but is great fun. Plotkin's level of invention on his instruments, and the crazy range of noises and brilliant editing keep up the interest, although the music can be challenging.

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Salaryman - Salaryman

1996 album on City Slang by this bunch of geeky-appearing bods (I saw them live), that seems to have disappeared into a historical crack. Sumptuous psychedelic grooves abound, with a plethora of overdriven synth lines and a heavy, over-arching sci-fi ambience. Live drums are the driving force, with a backdrop of whispered speech loops, but the trippy looped synths are the stars - pulsating blips and burbles alongside moody throbbing tremelo waves. A live band feel adds a sense of urgency to the sci-fi paranioa soundscapes, and indeed they were pretty good live. It's all good, but closer 'Hummous' is a highlight, with its squalling harmonics and heavy drone dirge; bettered only by the magnificent 'Voids And Superclusters', which lives up to its stellar title: a swirling black hole of churning synths, that has an almost Electric-Wizard-heavy moment as the pounding bass kicks in to glorious, stomping effect.

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James Plotkin & Mick Harris - Collapse

Excellent slab of ominous, industrial dark ambient from these two purveyors of fine sounds, released in 1996. Both had beginnings in far heavier musics - Napalm Death in the case of Mick Harris, and although this is superficially a long way from metal, it could also be seen almost as its logical conclusion. This is uncompromising, and very heavy; but also beautiful and meditative: it can be used for wholly immersive listening, or as a background wash. It responds to the volume level - if you turn it up you are shaken by the wall of bass; at lower volumes it becomes spectral and sepulchral. The exception would probably be 'Collision', which reflects its title with some clashing industrial noise, but on the whole this is a brilliantly executed and intriguing exploration of dark soundscapes. The best example of which is the 20 minute title track, which manages to convey both dread and exultation at once with its churning sonics.

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Current 93 - I Have a Special Plan for This World

Released in 2000 on Durtro. This is a single 22 minute track, consisting of David Tibet speaking words by American author Thomas Ligotti, with a minimal industrial/ambient musical backing. The words are remarkably dark, intense and apocalyptic; and David Tibet's voice is perfect for them - hinting at a kind of staring-eyed derangement. The speech is delivered in segments, as if they are being played on a portable tape player, with the sound of the play button being pressed. In between, there are weird granulated speech sounds, and a chilling tomb-like drone throbs all the way through.
Bleak and unsettling - one to listen to on your own, in the dark.

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Korea Soundblaster - Korea Soundblaster

From 2003, this album is a wild blast of completely acid-drenched mayhem. It's a full-on, saturated melting pot of metal riffs, deranged warbling vocal samples, bombastic organ, stumbling drums, outrageous dub echo and distorted noise. Not to mention the OTT moog-style burblings, atonal guitar leads, screams, bleeps and unidentified scary noises. All this is mashed together with little regard for niceties such as song structure or pleasing melodies, but it's such good fun to listen to that these absences are irrelevant. The songs tend to fade into each other, making this one long, crazed assault on your senses.
Thanks to Dimitri for this one.

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Terminal Cheesecake - Pearlesque Kings Of The Jewmost

Another slagheap of monolithic pounding industrial sludge dub, from 1992. Relentless bass, tons of reverb, drug references aplenty and some terrific samples - the usual excellent concoction. 'Satan Is Real' calls to mind Butthole Surfers, as does a lot of the album, which is of course a very good thing - with a blasting drum machine, and manic samples "I've got The craziest feeling all over my body" and "Satan!" hammering away at your senses, with some great grinding guitar that punctuates most of the album. 'Drug' is a superb psych-dub monster, smeared with delayed vocals and some space rock keyboards. It's all pretty great, really - there are some choice spoken word recordings from British TV news reports about various freakery, which only adds to the whole fucked up sense of abandon and joyous noise.
A shame that they can't reform for a few live shows, when there are so many unremarkable bands doing it these days.

Mediefire

David Tibet & Steven Stapleton - The Sadness Of Things

Aptly titled 1991 album from these two titans of the British post industrial avant garde. This consists of two long pieces which are very minimal. Listeners with a deficit of attention should probably avoid this.
The title track is propelled gently by slow and simple percussion, over a drone created by various woodwind, with occasional interjections of spoken phrases, and assorted echo effected noises. It evokes a Himalayan temple kind of vibe - desolate, but with dark and mysterious recesses, lit by the fading shimmers of softly struck gongs. 'The Grave And Beautiful Name Of Sadness' is a more traditional drone piece, which ebbs and flows with dark waves of sound comprised of chants, strings, synths - who knows what else. It's hard to tell because the overall sound is such an organic whole, and so well executed. This is a haunting piece, although the general texture of the sounds, and throbbing ambience make it quite meditative and relaxing.
Utterly excellent artwork, too, by Steven Stapleton - I wish I had this on vinyl!

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Einstürzende Neubauten - Ende Neu

Superb 1996 album by the German legends of industrial, which takes many of the sounds from the band's past, but deploys them in pursuit of a far more melodic end product. I'm sure there are many Neubauten fans who only prefer the noisy early stuff - I just prefer the later more melodic sound with a broader sound palette.
The first two tracks are a concise summation of their sound in 1996 - the frenetic opener 'Was Ist Ist', with thrashing metallic guitars and Blixa Bargeld's strident vocals, is followed by the lush string-led 'Stella Maris', where Blixa sings a gentle two part harmony with actress Meret Becker.
Throughout the album, the songwriting is excellent, the tunes are great, and there is a palpable sense of the band being absolute masters of their sound. The percussion is superb, as always, as is the use of non-music sounds, such as a pencil writing on paper. There are some propulsive grooves, too, that hark back to their motorik musical ancestors - on 'Installation no1', and most notably the 11 minute epic that is 'NNNAAAMMM' - which is chanted both as spelt - suggesting a car passing on the motorway, as well as being the initials of 'New no new age advanced ambient motor music machine': also chanted throughout. The rhythm of this track is helped along with some kind of chugging machinery to great effect. The title track is probably my favourite: a blend of distorted vocals, industrial percussion, and dramatic, ominous strings.

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Terminal Cheesecake - Gateau D'Espace

1992 EP of psychedelic industrial dub. A blend of pounding bass and drums, with heavily echoed shouty vocals, some grinding noisy bits, and primitive samples and loops forming a sludgy mass. Primitive is a great word for this band, as is monolithic. There is a kind of bloody mindedness that propels these cavernous grooves. I wish I'd seen this mob live, but I was too busy getting into techno at the time. I'm sure they would have been bowel-quakingly intense. Track titles give you a clue to their influences: 'Oily Bud', 'Herbal Alien Flavour', 'Extra Oily'. If you think they are heading into weed-nerd territory, they reveal the lack of seriousness with 'Blatant Drug Reference' and it's sampled chant of 'Marijuana'. Although they began as more of a noise rock band, I thought they really hit on a good formula with this relentless dub weirdness.
Excellent cover art is by Jim Sawers, who used to work at Tower Records when I did, in a different department. A top bloke - he's actually responsible for me owning the Bill Laswell album I posted a while back, too.

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Killing Joke - Hosannas From The Basement Of Hell

My metal choice for this month is this 2006 effort from Killing Joke. Massive, pounding, epic and heavy. They had perfected a great formula on this one: muscular and chugging riffs and Jaz Coleman's roar adorned by nice touches of keyboards. Definitely industrial metal, and you can feel the influence of Youth in some of the arrangements, with some very techno phrasing and some drops. There's even a chugging Kashmir-style track, with eastern style strings, that they pull off with aplomb. Highly enjoyable - good for hammering out in the car.

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