Coil – K.422 Records – 1984

Ubu Noir / Panic / At The Heart Of It All / Tenderness Of Wolves / The Spoiler / Clap

Solar Lodge / The Sewage Workers Birthday Party / Godhead = Deathead / Cathedral In Flames

For this years Halloween celebrations I have uploaded the stunning debut LP by Coil released (via Some Bizzare records) on the K.422 record label way back in 1984. John Balance and Peter Christopherson are both joined in the making of these recordings by Stephen Thrower, Clint Ruin A.K.A. Foetus,  ex Alternative TV (and sometime Psychic TV member) Alex Ferguson and Gavin Friday from the Virgin Prunes.  The whole package was produced by Clint Ruin taking some time of from his Foetus duties.

Texts below regarding Coil courtesy of brainwashed.com. The Halloween text was violently slashed by my rusty knife and stitched back together again upon a dark deserted moor from various Halloween websites.

Coil – Manifesto – 1983

The Price Of Existence Is Eternal Warfare

COIL is a hidden universal. A code. A key for which the WHOLE does not exist. Is NONEXISTENT, in silence and secrecy. A spell. A spiral. A serpents SHt round a female cycle. A whirlwind. A double helix. DNA. Electricity and elementals. Atonal noise, and brutal poetry.

COIL is amorphous. Luminous and constant change. Inbuilt obSOLescence. Inbuilt Disobedience. A vehicle for obsessions. Dreamcycles in perpetual motion. We are cutthroats. Infantile. Immaculately Conceived. Dis-eased. The Virus is Khaos. The cure is Delirium.

COIL are Archangels of KHAOS. The price we pay for existence is eternal Warfare. There is a hidden coil of strength, dormant beneath the sediment of convention. Dreams lead us under the surface, over the edge, to the Delerium state. UNCHAINED. Past impositions and false universals. Reassembling into OUR order.

COIL. Who has the nerve to dream, create and kill, while the whole moves every part stands still. Our rationale is the irrationAL. Hallucination is the truth our graves are dug with. COIL is compulsion. URGE and construction. Dead letters fall from our shedding skins. Kabbala and KHAOS. Thanatos and Thelema. Archangels and Antichrists. Open and Close. Truth and Deliberation. Traps and Disorientation.

Coil exist between Here and Here. We are Janus Headed. Plural. Out of time. Out of place. Out of Spite. An antidote for when people become poisons.

COIL know how to destroy Angels. How to paralyse. Imagine the world in a bottle. We take the bottle, smash it, and open your throat with it. I warn you we are Murderous. We massacre the logical revolts. We know everything! We know one thing only. Absolute existence, absolute motion, absolute direction, absolute Truth. NOW, HERE, US.

“Not Knowing What Is And Is Not

Knowing, I Knew Not”

Hassan i Sabbah

Zigzag, September 1985

Boys From The Crap Stuff by Tom Vague

‘Better that the whole world should be destroyed and perish utterly than that a free man should refrain from one act to which his nature moves him.’ (K.Marx)

‘I think we have a deviant viewpoint. But the important thing for me is we’re not saying that our viewpoint is the only one. It’s just a viewpoint which is as true for me as Mary Whitehouse’s is for her. Although I might disagree with her violently, I would not do anything to stop Mary Whitehouse holding her opinion. Just as I should hope, albeit a vain hope, that she would do nothing to stop me holding my opinion.’ (Sleazy Peter Christopherson of COIL)

I’m obviously not going to get through an article on COIL without indulging in any crap jokes…

When the excrement hits the fan what Coil are about is the pursuit of pleasure. If this pursuit entails the realization of unconventional hidden desires all the better. In fact conventional pleasure and desire are the things that COIL would flush down the pan, along with the Mary Whitehouse christian ethic that any pleasure gained from an unconventional source is a sin. They’re not the first to come out of this particularly medieval closet, as their album sleeve notes outline; acknowledging the efforts of Salvador Dali and the Surrealists. But, considering the subject matter they choose to make their point, COIL’s approach to it is arguably one of the most effective.

For a start an album, ‘SCATOLOGY’ by name, and by nature, that has not only won them a certain commercial acceptance that neither of the two-man nucleus of COIL had experienced before. As co-founder of THROBBING GRISTLE and PSYCHIC TV, Sleazy Peter Christopherson has never been that far away from a taboo or two, or the ensuing wrath of the supposedly libertarian press. And taboos and slaggings were never thin on the ground for him and present day coil-laborator John Balance in the intermediate incarnation of PTV. Yet as Gen and Co. remain reviled, even in their most conventional phase to date, COIL have taken the ‘darker side of life’ cliché to it’s logical conclusion, touching on the subject that nobody touches: Shit. And they’ve turned it into gold.

John Balance, the moody and intense, young punk of the pair, puts it down to ‘coming clean’; “I always had in the back of my mind this three point plan, where we were going to introduce COIL gently, then slowly get it harder and even more extreme and explore in a new way, without it being anything like Neubauten or SPK because that’s been done before.”

“So by our standards ‘Scatology’ is the most accessible,” laughs chubby faced Sleazy, who although considerably older and more experienced than John, has the younger face of the two and the air of a schoolboy prankster about him.

It’s only an air mind you. Conventionally speaking ‘Scatology’ is anything but accessible. On the surface it’s an inventive, compelling collection of noises, rhythms, chants and scratch-ditties, articulately honed and directed in such a way as to attract more than just the hardcore Noise-Freak.

The predominating subject matter is … another matter. Open minded to the last (cough!) I skirt round the issue and consider aloud the danger of desensitizing by dwelling on the dark side all the time. Sleazy comes clean; “I am personally interested in the subject matter of our album. And I don’t think the way it was presented was done in a particularly shocking way. It was done much more from the point of view of sharing new information and experience, that most people aren’t likely to have come across.”

But surely when you’re up the creek, knee deep in existence, the object is to search for some beauty in life, not subject yourself to the more repulsive side. Or is it?

“That’s Oscar Wilde!” jibes John, and Sleazy counters; “I agree, but who’s to say what’s beautiful and what’s repulsive. That’s what the record’s actually about.”

On the whole COIL’s personal or metaphorical approach had been interpreted as cleverly dealing, in a kind of purgatorial way, with common needs in everyone. Bringing out the child’s innocent fascination before conditioned guilt is instilled. So we’ve established that they’re not pruriently trying to exploit disgust, but did they intend to test people?

“Fundamentally ourselves,” offers Sleazy, “I think we’re testing ourselves particularly. If you say yes, we’re testing people, that sounds like it’s an intentional thing.”
“And that sounds like we’ve got the answer,” continues John, “which is never what we presume.”
“I think what we do is a celebration of the things that we enjoy,” says Sleazy, reiterating. “Whether they’re silly things like shit, or whether they’re important like spiritual things, the fact that we might find beauty and pleasure and fulfilment in different areas than the conventional ones, is one of the things that makes us interesting and possibly sets us apart from Go West, who seem to be completely, so deeply entrenched in M.O.R. music for the masses, as it were, that I think they have nothing whatsoever to say of any interest…. I won’t get to do a Go West video now.”

As odd as it may sound, for such a tasteful chap as Sleazy Peter Christopherson, he is something of a (professional) authority on conventional consumer-orientated pop music. From his work with hippy design group ‘Hipgnosis’ in the early 70′s (he was later responsible for the notorious ‘BOY’ shop window display and the censored first ever Sex Pistols photo-session in a public toilet) he now holds down a day job as a promo-video maker for, wittily named, ‘Hipgnosis’ off shoot ‘Greenback Films’, with whom he’s been partly responsible for all kinds of real horrors, best not mentioned in these innocent pages.

Stimulants and tranquillizers; Shake in your shoes technocrats. For the time being the Balance remains: “It’s like when people ask what will the next entertainment boom be? Will we get TV’s that you can touch and feel and smell? The same thing applies. 90% of the stuff broadcast on these machines is going to be as much rubbish as what’s on Radio 1. The technology will move up but the content will remain static and boring. It’s a static society. Anyone who’s on the boundaries pushes outwards, society tolerates it to a certain extent, because some evolution is necessary. But if you go too far you get your wrists slapped or you become a symbol like Boy George and get accepted back again like some anti-body in the blood stream … I mean I think we do find strange things beautiful. That’s not to say we have a deviant view point.” (!?!)

COIL recently put a deviant strain into the consumer-pop mainstream with a devastating re-working-cum-parody of ‘Tainted Love’. (Nurtured and programmed by omnipresent virus in his own right, Clint Ruin.) Apparently it’s some kind of in-joke at ‘Some Bizarre’, and along with it’s vinyl coupling ‘Panic’ a ‘sick but meaningful, desecratory but sensitive, well intentioned’ joke about the paranoia epidemic AIDS. ie. It’s instigation by the virulent strain of reactionary conservatism sweeping the country. A far more dangerous disease than any dodgy germ-warfare tactic. All the profits from it go to The Terence Higgins trust, which offers help and advice to AIDS sufferers.

The essence of this and their soundtrack for Jarman’s latest baby, ‘The Angelic Conversation’ (‘Isn’t exactly Raiders of the Lost Ark’: Sleazy, with soundtrack album, ‘The Sound of Music’ forthcoming) is an intuitively simple and humane new approach to an old problem. By their most unconventional means COIL have found some light at the end of the tunnel.

Halloween history and traditions

Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today. Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity and life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. Halloween has long been thought of as a day when the dead can return to the earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off these roaming ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day and the Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children’s holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in the winter season.

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain.

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints’, All Saints’, and All Souls’, were called Hallowmas.

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday, with luck, by next Halloween, be married.

In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night, she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle. 

Another day with connections to Halloween is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on November 5. Guy Fawkes was a Roman Catholic who planned to blow up the Protestant House of Parliament on November 5, 1606; luckily for the House, he was apprehended and executed. Afterwards, the anniversary of the day was celebrated by building straw effigies, entreating passersby for “a penny for the Guy”, and finally burning “the Guys” in bonfires.