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Coil

Country: United Kingdom

Coil began in London in 1983 as John Balance's side project from Psychic TV and became a full group the next year when Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, a founder of Throbbing Gristle, joined him. Scatology (1984), Horse Rotorvator (1986) and Love's Secret Domain (1991) took industrial music somewhere baroque and sensual, mixing tape collage, orchestral samples, acid house and ritual. Later the pair moved to the coast and turned inward: the drone experiments of Time Machines (1998), the two volumes of Musick to Play in the Dark, and the ecstatic live sets of the early 2000s with Thighpaulsandra.

Issue Three
New zine dedicated to Coil: the esoteric music project pursued by Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson.  Issue 3 of the ongoing zine dedicated to researching the importance of Coil. A5, perfect bound, 72 pages. Contents Singularities of Art and Natureby John Coulthart “There’s a Man Laying Down in a Grave Somewhere” Poem for Jhonn Balanceby Joseph Breitman "Shadows only exist when the spotlight is on"An Interview with Mead McLean “In Perpetual Motion”:The Coil Manifesto as Theory in Practiceby…
Issue Two
New zine dedicated to Coil: the esoteric music project pursued by Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson. Issue 2 of the new zine dedicated to the incomparable legacy of Coil. A5, perfect bound, 64 pages. A Slip (or a Jump) In Beverley Roadby Nick Soulsby Letter to the Esoteric Order of Dagonby John Balance Towards a Magickal Appreciation of Coilby Patrick Weir Agapanthus: Four Poems for John Balanceby Jeremy Reed The Chaosphereby Stephen Sennitt Shakespeare, Jarman, Coil: A Conversationby Corma…
Issue One
New zine dedicated to Coil: the esoteric music project pursued by Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson. Coil are greatly mourned and yet their project feels just as urgent now as it did when they were here. This zine will pore over the products they left behind, hoping to reinvigorate a living interest in their radical praxis. A5 perfect bound zine, 60 pages. "A timely publication, given the persistent and increasing interest in Coil, and one whose essays are all of a quality belied by the “zi…
The New Backwards
"The New Backwards" was conceived by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn't seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber "Ape of Naples" from 2005, Coil's initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance. Significantly different to its sister release, this album collects the brilliantly chaotic and outrageously rhythmic material from the original sessions for the album tha…
qXn948s
* Limited Clear Vinyl edition * SoiSong is the stunning but short-lived partnership of Coil co-founder Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and veteran Russian electronic experimentalist Ivan Pavlov. Though friends since 1997, the project birthed roughly a decade later in Bangkok, where Christopherson relocated following the death of his Coil collaborator John Balance in 2004. Named after the Thai word for ‘two’ along with a notorious red-light district street nearby, the duo dialed into a cryptic lang…
Theme From The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex
180gr black vinyl version Entirely a category of their own, fifteen years after the untimely passing of John Balance and the project’s demise, it remains impossible to calculate the importance of Coil. For just over two decades, following the band’s founding by Balance in 1983, it stood among the great emblems of underground music - a full realisation of the seeds and potential planted by punk, bred with the higher realms of experimental and electronic music. Their sprawling, deeply emotive cat…
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Queens of the Circulating Library
**Clear vinyl edition** Queens Of The Circulating Library stands alongside Time Machines and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith as a post-industrial pinnacle of sensory-warping long-form drone. Crafted by the distilled duo of Thighpaulsandra and John Balance, the 49-minute piece unfurls in swirling, cyclical waves, tidal as much as textural, channeling the spirit of levitational minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young. Touted as the first part in "a continually mutating series of circulating…
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Form Grows Rampant
The Threshold HouseBoys Choir was a project by Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson. Operating out of Bangkok, Thailand, the Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV founding member started this audio and visual endeavour following Coil's end. Despite the name, it was a solo project which relied heavily on computer generated vocals. 'Form Grows Rampant' is the soundtrack of a film shot by Christopherson (a video capture at the GinJae Vegetarian Festival in the south of Thailand) and his first major musical pro…
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City of Light
*500 copies limited 'indian green' color vinyl*  City of Light is the sixth solo album by American composer Bill Laswell, released on July 29, 1997. While it may appear an anachronism in his catalog, fans of Bill Laswell will find City of Light an extension of ideas he has explored throughout his career. His strong interest in Eastern music and religion resulted in this 1997 collaboration with Janet Rienstra. Part sacred, spoken word, part meditative soundscape, City of Light takes as its inspir…
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Nekrophile Records 1983-1990
* Edition of 666 * Symbolically limited to 666 copies, housed in a deluxe wooden box, and also including an exclusive t-shirt and a 240-page book, this magnificent set feature no less than ten LPs and two 7" vinyl records covering the entire Nekrophile Rekords original output, with the welcome addition of two unreleased full-lenght albums by Coming To Now and Metgumbnerbone. Comprehensive edition about the legendary Nekrophile Records tape label. Founded in Vienna by Michael Dewitt, also known a…
Musick To Play In The Dark²
After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a s…
A Sip From A Cup Of Mercury
* Gray area reissue * Limited to 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl. These are essentially the non-live audio backdrops to some of Coil's live shows in 2003-2004.
The Abrahadabra Letters 1984 - 1988 (Book)
From 1984 to 1988 Anthony Blokdijk frequently visited Threshold House in London and corresponded with John Balance of Coil about playing live, releasing music and personal affairs. This book collects scans of Balance's original letters, including idiosyncratic decorative flourishes and provides insight into his colourful world. Also included two articles on Coil from Blokdijk's Abrahadabra magazine, and an interview with Coil he conducted for the Dutch magazine Opscene. Translations included. Fo…
Presents Coil / Aural Rage
** Marbled Vinyl Re-edition of 100 for the very limited lathe-cut 10". First time on vinyl ** Released for the XV Congresso Post Industriale, OEC's Label festival, on January 26 2019 in a limited edition of only 45 lathe-cut copies. Finally those 2 tracks see the light into solid vinyl! Here you go for two exlusive tracks in best Danny Hyde / Coil traditions featuring Sleazy & John... Tracklist:A. Coil - Where's Your Child / Moon Change Re-Mix (Black Antlers - Danny Hyde / Peter Sleazy Christoph…
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Love's Secret Domain
* Deluxe Hardcover Triple-Gatefold 3xLP. Gold Vinyl, sold-out at source * In 1991 Coil released the third of their early classic full-length albums "Love's Secret Domain", seemingly casting aside the gloom and funereal beauty of its predecessors in favour of a painstakingly multi-layered hallucinogenic electronic beast, which unlike some of their fellow ex-industrial contemporaries' releases of the time wasn't an attempt at easy accessibility or (the-gods-forbid) danceability, but a vibrating ps…
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A Guide For Beginners
**Deluxe reissue of 2xCD 'Best Of' by the esoteric experimental pioneers** Out-of-print on CD for almost two decades, Cold Spring announce the official reissue of a much sought after Best Of set by the acclaimed esoteric experimental pioneers Coil, with A Guide For Beginners - The Voice Of Silver and A Guide For Finishers - A Hair Of Gold being made available together in one deluxe set. Officially licensed from FEELEE, this edition spans Coil's entire career, featuring tracks from all their majo…
Unnatural History
* Gray area reissue * A collection of hard or even impossible to find international LP, 7-inch and cassette compilation tracks. A showcase of Coil's early days. Limited edition of 500 sets, containing four clear vinyl LP's, boxed with an insert and booklet.
Sara Dale's Sensual Massage
CD digipack ed. Sara Dale's Sensual Massage was a delightful erotic video with a mystic soundtrack by Coil. Quite unusual for the band dreamy ambient, almost spa-relaxed soft harmonies, bland tribal rhythms, chimes, and birdsong but still with dark mysterious and inimitable Coil musick's charm. However, the second part of the album explores more rhythmic structures that remind 'Gay Man's Guide...' soundtrack.  Besides the OST recordings, the edition includes bonus tracks from the "Basilisk prod.…
The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex +3
**Limited edition of 100 cassettes in a mini VHS vacuum case. The cassette shell is transparent red with white screenprinting on top and is held together by adhesive.** Entirely a category of their own, fifteen years after the untimely passing of John Balance and the project’s demise, it remains impossible to calculate the importance of Coil. For just over two decades, following the band’s founding by Balance in 1983, it stood among the great emblems of underground music - a full realisation of …
Swanyard
**2CD in a 6-panel Digipak, second pressing in white color** 150 minutes of previously unreleased material from Coil, strewn with parts that would eventually metastasise into Backwards, and ultimately Black Light District and Musick To Play In the Dark.We hardly need to stress that Swanyard is a bounty for Coil nuts out there, but equally a fascinating listen for anyone attempting to get to grips with their unfathomable catalogue - especially DJs and listeners currently digging into the underbel…
Un/finished Musics
**Edition of 500, black vinyl** These rare recordings were recorded as part of the legendary prescription label album series in the late 1990's that resulted in the album "Astral Disaster". Coil were invited to record at Sun Dial's studios beneath the London Bridge Hop Exchange. This studio was originally know as Samurai studios that was originally built and owned by Iron Maiden.  The premises in Victorian times was an old debtors prison which had three levels underground, and still had the orig…
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A Prison of Measured Time
**CD version, to be released in late June 2020** Recorded at Creek house, Swanyard and Bushmead studio in 1995-1998. "In 1995 and before I was employed to take tracks home and manipulate the streams to create new content. The way I did this was a process I called “Rate/Stretch, I won’t go into details, but it was very successful at creating whole new content. From these experiments came the “scorn“ dreamspace mix, and much of Black Light District. After we came back from New Orleans working on t…
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Stolen & Contaminated Songs
** Double LP on sumptuous 180gm BONE vinyl, housed in a glossy 350gsm gatefold sleeve. Ltd 800 ** Cold Spring are proud to announce the long-awaited reissue of Coil’s 1992 album, presented on CD and, for the first time, on vinyl. Stolen & Contaminated Songs was recorded and produced in 1992. It is comprised of over 60 minutes of outtakes and unreleased songs, evolved during the recording sessions for their prior album, Love’s Secret Domain. A wealth of superb material showcasing the diversity of…
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Love's Secret Demise
Originally collated on a demo tape for WaxTrax! records in 1989 under the working title ‘The Side Effects of Life’, these are the raw early iterations of tracks that would become Coil's ‘Love’s Secret Domain’, and arguably one of the ’90s definitive albums. Only a handful of the original cassette are known to exist, and have understandably become important artefacts in their own right, so it’s a massive buzz to finally, physically grasp the album in its entirety, here supplemented by material of…
Elph vs Coil: Worship The Glitch
Coil’s cultishly acclaimed Worship The Glitch features the group in dialogue with the ghost in the machine, an element they named ELpH and considered as much a part of the group as any physical member. Aye, you’d probably be right in assuming they were taking a lot of drugs during the creation of Worship The Glitch, and consequently the results stand out among their trippiest releases, comparable with the rugged space of early Pan Sonic and slightly later Mika Vainio releases as much as Philip J…
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Black Light District: A Thousand Lights In A Darkened Room
...At Last, it's here! During the transitional period in which Coil’s primary leadership (Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and John Balance) reorganized their creative direction by taking on new membership in the group through their inclusion of Drew McDowall, Coil took a drastic turn towards the metaphysical unknown. Employing the subtle handiwork of Coil’s “real life” members, as well as the cleverly guised aliases and spiritual collaborators, the band chose to filter their identity through a the…
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A Cold Cell In Bangkok
In stock! "In 2008, Domino Records invited Optimo to put together a compilation of music for them to release. I wanted to include Coil’s “A Cold Cell” and after approaching Peter Christopherson for permission to release it he suggested doing an exclusive remix for the compilation. How could I say no? The remix was titled “A Cold Cell In Bangkok”. It was glorious and many Coil fans as well as people who had previously never heard of them fell in love with it after hearing it on the “Sleepwa…
Another Brown World / Baby Food
Two rare tracks by Coil, never before released on vinyl and commissioned by Sub Rosa. These two pieces were commissioned by Sub Rosa for these two specific projects: Myths 4 - Sinople Twilight In Çatal Hüyük (1989) and Chaos In Expansion (1993). "Another Brown World" was written by John Balance and Peter Christopherson, produced and mixed by Coil, and recorded by Danny Hyde at Threshold House, London in the Summer of 1989. The vocals were recorded at the Animist Monastery situated at the Summ…
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The Melancholy Mad Tenant
In 1984 Vortex Campaign invited Coil and The New Blockaders to collaborate. The result, unofficially referred to as Dolbied, was released on cassette in an edition of 50. The release has since gone on to become legendary, showcasing two of the most influential groups in the scene at the early stages of their development. The melancholy mad tenant is an authorised release, sanctioned by all three groups. The tracks have been professionally re-mastered and in addition to the Coil/The New Blockader…
Transparent
Comes in a gatefold sleeve with a 12" booklet of unseen images and includes a download card. The entire Transparent recordings released for the first time, completely remastered from the unedited tapes. Zos Kia was formed by John Gosling (Mekon), John Balance (Coil) and Min - with guest Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle). Their one and only album, Transparent, was released on August 23rd, 1983 in a cassette only edition on the now defunct Austria label Nekrophile. They were the …
The New Backwards
LP version. The New Backwards, created in 2007, was originally included in the Ape Of Naples box set released on Important in 2008 and was constructed by Peter Christopherson using material from the Backwards sessions (CSR 203CD/LP), recorded in the early '90s for a planned release on Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. The New Backwards, like The Ape Of Naples, is an intense fan favorite and an essential part of the Coil catalog.
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Bundle
Threshold Archives - Remastered Reissues CD Bundle
*shipping on Tuesday* At long last, the posthumous reissues of Coil's near-sacrosanct catalogue gets underway with the first batch of eight CDs including some seriously remarkable finds. On each disc original releases are featured in their entirety alongside stacks of formerly unreleased material - remixes, demos, edits and instrumentals - amounting to one of the most gobsmacking archive retrievals of this decade. For the many who are understandably bewildered or even scared by Coil's sizeable…
Hate People Like Us
Remixes of PLU music by Coil, Negativland, Farmers Manual, Bruce Gilbert, Boyd Rice, Dummy run, Rehberg & Bauer, Stock Hausen & Walkman, Death in June, Christoph Heemann, Sons of Silence, Barbed and Mika Vainio. "Radio shows and kitsch 60's Easy Listening, found sounds, overheard conversations, all subjected to a malicious clown's fiendish tinkering and manipulation of texture and tempo... Wild but wonderful." -- Paul Stump in The Wire.
Recoiled
Five previously unreleased Coil remixes of Nine Inch Nails songs from the 1990s, mixed by Danny Hyde and Peter Christopherson. CD in digipak, Cold Spring, 2014.