Coil – Love's Secret Domain

this isn't coil's best album and the idea that it is is an extrapolation of legend, based upon historical events that have been blown out of proportion. the truth is that there is a specific pressing of this album that is difficult to find and has value to collectors due to the label it was released upon; this is what has fuelled the legends about it being a classic record. if it's so hard to find, it must be great, right?

well, the record itself has never been hard to find; it's only that specific pressing, remember? in fact, i have two copies of the record. i was given both by lucky people that had found the rare pressing.

the rare pressing was the wax trax! version of the record. see, wax trax! was bought out by tvt around the same time that the first pressing of the record happened. all subsequent pressings were manufactured by tvt. wax trax! was the cool, underground, industrial label. tvt was a bunch of suits from new york. hence, the obvious appeal of the wax trax! version.

as for the record itself, it's an interesting pastiche of druid pop music, instrumental hip-hop, melodic idm, caribbean music, australian music and several other diverse and seemingly unintuitively complimentary ingredients. the result is a record that is extremely interesting from start to finish and is as a result enjoyable to listen to from start to finish. however, the record doesn't really hit any climaxes. sure, it tries. take dark river, for instance. if the track is supposed to sound like a music box floating through space like an asteroid, it accomplishes it's goal. however, it does so with a 20 second loop over six and a half minutes. i can't accept that as a climax. further back and faster tries next, but what is this? number 5 jamming with some australians in the outback, with a voice over by who? timothy leary? don't misunderstand me, it's a pretty cool eight minutes; didgeridoos and talking robots sound kind of cool together. but, a climax? chaostrophy almost pulls it off in a fuzzy electronic haze of ethnic chamber music, but it doesn't sound like a climax of the record so much as it sounds like a climax of itself. finally, there's the title track - an electronic pop tune with a jerry lee lewis swagger, a mccartney flair and a renaissance tonality and that manages to "borrow" from both william blake and roy orbison. climax? it's a pop song.

so, in it's attempt to cover a large swathe of territory the record became highly disjointed and even somewhat erratic. while certainly enjoyable, it just doesn't exist as an entity and it just doesn't have defined peaks. if you like any abstraction at all in your electronic music, you should definitely check this out but you should do so under the understanding that it's a collection of substantially dissimilar songs and not a cohesive record.

1993: techno was beginning to grow cliched and crusty already. Love's Secret Domain came flying in from left field and knocked a lot of us upside the head. It wasn't techno or rock or post-punk, house, experimental or industrial. A little of each, certainly but most of all it is a concept album. A personal oeuvre of some young bright minds saying "here's how we percieve existence". The tension of hyperawareness runs through each of these pieces like a painful throbbing wound.
Disco hospital starts with some cut-up to raise the shackles of the listener and blast away preconcieved notions. Teenage lightning is a wistful glance back to the intense and unforgettable moments of first love. Things happen brings us past the glow of youth into the late-twenties, with a fantastically run-down female vocalist who sounds like an east european Dorian Gray. Then comes the snow: voices of the dead singing at the living across the frozen wasteland of time. Dark River is a contemplative demo that might be filler, but it provides some needed emotional breathing room before track 6, which is possibly the best use of digeridoo in any piece i've heard (before it became overused). Also the dub-like bass kick on 06 is a great speaker test. Teenage lightning 2 is an even more keening bossa nova revierie on lost youth. Windowpane is a bit of an electro-dub throwback to Throbbing-Gristle/Psychic_TV. Further Back and Faster has to be one of trippiest damn tracks ever - a unique combination of dub rhythm and acid synth textures - play it LOUD! Titan arch takes us into gothy This Mortal Coil-esque trance. Chaostrophy is a fantastic piece of heavy drug schizophrenia - shades of 'Revolution Number Nine'. Lorca Not Orca is our third melancholy encounter with Teenage Lightning. The album finishes strong with a quavering shakespearian spin on William Blake's "the Sick Rose". Anyone into Industrial, Goth or Darkwave or just plain creative electronica needs to hear (and buy!) this truly seminal CD.