Album of the Week #16: Coil - Love's Secret Domain
This is Album of the Week #16 ~ This week's album is Coil - Love's Secret Domain
Year of Release: 1991
Genre(s): Industrial
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 61 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)
Excerpt from The Quietus:
... the combined musical impact of Love's Secret Domain remains undiminished: a sonic world erupting with mind-spinning ingenuity, that beneath its surface strangeness, holds more hooks and grooves than a Cenobite's playroom. As always with Coil, however, Love's Secret Domain is about more than music; it's an exploration of what it meant, in 1991, to be a deeply inquisitive consciousness, all channels on, all bandwidths open, trapped in a human body and surrounded by the joy, anger and madness of existence. It's a palimpsest of an incredibly potent time for London's underground cultures, a mindmap of spaces, now largely lost ...
Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?
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“Tell me what it’s like in Ohio, baby”
I grew up with Coil starting when they released “Horse Rotorvator” back when I was in high school. “Love’s Secret Domain” (LSD) was on the first time I did windowpane LSD 🤪. I have a very long history with Coil, their multiple side projects and collabs. Easily in my Top 5 “bands” of all time.
I would also include with LSD their “Stolen & Contaminated Songs” which was their LSD out-take/demo release not long after. I actually treat these two as a single, somewhat cohesive album. I’m not sure if it’s even available because the company that did the CD pressing screwed something up and the metal oxidized. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. My copy has been unplayable for decades but I had thankfully copied it to a DAT when I first bought it.
My copy of Stolen and Contaminated Songs also stopped playing many years ago :(
Unfortunately, it was so long ago that the MP3s I encoded from it are a paltry 192kbps.
Wow, I certainly didn't expect to see this album pop up.
I think this is a pretty great album, and definitely one Coil's most listenable album for most people (e.g. they have some albums that feel like pure experimental noise).
I'm not sure what genre you can really classify this as other than something broad like "Electronic" or nebulous like "Experimental", maybe some flavor of "Industrial".
I ended up discovering Coil around when this album was released because I liked a lot of bands on the Wax Trax label and I was always trying to find more available at local music shop. Coil was notable for doing some of the cooler NIN remixes throughout the 90s as well.
I lob them into the “Magik” genre of music along with the likes of PsychicTV, Throbbing Gristle, KLF, etc. Electronic, “noise”, experimental…full of hallucinogens and weird magik spirituality and symbology.
I've never heard of that genre, but it certainly fits since Coil and PsychicTV were formed from the members of Throbbing Gristle and they both have that vibe.
I've come across Coil before. They seem like a predecessor & darker foil to the band The Books who came later with a lot more carefree/optimistic music. I've seen Coil described as dark psychedelica and The Books and light psychedelica which I agree with. Still learning and getting a grasp on Coil