Drone Records

COIL - Time Machines

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: DAIS Records DAIS103

Release Year: 2017

Note: IN STOCK NOW!! COIL as 'TIME MACHINES' : re-issue of this much requested release from 1998, when COIL created four drone "tones" named after psychoactive substances: Telepathine, DMT, Hecate, Psylocybin, enabling time travels; CD version incl. reproductions of the 6 original vinyl stickers, comes in gatefold brown board digipack with spot gloss overlay

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €15.00

More Info

"Coil's four legit drone pieces, released under the moniker 'Time Machines' in 1998, recorded one year earlier, using single takes with minimal post production. What has become one of the most treasured and revered pieces of COIL history ever released, is now for the first time available on vinyl.
"4 Tones to facilitate travel through time." So begins the listeners’ journey into what has become one of the most treasured and revered pieces of COIL history ever released.
Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for, and the album was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as "temporal slips" in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively "dissolve time".
Inspired by long form ceremonial music of Tibet and other religions, where the intent is to lose oneself in the music – to meditate or achieve a trance state – Time Machines became Drew McDowall, John Balance, and Peter Christopherson’s “electronic punk-primitive” answer to this tribal concept.
Starting as a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to Balance and Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil’s sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction. Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original – “Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience.”
Dais Records announces the official remastered reissues of Time Machines on both LP and CD. The reissued CD edition includes reproductions of the 6 original vinyl stickers and comes in a double-pocketed brown board digipack. The reissued double vinyl LP will feature deluxe double pocket gatefold, matte with gloss overlay with printed eurosleeves inserts. The European LP edition is limited to 1000 on transcent orange vinyl."

"The art of Coil involves a confluence of the surreal, the deviant, the magical and the psychedelic, all stemming from their inception within Industrial culture in the early '80s. Time Machines was conceived by Coil's John Balance, Peter Christopherson and Drew MacDowall back in 1998 as a series of audio hallucinogens, constructed by means of method acting. The zeitgeist of Time Machines is the very same as Spacemen 3's early compendium Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To, while the compositional sensibility travels down a very different path. For Balance, the concept to the album reflected the notion of hallucinogens as means of time travel, as he posited, "they can conjure up histories of yourself and/or act as predictors of the future. In any case, they can remove you from 'temporal reality.'" The four tracks are named after four powerful chemical compounds with hallucinogenic properties, with each track presumably engineered both for and through those exact chemicals. Such is deeply rooted in the tradition of kosmische electronica and psychonaut minimalism. La Monte Young, early Tangerine Dream, Nurse With Wound and certainly Coil stand at the pinnacle of a tradition for lysergic music that transcends the need for drug-taking to embrace the full experience.

Time Machines remains one of the few truly successful pieces of electronic music in this liminal oeuvre. Slow oscillating tones gird vibrating patterns, and black-hole echoes of rhythm slither in the distance behind slightly dissonant saw-tooth drones. This simple structural sensibility belies the investigative and imaginative prowess that Coil have long mastered. You can't just turn on a synthesizer and have these sounds spill from the circuitry. In Coil's calibration of electricity with chemistry, this immersive pool of sound is a stark document of their power in dissolving time." [Stranded Rec.]

"Vier Klangreisen zu halluzinogenen Verbindungen. Meditation in post-spiritueller
Versuchsanordnung.

Vier Töne, um eine Reise durch die Zeit zu erleben. So beginnt der Trip zu einer der geheimnisvollsten Veröffentlichungen in der langen Geschichte von Coil. Jedes der vier Stücke von "Time Machines" ist nach
der chemischen Verbindung einer halluzinogenen Substanz benannt. Das Album wurde konzipiert, um zu ermöglichen, was John Balance als eine Art "Fehltritt" in Zeit und Raum bezeichnet; die Möglichkeit für Künstler wie Publikum, sich im übertragenen Sinne in der Zeit aufzulösen, eine Art Gegenstück zu spiritueller Musik. Die drei Musiker verstehen dieses Werk als eine elektronische und von der Primitivität des Punks
inspirierte Antwort auf die lange Tradition zeremonieller Musik und Stammeskonzepte verschiedener Religionen, denen es darum geht, zu meditieren und sich in der Musik zu verlieren. Das Projekt begann als Demo-Tape, das ausschließlich von Drew McDowall aufgenommen wurde, und formte sich voll und ganz aus,
als er es Balance und Peter Christopherson vorstellte. Es entstanden vier Klanggebilde, die 1997 als First Takes aufgenommen und nur minimal nachproduziert wurden." [label info]