FERMENTING MOON MUSICK

FERMENTING MOON MUSICK : A Conversation with John Balance of Coil.

Michael Moynihan and Joshua Buckley.

TYR: Myth, Culture and Tradition, Volume 2. Ultra. 2004.

When he was twelve years old, John Balance wrote to Alex Sanders, Britain's self-proclaimed "King of the Witches." Sanders shot back the discouraging rejoinder that Balance would have to wait until he was older before he could join the coven. Within a few years, Balance's enthusiasm for Sander's brand of smoke-and-mirrors "witchcraft" had faded. But his willingness to pursue the shadowier side of human (and, perhaps, more-than-human) existence had not.

By 1980, Balance had begun publishing the early industrial music fanzine Stabmental, chronicling the activities of seminal groups like Cabaret Voltaire and SPK. His work as an underground journalist would eventually lead to a chance meeting with Peter "Sleazy" Christophersen, then a member of Throbbing Gristle. Christophersen had also been a part of the legendary design firm Hipgnosis, and would later make a name for himself directing music videos for everyone from Barry Gibb to Rage Against the Machine. But it was Christophersen's and Balance's mutual interests in Crowley, surrealism, avant-garde music, and the deliberate alteration of consciousness which cemented their working relationship. This partnership would form the core of Balance's "musick" group Coil, and a long and by now fabled career has followed.

Describing Coil's music is no easy task; each album can be seen as a sort of self-enclosed statement, and there is little stylistic continuity between one offering and the next. Early releases like Scatology and Horse Rotorvator alternated between bowelchurning dissonance and crystalline, euphonious clarity. Coil's often brilliantly subversive soundtrack work for European television commercials has been documented on the Unnatural History series of discs, while their original score for one-time friend Clive Barker's Hellraiser film was rejected by the major studios for not being commercial enough. Love's Secret Domain, perhaps the group's most accessible album, attempted to read early-1990s rave culture as something more than just aimlessly indulgent hedonism. Other projects have been decidedly more unusual. Coil have experimented with "sidereal sound", inspired by Austin Osman Spare's sidereal illustrations, and have created whole albums out of found sounds and studio glitches, reinterpreted as transmissions from a disembodied intelligence. Coil designed their Time Machines project to facilitate time travel, and calibrated each piece to the sensations brought on by a variety of obscure psychotropics.

But Coil's solstice albums, and their incredible, two-volume Musick to Play in the Dark, undoubtedly represent the most mature phase in the group's development. Balance has truly come into his own as a vocalist, while Coil's music seems to have achieved a certain consistency, despite remaining as challenging as ever - if not more so. Much of Coil's history has now been documented in David Keenan's laboriously detailed new book England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground (London: SAF Publishing, 2003), which traces their career, along with those of occasional collaborators Current 93 and Nurse With Wound. Those new to Coil's intimidatingly varied catalog also have a much needed place to start: the recently issued retrospective, The Golden Hare With a Voice of Silver.

________________________________

TYR — You have said that you were born with a "pagan sensibility." You have also spent years exploring the possibilities of magic, psychedelics, and other tools designed to alter consciousness. What is the relationship between these types of pursuits and paganism? One can practice magic, for instance, without being a pagan - and vice versa. But as far as you're concerned, are these things all somehow connected?

JB — Yes, they are connected - most definitely, both in plain sight and also in the most subtle ectoplasmic and tendril-like ways. There are countless definitions of Magick and as many branches and paths that the pagan can travel down. I am a pagan. I derive my inspiration and my life energy from the observation of, appreciation of, and intercourse with Nature. Natural Magick. Currently I am deep into a year-long encounter with what I describe as "PAN energy." I am closely bound together in this with Ian Johnstone, who I met last year and who has been a central effervescence, guardian, and guide throughout the turmoils and trials that adhering to such a strange, rarely traveled path brings with it. This whole year has been one of new beginnings, dark echoes of previous events, and ghostly encounters. We have lived a raw-nerve procession of seasons. It is as if we are clearing dense, thorny foilage both for ourselves, and therefore in each of our personal lives, and also for others who come swiftly behind in parallel explorations. As regards psychedelics, narcotics, and vegetable allies, I presently only have eyes for the beetroot. Shamanism is the root and the branch and the leaf of my particular World Tree. Last year when Coil played live it seemed very much to be an ending of one sort of exploration and mode of expression. I had a particularly lonely and hard winter and was thrown into a bleak place the likes of which I have never encountered before. A dark night of the soul. The worlds of politics and art and spirituality and of almost every belief and inner drive and enthusiasm for life and for living were tested until I nearly broke. I think I did break, in fact, but was mended again over time with my friends' help and especially with Ian's help, for he never stopped believing in me despite the ugly distortions that I was creating and presenting outwardly, lost in the shamanic tangle. I became a shame-man, revolted to the point of acute rejection and illness by what "Manunkind" was doing in the world and to the planet at large. Now I'm out the other side of this crisis and am full of joy and am finalizing my turnaround. Ian and I, along with Simon Norris and others, are planning a printed project, or rather, series of projects, under the overall name of ONE. There will be a magazine (Pan-zine?) and printed posters and broadsheets, etc. I feel that to set into word and image the results and conclusions, the catalyzing ideas and images that we have imagined and evolved and worked on, and most importantly lived this year, is the way forward. To make a mark and a difference we now have to publish and disseminate PAN ideas and beliefs. These include organic gardening and food production, growing and working with medicinal fungi, establishing and encouraging private press editions, public poetry readings, performances and events, reducing and making people aware of light pollution, reducing consumption of everything, buying locally, helping establish woodlands with native species of trees, reactivating old ceremonies and traditions. I don't mean that we ourselves will be doing all of these things all the time, but we will attempt to inspire via ONE a sense of place and purpose. There is an excellent organization doing this kind of work already called Common Ground. They are based in the U.K.

TYR — One of Coil's most ambitious projects in recent years has been the Moon's Milk cycle of musical works for the solar/astronomical quarter days. Each equinoctial or solstitial piece appears to have been begun in one year and completed at the same time the following year. What led you to conceive this project, and how did you see it through to completion - did you make initial recordings on one equinox and then set them aside, only reapproaching and finishing them a year later?

JB — I was interested in exploring time in musick. And musick in time. I coined the phrase "Musick cures you of time." I was interested in the phenomenon of literally being "lost in musick." I wanted Coil to play continuously for a week, eating and sleeping where we played for a whole cycle of time, working in shifts to ensure the chain of events and expression was never broken. One person could play for twelve hours solo and then be joined by the rest for forty minutes. All sorts of combinations become possible. The individual becomes part of a much larger and boundless vehicle of sound. Moving to a larger house by the sea where the tides and their cycles can be seen from many of the windows deepened my sense of ebb and flow, of lunar rhythms and patterns and the whole procession of the seasons. When Sleazy and I lived in Chiswick, London, we used to take our two basenji dogs for walks down to the river Thames. It was a five-minute walk from Threshold House. The Thames has a high tidal volume and there were times when you could literally walk on the exposed riverbed. In these walks and at this time I became very aware of the moon and its power and influences and I decided to begin to call our work with Coil "Moon Musick." This meant that instead of working with preconceived and structured pieces, we would trust to chance and intuition. Nearly all the lyrics and vocal takes from the solstice/equinox series were one-offs. First takes. I didn't have any words or ideas written down in advance (actually I would have a vague notion or theme in mind, but this was deliberately left fresh and unformed until the recording of my vocal). The result is there to hear. Some of the words are sounds and impressions and are unformed, not finished, but that is how they are meant to be. I had to learn to trust to my own inner system of images and poetics. The same went for the majority of the actual sounds you hear - the musick was written live. Improvised. Bill Breeze's extraordinary viola parts on Moon's Milk were one-take performances. The only thing we did was to edit and select the pieces and sections that worked best for our purpose, and to shape the final songs from the streams and shards that the experiment became. We did record at the correct astrological time to the best of our admittedly limited knowledge. If mistakes were made they are excused by the fact that we remained faithful to the spirit of the adventure. The bones are all shown there and they are all bare or partially concealed by after-work and tidying up. Yes, we did record passages and then set them aside until time was again right. They were left to ferment with Moon Juice.

TYR — Coil has always had a reputation for confronting the darker aspects of existence - chaos, violence, and deviant sexuality have been recurrent themes throughout most of your career. In recent years, however, you seem to have moved towards a more earth-centered type of spirituality (although not at all in the regrettable, New Age sense.) In the end, is this where the "path of excess" has led you?

JB — Personally I've found that the path of excess leads to the palace of excess, and to insecurity, neuroses, a profound disillusionment with almost everything, and an insurmountable depression. I have never been one to do things by halves and I have suffered as a consequence of my youthful adventures with the Left-Hand Paths. I ended up on antidepressants and found myself burdened with the ugly common yoke of alcohol abuse and addiction. I am currently free of these ordinary and dismal traps. I wish I had never gone onto antidepressants. They are a nightmare to come off of and my doctor, along with nearly all the medical industry, seems to want people on the fucking things. I recommend that everyone read the fantastic Feral House book Pills-A-Go-Go. I was profoundly depressed. I needed a deep-rest. To be surrounded by Nature and natural things was the way in which I eventually walked away (well, with more of a lopsided hobble) a free man. Now I find a time to be silent with myself every day. I exercise my voice and my body by chanting and singing. I am swimming more and most of all I'm going out into the countryside and just being there in it. Finding a deep spiritual drive and energy from immersing myself in the green and in the wood and in the water and the light that plays on the water. I'm in love and of course that helps enormously, but fundamentally being alone in Nature provides all the psychic nutrition my soul needs. Anything else is a joyful and heart-bursting gift. I still carry an intrinsic deviancy with me whereever I go. It's part of my askew take on the universe. I revel in the gnarly, the crippled, the liminal, and the sidereal. Distortions, outcasts, hybrids populate my crepuscular celebrations. Polymorphous perversions. All horned animals!

TYR — It would seem, then that relocating to the British countryside played a significant part in your spiritual development.

JB — Indeed it did. We have a young oak forest right behind our house - in fact, the garden merges with it. We have an Iron Age fort directly above our house, and evidence of a very early goddess-centered temple in the middle of the woods. The local museum has a small white stone statue of what looks to me very much like Astarte that was found up in the woods in the 1890's. The remains of a Roman altar were found in the garden next to ours around the same time. There is a place on the narrow steep peninsula that our house is located on where you can hear the sea on both sides of you, and it mingles with the sound of the dry leaves rustling to create a very special place.

________________________________