COIL - LOVE'S SECRET DOMAIN @30

 

Thirty years ago today, on March 3rd, 1991, Coil released their third proper studio album, Love’s Secret Domain. For this project, core members Peter Christopherson and John Balance were joined by Stephen Thrower and Otto Avery with production & engineering helmed by Danny Hyde. The album also featured a significant list of guest performers including vocals by Marc Almond, Rose McDowall and Annie Anxiety.

Prior to the album’s release, Coil released a single of Windowpane in 1990, which was a song clearly displaying the influence of the electronic dance music scene that had become popular since the emergence of Acid House in 1988. In the ensuing years, “rave” culture had swept the underground and both John & Peter became deeply ensconced in it and its attendant mind altering substances. Indeed, the entire recording process for the album became steeped in psychedelic drugs, as indicated by the album's “LSD” acronym. As a result, some of the recording sessions became pretty mad affairs with conflicts frequently arising during production that could lead to days-long debates between members.

Stylistically, the sound of the dance floor can be clearly heard infiltrating the album as evidenced by the Windowpane single and The Snow, which is fully submerged into the transcendental rhythm of trance techno, though displaying production sophistication that was far beyond the aesthetics of most other contemporary producers of the era. But this was not the sole concern of the album as its styles diverged in a wide array: from sleazy nightclub jazz to deep, dark ambient passages to Spanish flamenco guitar flourishes and more. Yet the whole somehow manages to come together into a relatively coherent, trip-worthy soundtrack.

As far of the packaging, the cover features a gorgeous painting by Nurse With Wound main man, Steven Stapleton, who created the painting on a piece of wood from an old outhouse door that he had kicking around his property in Cooloorta. The image is an ingeniously multifaceted crypto-mystical phallic crest that resolves into a lion’s face when you look at it just the right way. It’s the kind of graphic that continues to reveal new elements within itself every time one takes a closer look. I’ve seen it for 30 years and I still keep finding new subliminal content emerging from its depths.

The production of this album was so intense that it left Coil in somewhat of a quandary in terms of how to follow it up. Struggling throughout most of the proceeding decade, the group didn’t start to produce fully realized albums again until the turn of the millennium. It’s not that they didn’t release anything, but what did get released was mostly experiments and idiosyncratic indulgences. They were certainly not without merit, but it wasn’t until the Music To Play In the Dark albums that they returned to writing “songs” in a more concise manner. Attempts were made to do another album as a continuation of LSD. They even went to the US and worked at Trent Reznor’s studio in New Orleans in the early 1990s on an album, Backwards, but they struggled to get what they wanted and the album that emerged from these sessions ended up shelved for many years. It wasn’t until after John’s death that these recordings surfaced in a remixed and reworked form on the Ape of Naples/New Backwards sets from 2007. Their original form didn’t get released until after Peter’s death on a 2015 remastered version of the Backwards album, though bootlegs of it had been making the rounds for two decades. All of this just means that LSD was a tough act to follow and left a legacy that many Coil fans consider the band’s peak.

For me, personally, the album certainly holds a special place in their canon of recordings, particularly Windowpane and its accompanying video, which I was fortunate enough to get to see shortly after it was produced in 1990. I have distinct memories of seeing it while high on acid myself and being completely blown away by its psychedelic majesty. It’s a simple concept; John, sporting a silver lamé jacket, flouncing around in the water against a golden sunset, overlaid with mirrored video FX, but it’s so beautifully rendered and it captures the experience of that altered state with remarkable accuracy and emotional resonance.

Since it’s original release, LSD has been reissued several times with at least two remastered editions including a brand new one to celebrate its 30th anniversary. So if you’re looking to discover it for the first time or bring it back into your life after a long absence, now’s the time to set the controls to go Further Back and Faster and grab a bottle of some Teenage Lightning!