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!
