EXPERIMENTAL SPACE AND SOUND // Coil - Musick to Play in the Dark // COMPOSER REACTION & ANALYSIS

Bryan reacts to and talks about his thoughts on Coil's album " Musick to Play in the Dark"
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00:00 Intro
02:09 Reaction: Are You Shivering?
11:54 Analysis: I Have No Context For This
17:10 Analysis: Simple Yet Effective
23:40 Analysis: I'm Constantly Off-Balance
31:35 Lyrical Dive
40:53 Reaction: Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East...
53:25 Analysis: Reminds Me of 3D Animation
56:07 Analysis: Improvisational Playing?
1:03:57 Analysis: Kinda Bounced Off Of Me
1:05:45 Analysis: I Have No Context For This (Part Two)
1:09:33 Reaction: Red Queen
1:20:46 Analysis: Is This An Early Attempt At Experimental Sounds?
1:25:26 Analysis: Sonic Experimentation
1:35:48 Analysis: A Perfect Voice for the Sound
1:37:09 Lyrical Dive
1:41:23 Reaction: Broccoli
1:50:48 Analysis: Subverting My Expectations
1:52:05 Analysis: A Different Type of Experimentation
1:59:21 Analysis: Actually In The Dark?
2:02:07 Lyrical Dive
2:05:31 Reaction: Strange Birds
2:13:10 Analysis: Was This Music?
2:21:06 Lyrical Dive
2:21:55 Reaction: The Dreamer Is Still Asleep
2:32:07 Analysis: A Perfect Conclusion
2:38:45 Lyrical Dive
2:46:45 Outro
#reaction #coil #electronic

[@hextatik_sound]

YES!!!!!!

[@morgue_file]

Bro you've been killing it with the album and track reaction choices lately. As a *very* brief and *uneducated* context - Coil are as much occult practitioners (magickians) as they are musicians/artists. And similarly, Musick To Play In The Dark is as much an experimental electronic album as it is a magickal effort, or ritual, by the band based around what I would qualify as Lunar magick. In regards to the first track's lyrics; silver representing the divine feminine, or the moon. Gold representing the divine masculine, or the sun. At least in my interpretation. Knowing just that, I feel like the rest of the song (and album) kinda falls in line. Sort of like an ode to the moon and the divine feminine imo. Could be completely off base, of course. Jhonn Balance is a bizarre, esoteric poet and his words are intended to tap into the subconscious, so it's up to you I suppose.

[@progperljungman8218]

Not his own choice, but a cool one 😊

[@monsirto]

"Were" bless 'em 👿

[@morgue_file]

@@monsirto sad but true

[@MusicMissionary]

I understand a lot of the weird sound effects are sigils or spells.

[@ghork3202]

A reaction and analysis of a full Coil album. Won't find this anywhere else, awesome.

[@amphitheatre]

coil is my favorite band and it was nice to see someone unfamiliar experience it. you seem to be an open and sensitive person able to capture some of what they were going for without knowing anything about them, so good job there. i bristled at some of the "noodling" comments but wasn't offended. musick is the only thing left for me, all friends are gone or kept at a distance, so seeing someone engage with coil is doing more for me than most i bet. i watched this over a week and wrote the comments below as i did, hoping to provide a little insight. i hope you check out musick volume 2 and moon's milk, albums which continues these themes with even stronger efforts. thanks for spending time. 5:42 the crackling is from drew, who was the only member of the band at the time actually working at night, the others put things together the following morning so your guess is pretty close i think! 10:12 i think the vocal patterns are random, modulated by tremolo. coil has many parts on sequence (timed with the computer) but many parts seem to just flow outside of the beat. 1:05:52 this came out may 1st, beltane, 1999. there is a flyer showing the date. the album was mail order only originally. 1:13:00 red birds is about nostradamus, there are lyrics just chopped up by birdwings i guess. the music is almost entirely from Thighpaulsandra, the newest member of the band at the time and the only one with musical training. red queen is strangely prescient seems to be about social media before its time. 1:31:00 they're using a korg wavedrum, I'm pretty sure. digital synthesizer with very realistic snare sounds. i have one and yes it does brushes perfectly. 1:32:30 I've never figured out this sound either! not knowing a sounds source is what attracted me to this music. "feeling lost" as you say is very good at making you want more, i think. 1:48:55 its a sample yes, if you mean the female falsetto vocals. its not humming but i like that interpretation a lot for the sub bass track! a fathers voice at bedtime, warning you about your hygiene. feelings that happen at night. 1:53:53 peter christopherson only has vocals on 3 tracks across 23 years of working with coil, its him in the left channel at the beginning of broccoli. and yes not trained but childhood innocence is a strong theme on this track! 2:40:00 in short: its king arthur. john balance was a lifelong fan of avalon and the idea behind it is inventing the common denominator of english history through the past. the english past takes root in other albums like Astral Disaster and Megalothomania. 2:41:58 the cycle here is that coil went from sun to moon musick! the lyric is meta textual. their early career is more masculine, danceable and loud. with the band moving to the seaside the feminine took over for the last 5 years of balances life, where he watched the moons' pull on the tide in Weston's seaside as much as he did in London living along the Thames.

[@JohnLloydDavis]

I've been listening to Coil since the early days and my favourite was always Stolen and Contaminated Songs closely followed by Loves Secret Domain. There was a hiatus (as Coil do) and suddenly online this album appeared in 1999. I preordered it as soon as I heard it was available and got it through the post directly from Coil. I loved it so much. It strikes me that when Thighpaulsandra joined them (especially on this album and part 2) there was a real shift in the quality of the recorded works. If Coil weren't atmospheric before they certainly were on these albums.

[@thesmogo]

Current 93 album next!

[@Ca11mero]

Thunder perfect mind? :)

[@martinh1457]

YES please.

[@StuntrockConfusion]

It's the second time I catch you reacting to Coil. Few bands benefit more from context than them, IMHO. Peterchristopherson did some incredible graphic design in the 70ies, withing the Hypgnosis studio, for bands like Pink FLoyd, Peter Gabriel, Sex Pistols... At the same time he was starting his Throbbing Gristle quatuor, which defined industrial music. As this band was an ego mindfield, he left to start Coil, with his lover, John Balance. Coil started out in extremely dark and perverse music, but avoided teen angst obnoxiousness by inserting poetry, chaos, sex, magic and absurdity. throughout the 80ies, they grew that sound, also influenced by the pastoral folklore of pagan Britain, and the social and industrial wasteland created by Thatcher. They helped the great movie director Derek Jarman with his most radical works, deeply influenced Clive Barker with Hellraiser, and became the matrix of the first 4 Nine Inch Nails records, so much so that Trent Reznor produced an album for them, and they helped him out with tons of sound design, which can be reflected in the opening credits of Se7en, the movie. By the early 90ies, they had embraced acid house and its drugs, which Love Secret Domain (LSD, with its pills ejaculating cock on the cover, painted by Steven Stapleton, of Nurse With Wound), which turned their music more evidently towards electronic music, and psychedelia. Musick To Play in the Dark 1 may be my second least favorite Coil album, and I do love it, but it is an album of experiments with the then current technology, attemting to insert humanity in it, however much existentialist. It was a turning point, as it is when forward thinking musical journalism starts to take them seriously, and not just as agent provocateurs. They were far more than that already, but it was convinient to deem artists you don't understand as goth, put a stygmata on them. I don't really consider Coil as an album band, except on a few occasions, and MTPITD1 is one of those. I much prefer some songs from the second volume, and most of their later 2000's output, but it was nice for you to discover it that way, even if you are not sold on it. Anyways, keep it intereesting in 2024, cheers.

[@BlackburnBigdragon]

That second song on this album made me think of the Tangerine Dream album, Phaedra.

[@progperljungman8218]

Right with you!

[@josschakenraad6415]

No wonder. The track is in fact a modern tribute to the '70s work of Tangerine Dream. Mostly early '70s (Rubycon, Pheadra, Ricochet), but also a little bit of Cyclone (1978) and Force majeure (1979). The deliberate similarities are audible: shifting and recurring patterns, human-like voices (Cyclone) and the modern imitation of the mellotron sound of that time. The entire track emphatically exudes a Tangerine Dream atmosphere, but it is also audible that it is not Tangerine Dream, but something from many years later. With modern equipment, while Tangerine Dream eventually unfortunately drifted towards electronic kitsch with modern equipment.

[@spectralisation]

Jean Michel Jarre (especially track "Arpegiator") and Klaus Schulze also come in mind. Yeah this one is really an indulgent retro callback to the classic golden age kosmische electronic music.

[@josschakenraad6415]

@@spectralisation Arpegiator is a great track. Apparently a simple track, but a brilliant composition.

[@Ca11mero]

One of my favorite albums out there. Just sitting in a dark room with eyes closed and listen to this from start to finish :)

[@spectralisation]

Silver and Gold in "Are you shivering?", I believe, refers to Moon and Sun, and by proxy - Day and Night and everything that's associated with these; Like, where are you? In silver or in gold? Narrator then goes on to lead you into the silver light of the Moon (liquid Moon, since it's shining upon you through dark cold water in which you, the listener, are submerged). The track I think is intentionally longer than strictly necessary and serves as a long hallway which conditions and seduces you into a certain frame of mind for the rest of the album, in order to create the distance between the world of Daylight (Gold) and the world of Nighttime (Silver), it's "Musick to play in the dark" after all. The word Musick is also a play on the word Magick - Coil used to be practitioners of occult "Magick" and their entire musical concept was always married to the occult, ritualistic, magical and alchemical notions.

[@seanotron4559]

🌕 Brilliantly presented.

[@AdoraVivos]

I have loved your channel ever since I discovered it after watching your former Coil analysis. This video is something I could never have dreamed of!

[@cybersnap6072]

"It is cyclical but linear" to your point about the circular hallway that has continually increasing door numbers.. It could be possible if the hallway wasn't actually a circle but a spiral upward or downward. Like a spring.. or a coil;)

[@ChinVape]

I appreciate the diverse content and your appreciation for every detail.

[@iggypopdrop3509]

I was considering this for my Album Club pick this week. Will have to go with another contender.

[@HerrTelef]

The album title is also a recommendation how to listen to that masterpiece. Darken your room , listen to it with headphones or speakers. And open your eyes in the darkness.

[@YuriRadavchuk]

You come to dark areas of the Musick. I'd highly suggest checking out Vas Deferens Organization - any of the albums that took the Coil tradition, took it across the depth of global underground, ethnic, psychedelic, droning and underrated music which came out to be a unique blend of everything under the sauce of psychoacouatic effects

[@DerekPower]

This was an album I encountered in college and I liked it right away as it was mysterious and intriguing. And yes, this is another explanation to why my own music sounds the way it does =D A few additional things to consider ... The title "Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night" comes from Nostradamus. I also encourage you to seek out Tangerine Dream as that can help "make sense" of that track's construction. I think of "Red Queen" quite a bit. Not hard to see why. In "Broccoli", there is also a belief that those kind of vegetables have magical properties and thus the praise it can receive. Personally, I've been thinking about "the death of the mother and the death of the father is something you prepare for..." quite a bit. As of right now, both are still alive. However, earlier this year, now both have lost theirs. Death is inevitable indeed. "Strange Birds" came about partly out of a childhood memory and also out of a contemporary experience Jhonn Balance had where he was in "bird mind" and for three days was speaking like a bird. "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep" was also his nod - one of many - to William Blake. Listening to it, this is probably the closest to a "pop song" that the album has. There is a second album called Musick to Play in the Dark. I've likened them to Kid A and Amnesiac (which came out in 2000 and 2001 respectively, whereas these were 1999 and 2000 respectively). The first one is, I think, the most cohesive and probably the strongest. The second one has good moments but doesn't quite have the same flow to it. That doesn't make it bad in a way though.

[@CriticalReactions]

Thanks for all this context. I find the concept of "a bird phase" where he spoke like a bird for 3 days quite....unorthodox. It says a lot about the creators and helps me understand, a little bit at least, how these people created something so odd yet intriguing.

[@aramchek]

This has always been a favorite set of albums.

[@evgeniy_reut]

Hey! You did great job on that one and I insist you to check out the Part 2, because it feels like a culmination of what is settled in Part 1. I consider «Ether» the darkest song I know - it feels like death and infinite despair. And as for the last track «Batwings» well, you should hear it yourself..

[@YuriRadavchuk]

Not sure if anyone has already mentioned, but this band stems from the pioneers of experimental electronic of the 70s that invented tape looping and the voice on Broccoli is a voice of legendary underground writer William Burroughs who invented cut up method in writing. So they say that his idea influenced sampling as a principle of electronic music. The band from the 70s called Throbbing Gristle and it's way more raw. This project Coil has much more magical, psychedelic and esoteric topics to it with a touch of psycho acoustic. Some Psychonauts use it as experience enhancers because of the qualities mentioned above. That's why this is Musick to play in the dark - so that the visions emerge.

[@YuriRadavchuk]

P.S. The dreamer is the one who is in the dark and dissociated from his body into the visions. So, it's a way for a listener to visualize themselves from outside of their mind.

[@amphitheatre]

@@YuriRadavchuk the dreamer is king arthur. the voice on broccoli is not burroughs, though i'd LOVE to hear that in a parallel world (they did actually record his voice, though).

[@johncondon4081]

Coil has an album called How to Destroy Angels. Trent Reznor from Nine inch Nails has another project with the album’s name. Coil and Throbbing Gristle are two main inspirations for the sounds Trent Reznor uses.

[@SaturnineXTS]

Well this was definitely unusual, very atmospheric and story-driven music. I'd also like to take the opportunity to remind you of the song I keep doggedly recommending, Scar Symmetry - The Kaleidoscopic God. Have a nice end-of-year break and please consider reacting to this song when you're back!

[@saskyova8203]

Anathema - The Silent Enigma (death doom), I've seen you have already reacted one of their progressive rock albums, their old stuff is ethereal though, definitely one of my favorites in this genre

[@LinkinSphereLowara1499]

Thank you!

[@dalek604]

Probably recorded on DAT being the 90's, however hard disc recording would have easily been possible to burn on a CD by the mid to late 90's, just hope the computer didn't glitch during the recording process.

[@schwilly6667]

I've only heard the first track analysis so far. It's straight out of alchemy, which is big in the occult(as Coil is) and Jungian psychology. Here's a video of James Hillman, a post jungian, which fits very well here: Madness, silver, gold, the divine feminine and masculine, cold and hot, etc kzbin.info/www/bejne/jH_OgGuEhc2BrMUsi=l-Y9IKBRJbR2iMAC

[@_Helm_]

I commend you for going on a proper Coil trip, full album. The challenges that you are facing about the motivation of this music are very much part of the experience of Coil. I also enjoyed your 'dark streamer' switchup to listen to this 'in the dark' as it were, that was fun. At some point you ask 'how did they achieve this? compositionally, how do they end up here?'. Neither of the two Coil main people were traditional musicians. They probably put most of their stuff together by literally fucking about with hardware. Making sounds, collating them, collaging them, chopping them up, arguing amongst themselves, doing another line, then moving shit around more. Some other intuition played a part in putting this together. How we do know when a piece if finished? I don't know, I don't think they knew either. Most of the music you review is made by comparatively earnest instrument nerds that spent a lot of their lives learning how to perform well. These people didn't come from that angle, they were punks initially, they curated their own fringe, they took a lot of drugs and got involved in the occult lark and they definitely didn't have in mind how to impress the listener with normal music methods. What you're listening to is not a regular album of songs, it's an attempt by Coil to fuck with you, with layers of obfuscations and ironies but also something that seems to be real and true at the heart of it all. To try to analyze it by seriously taking it apart won't work, to try to just empathize with it won't work either because it is too oblique. This is why the comment section is talking to you about 'magick' and stuff like that.

[@_Helm_]

if the helps, the second (stellar) track, Red Birds, is straight up a homage to the general composition tendencies of what was called in the 1970s 'Kosmische Musik'. As popularized by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze et. al. That you do not recognize this style of music with the arpeggiations and delays and the sudden modulations while ostinatos play means you're going to have a lot of fun when you eventually listen to something like Tangerine Dream's 'Ricochet'. This is an atypical track for Coil, hence worth pointing this out

[@_Helm_]

as I am taking in your further thoughts, I think Coil *are* showing you a way through for your own stuff, here. You are honing in on that 'huh, they turned their noodles into a song? I can do that too!' because your soul probably needs to hear this. That your improvised, off the cuff playing is music too, and it deserves to be shared and enjoyed, not just your every-note-in-its-perfect-place fantasy of sheet music perfection, but all the stumbling about and silly mistakes and -indeed - opaque bits that nobody will understand. That is valuable too, if you have the right attitude about how you present it and you have a purpose with it beyond 'listen to my noodles'. Coil's purpose, whatever it is, seems huge, it shows in the music. Their 'mission' is something critical to them, yet we cannot understand it at the face of it. Letting your subconscious mind take the wheel a little when you write music (to play in the dark) is Coil's contribution to your own journey, and I think that's why you feel an attraction to their 'ugly' music. Because it's free on that subconscious level, it's not trying to impress with social graces, it's like the dreams of an animal. Sometimes Coil are really shitty, they legit have bad, shitty songs I don't want to listen to, yet, if I put the record on, I let it play...

[@_Helm_]

re: how 'wild' was this in 99? Not wild at all. This is very polite music in terms of surface extremity, it can almost pass by imperceptibly unless people pay attention. Coil sounded more out there and aggressive earlier in their catalogue, but still unremarkable next to extremely noisy stuff that had happened by the end of the 80s. Sadly that means the people that DID pay attention to this difficult-to-love act are kind of insufferable about them. I apologize as well, look at all these walls of text, and I'm not even into Coil that much. It's just very interesting that this sort of art project ever happened and ever became so well known and I think most people sensitive to art making can learn a lot from their example (both what to do and what not to do). I am seeing you in real time validate that assumption.

[@_Helm_]

re: the dreamer is still asleep. you are the dreamer, perhaps you should be asleep by this point in listening to this, in the dark. Ritual music, all jokes aside. Try it once. Very happy I watched this whole thing, top shit. You are genuine and sensitive and intelligent. Thank you for all the work that goes into this, you are showing some interesting music to a whole new - younger - audience. Videos such as these will not net you hundreds of thousands of views, but they do contribute.

[@amphitheatre]

@@_Helm_ you nailed it

[@aramchek]

If you want more context on Coil, listen to Throbbing Gristle and PsychicTV.

[@vincent_noir]

When Coil invented ASMR

[@HerrTelef]

Yes, long long time before half naked ladies licking on mics via twitch and begging for money.

[@DennisNelson-ee2il]

Current 93 are another band,I'd put forward as a recommendation to check out,having connections with Coil.

[@cybersnap6072]

"He never strays from the concepts of states of matter." Another keen observation. A lot of these lyrics are alchemical.

[@ryan1840]

If you have the time to do so, you should really start streaming. Listening to stuff and giving your thoughts on it, while fielding questions. Your channel is CRIMINALLY underrated.

[@CriticalReactions]

Thanks! I stream music reactions every Sunday at 11a EST. I'm looking into expanding my streaming schedule this year (like every year 😅) but I keep running out of that "time" resource. If only I could capture an extra hour per day :)

[@ryan1840]

@CriticalReactions clearly the answer is to become the uberman and sleep for 20 minutes every few hours like everyone was obsessed with 15 years ago.

[@progperljungman8218]

I enjoyed doing this journey alongside you Bryan. The album as a whole sits quite similarly with me as it does with you. Really cool stuff mixed with (to me) outdated experimentation/stuff outside my jam. There was one track (the second I think) that was REALLY reminiscent of the German groundbreaking band Tangerine Dream, who were doing "synth prog/art rock" in the 70's already. I guess you could also see parallels with the more mainstream French synth pioneer Jean Michelle Jarre.

[@DivebombMovies]

love this album. I came across the line from strange birds recently when reading the book 'a maze of death' by philip k dick. "One day," Babble said, "your pills are going to hatch, and some strange birds are going to emerge."

[@Blady99]

I like it

[@snowgrubs]

if you want to listen to a underrated band, check out the song "pink fruit" by kiran leonard (the full 16 min version, not the music video). i think you may enjoy it.

[@DarkenedSpell]

Hey new subscriber here. I like to watch React channels on YT but so many of them are just Always Amazed for nothing and/or bland/conservative about their comments. Very rarely bring any relevant or constructive comments about the songs or even saying negative things about it. Ofc along the ride they should dislike some stuff. You can't like everything this much all the time. So yeah just to say I like that you actually "react" and have things to say about the songs.

[@CriticalReactions]

Thanks and welcome to the channel! I try to approach everything with as open a mind as I can but I'm certainly not afraid to give criticism where I think it's due. My philosophy is that all art is flawed in some way given that flawed creatures create it but that every artwork also creates an equal opportunity to learn and grow from engaging with it.

[@Dancetothetower]

i find it intresting that your view on music changend a bit for me i had a similar experience with noise music/at a noise concert music is just sound in time art in general is just taking decisions not necassarily skill also you can harmonise nearly anything there is a really cool artist Christoph Chassol (check his album Indiamore out) he did multiple albums where he recorded random people, animals and objects or locations and harmonized them with jazz that opened my eyes that literally everything could be a harmonic song with just the right context structure and that you dont need to be skilled to make music coil are a good example of that they dont have the most complex chord progressions or song structure but the loved what they did and did incredible synthesizer work for the time and even now they nailed atmosphere and in genereal music that wants to tell a story and make you think about it every coil album is diffrent and not repetitive and they released a shit ton of albums in their 20+ years run till jhonn balance died i dont know any band which you can discover a really cool song you never heard about because they did like ton of musick the only band i know which have this much love for music is King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard with their 25 albums in 12 years of band time and every album hitting diffrent but hard everytime and outdoing themselfes time and time again its really sad that we didnt get a chance to get to hear coil with the modern possibilities of digital music production

[@CriticalReactions]

I love the way you put that. That they loved what they did and that passion connected with listeners all over. As for King Gizzard -- I'm checking out some new stuff of theirs on Wednesday!

[@TheIonizator]

Would kill for Ape of Naples album reaction

[@Dancetothetower]

the dreamer is you the album is constructed to hear on psychedelic drugs to shape the trip in the last song he is talking to you hearing manifesting the idea the album will end and that you must wake in time to most of time put on another album

[@el_mal_de_ojo]

Amazing album, hate to be "that guy" but it's also an incredible listen on LSD. A great conduit to losing oneself within another mind-state.

[@thesmogo]

Politics aside, this channel is among the highest end reaction channels on KZbin

[@thedudeperson]

what are the politics

[@josschakenraad6415]

Great anaylisis! Fun and interesting tot watch. A big thank you! Actually, the sounds you hear are probably not insects chirps, but samples of a flickering fire. Coil also used similar sounds in the track 'Where are you?' (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mnPJk5Wan5WMmpo).

[@bathroomsexmurder]

Masterpiece

[@WastelandAsshole]

Would love to see you react to coil "the dark river" or their album "the ape of Naples"