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Coil, "Love's Secret Domain" (Creaig Dunton)
Like many, my first exposure to Coil was via their Nine Inch Nails remixes in the early 1990s, which, as a middle schooler, perplexed me more than anything else. It wasn't until I was a bit older and had exchanged some mix tapes that I heard Coil properly, and "got" it. While I might be in the minority by not ranking this album as my favorite from them, Love's Secret Domain still stands as a distinct and creative album that is artistically, as well as technically fascinating.
 
Looking back, I'm somewhat surprised I didn't hear this album earlier, because not long after the aforementioned NIN period but before delving into their catalog, I was a whore for pretty much anything Wax Trax put out, and I was, in fact, into the label around the time this album came out.Looking back, I would have probably been a bit better off laying off the KMFDM and looking more towards this disc.
Personally, my favorite Coil works tend to be the ones I heard first, which were mostly from mix tapes culled from Scatology and Horse Rotorvator, to this day still my two favorite works from them.While those discs straddled the line between what used to be and what is now "industrial" (for the abstraction of "The Sewage Worker’s Birthday Party" there was the catchy "Panic"), LSD flirted with techno and house music, which was a bit less of my "thing".
In hindsight, it's only the two singles, "The Snow" and "Windowpane" that are overtly using stiff 4/4 beats and squelchy 303 synths, and consequently the ones that sound the most of their era.They’re not necessarily dated, but at the same time not as timeless as the other songs either.
In comparison, "Things Happen" sound of no era in particular: a hallucinogenic cocktail of difficult to identify songs and rhythms, all of which come together perfectly, polished off with Annie Anxiety's inebriated vocals."Where Even the Darkness is Something to See" carries a similar vibe:a cut and pasted didgeridoo and erratic rhythm come together into a bizarre mutation that is almost unidentifiable.
While the techno/house theme runs throughout the album, it does not define it, nor does it restrict it:"Chaostrophy" makes no concessions to rhythms and instead links swirling layers of noise with a melancholy horn melody to wonderful effect.The closing title track also is, to me, the perfect culmination of the album:John Balance's snarling vocals and menacing electronics beautifully pervert traditional electronic "dance" music.
The "hallucinogenic" tag I mentioned earlier is one that applies to pretty much every song on this album, and given its title, I don’t think it’s accidental.As someone who doesn't use recreational drugs, I cannot say with certainty the relationship of them to this album, but I can imagine the influence, if on nothing else the ideal of experimentation.
That's one of the most amazing things hearing this album today:it was recorded 20 years ago.The idiosyncratic sound of this album is one that, even with an absurd amount of VST plug-ins and technical know-how, would be extremely difficult to replicate.Here, with just rudimentary samplers, MIDI, and analogue tape, Coil created something more original and creative than 99 percent of the world.
It's hard to imagine what experimental and electronic music would be today if this album had not been released.Artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin are indebted to Coil and their willingness to misuse technology and re-contextualize "conventional" sounds to their own ends.Even with its house tendencies, Love's Secret Domain could be released today and it would still be as lauded as it has been for the past two decades.
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