ELpH vs Coil – Worship The Glitch

Coil were my entry point into weird music, shall we say? There was this book I found at school called Making Music With Tape Recorders, like musique concrète for beginners. And even though I hadn't heard any musique concrète I wanted to make some. Someone lent me a four track tape recorder and some microphones and I made some really bizarre music, these horrendous collages using my mum’s food mixer, playing it backwards and putting echo on it and whatever. Someone told me it sounds like Coil, so I went out and bought Horse Rotorvator. I've always been fascinated by an idea of things that exist beneath the surface of society or culture and Coil and William Burroughs were my window into this other world. Worship The Glitch has been one of my favourite Coil albums for a long time, but it's not given the attention it deserves. I'm sure I've read people, even Coil fans, saying ‘yeah it’s just some noises’. It’s one of their most out there albums, so minimal in places, but I find it incredibly deep. Every time I listen to it, it mentally tips me off balance. Considering how many times I've listened to it I never know what’s going to come next, which is really weird. There’s a track called ‘Mono’ and though I’ve been listening to this album for 20 years one day my brain shifted and I realised that it’s a ring modulated version of Sonny Bono's ‘Bang, Bang’. You’ve got that and references to Joe Orton in ‘The Halliwell Hammers’, so even in this more austere record, there are nods to pop and queer culture.