Coil's early albums get remastered reissues via Mute

Mute, together with Threshold House, has announced a partnership that starts with remastered reissues of four early Coil works, with restored artwork, previously unseen images and new sleeve notes. The series opens with 1987's “Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)”, out on limited-edition vinyl, CD and digitally.

The album closes the trilogy begun by “Scatology” and “Horse Rotorvator”, shaping textural and instrumental pieces set aside during the sequencing of “Horse Rotorvator” into a full record. Stephen Thrower calls it much more than “a round-up of wraiths and strays” and speaks of “electro-erotics of sound”, with a collage structure inspired by “The Faust Tapes”. Its field recordings include a drunken brass band in Mexico, a clip from a TV documentary on young British boxers and a Thai boxing arena recorded by Peter Christopherson. “Metal in the Head” keeps the sound of a hired Fairlight sampler malfunctioning and randomly rearranging the music.

Thrower and Ossian Brown, a Coil member from 1999 to 2004, rebuilt the artwork with archive material and John Balance's personal notes. Brown and Davide Pepe also made a film for “Cardinal Points” from footage shot in 1988 for “Sound of Progress”. Next come the soundtrack to Derek Jarman's “The Angelic Conversation”, the unreleased music for Clive Barker's “Hellraiser” and the compilation “Unnatural History”. Threshold House, the band's own imprint, has been revived in association with the Balance and Christopherson estates.

Coil, an English post-industrial band, formed in London in 1982 around John Balance (1962-2004), soon joined by Throbbing Gristle's Peter Christopherson (1955-2010), and disbanded in 2004.