Coil were always a conceptual project that was located in, and concerned with, time in ways that are only now becoming fully clear. The name itself is a way of cheating time: a coil is a contraceptive device used by women to avoid reproduction, and so providing a way to opt out of hereditary time; and the DNA double helix is the ultimate evolved time machine, an eternal parasite shifting from host to host through the lust impulse. Their early releases also speak to the cheating of time in oblique ways. How to Destroy Angels is specifically focussed on the accumulation of male sexual energy, and Scatology points to the anal, non-reproductive use of sexual lust. The occult aspect of this is geared toward the creation of the magickal child, the non-material issue of ritual congress. But it also encompasses an anti-production ethos, a refusal to countenance the idea of a ready, pre-fabricated artistic praxis. Their method, ironically enough, was profoundly anti-industrial.

The music has stood the test of time very well but this is true of most British electronic music from the early eighties. Unlike TG or Psychic TV, Coil were always more clearly committed to an electronic sound (again, the trope of the non-organic appears), and Christopherson’s contribution became more melodic in contrast to the sound-montage effects that he brought to TG. As an emerging electronic music band, their sound was always, as it were, cutting edge but they appeared when some of the more self-consciously futuristic sounding experiments of synth pop had concluded, so there is no element of retro nostalgia associated with their works. In fact, much of their catalogue sounds cutting edge even today, consolidating Mark Fisher’s theory of the slow cancellation of the future.

I want to suggest that Coil can now be seen as a hauntological project even though that might have not made sense whilst they were alive. Indeed, it might have even been untrue whilst they were alive but their works now percolate down to us through the prism of the intervening years and a parallax distortion operates to reframe the past. It is no coincidence that John Balance died in November 2004, before the launch of Facebook and YouTube and so never lived to see the inauguration of Web 2.0. In one sense this means that a certain aura is preserved around his memory as he remains known through personal recollections of those who knew him and the interviews that he gave during his life rather than the transparency of social media. Social media has done a great deal to reveal the truth about individuals and it is rarely pretty. But, in a deeper sense, his death locks his work (and so the work of Coil) into a particular phase of culture: that which immediately preceded hypermodernity. What this means in substance is that it was still possible to be entirely serious about one’s work and one’s life. The world that ended in 2005 was one in which a certain amount of commitment was required, one where allegiances and beliefs were formed with a sense that they were important and that they would have consequences.

Now this point may seem a bit odd. After all, wasn’t Balance an admirer of chaos magick which advocated the swapping of belief systems? Yes, this is true, but it is important to note that it is only possible to swap belief systems if such belief systems are seen as being discrete, autonomous structures. Interchangeable, to be sure, but self-enclosed. Chaos magick was a properly postmodern phenomenon. In hypermodernity, the walls of belief systems, of traditions, of cultures become porous; they leak and mingle, and ultimately merge and disappear. This doesn’t mean that ethical positions likewise become synthesized into a mix. It is clear that ethical and political views have hardened and become more polarised since 2005. I am suggesting that it was impossible for Coil to survive into this era. One of the hallmarks of Coil and some of the associated artists was a certain impulse to heretical viewpoints. Without going over the boring rights and wrongs of all this, it should be obvious that Coil could never really exist in a world where they would have been expected to justify all of their decisions. Now, I’m aware that they did in fact discuss their motivations in some length but the situation is different now, less forgiving, less able to tolerate nuance. There was some controversy regarding How to Destroy Angels and it’s focus on specifically male sexual energy back in the early 80s but this was only known by people who followed them closely. It was never possible for such information to trend. In short, if Coil had continued into the 2010s and had then collaborated with Boyd Rice it would have been a very different scenario to that which happened in the 1980s. The possibility of flirting with certain taboos is now foreclosed in advance and ethical lines are drawn very clearly and very publicly. A good thing some may say, but it shuts down some of the experimental possibilities that made the era in which Coil were operational such a fertile one.

On the other hand, Coil’s sexual identity would have been welcomed and accepted had they lived until now. But weren’t they constitutionally allergic to mainstream acceptance? I’m guessing that the choice of the name Scatology for the first album wasn’t aimed at making them popular. The fact is that Coil were aware of the power of taboo and the power that came from the breaking of taboo, but the breaking of taboo cannot happen unless taboos are held to be important. There is a certain paradox here. When taboos are rigidly enforced it is not possible to break them, at least not without the loss of life. But when taboos disappear it isn’t possible to break them either because they don’t exist. Coil existed at a particular time when they could utilise the symbolic power of playing with certain taboos to maximum effect. In hypermodernity their message would be emasculated.

So, my point is that Coil could only have worked at that certain point in time. There was a unique sense of historical balance that allowed for the most charged and fertile occultural experiments of the twentieth century to unfold. Coil were always interested in time and they were, in some ways, ahead of their time. They were always able to see the future leaking through. But the future was too bland and conformist for them to fit in to. This is why I now make the case for their hauntolgical status. I saw them live a couple of times, but they were never a live band. I think they were an undead band, always spectral and hauntological. The time was always out of joint for them. They could not exist in their present so they had to create a future that was esoteric and out of reach. But they could never fully realise that future because it would have meant actually manifesting it in organic reality, a sort of birth that would have inverted their anally focussed non-(re)productive tendencies.

And, of course, claiming Coil as a hauntological band is itself a gesture that can only be made in hypermodernity. We are hypnotised by the light reflecting off the black mirrors, rather like those characters in Derek Jarman’s short film, The Art of Mirrors. Condemned to inherit a world without magick or culture we shuffle around the pieces of the past in new and interesting constellations, divining new meanings and creating new remixes. It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. Coil are dead, long live Coil.