8/10 Daoud 08 January 2020

There’s no arguing that Coil weren’t prolific. Not when 1992's ‘Stolen & Contaminated Songs’ was just the off-cuts from the previous year's ‘Love’s Secret Domain’. I would love to produce enough music that I can have over an hour’s worth of off cuts, but I’m not Coil.

Nor could I, say, turn a warm conversation into a beat as whirling and intense as the one that holds ‘Furthur’ together. And I probably couldn’t follow that up with ‘Original Chaostrophy’, a delightfully demented classical interlue. And that’s just Coil getting warmed up.

‘Stolen & Contaminated Songs’ goes wherever John Balance and Peter Christopherson wanted it too. And theirs is such a clarity of psychedelic thought that it all sits very happily together. ‘Omagus Garfungiloops’ is built on a sleazy jazz groove with all dub trumpets buzzing around it. Meanwhile the horns on the wonderfully named ‘The Original Wild Garlic Memory’ are wheezing and sick, certainly not in any state to be sleazy. They also find space for an alternate take on ‘Love’s Secret Domain’ which, between its messy production and gleefully depraved vocal performance, sounds like ABC after a few days trapped in a cave.

The sheer variety here means my biggest takeaway is that I’m listening to two musicians having a blast flexing their creativity. Though that title does beg the question. Stolen by who? Contaminated by what?