Well, no one who ever reads this would expect me to let this go without a little comment since Coil mentions make me spin away into a kind of petit-mal fanboy gurns...
Regarding the origin of Threshold House...
Well, a few little inter-digs and here comes Heidegger:
“The threshold is always stony, because it bears the doorway, because it sustains the middle in which the outside and the inside penetrate each other. The threshold bears the between, and pain has petrified it.”
Emphasis mine, of course but this might be as good an origin point for Coil’s label as any and an even better, more apposite, name for Sleazy’s Threshold Houseboys project… “bears the between” seems to resonate with the kind of liminal light that Coil constantly referenced, alongside the idea that Heidegger is seeing the threshold as a complex inter-weave of inner and outer, of Us and Other - which, seems to fit Coil conceptually - cf Penetralia which references a linked theme:
1.The innermost parts of a building, especially the sanctuary of a temple.
2.The most private or secret parts; recesses: the penetralia of the soul
cf that line in Circles of Mania - "Eaten alive by the perfect lover" - (which Kempernorton might remember was always the opening song on our ill-fated, badly-conceived lunch-time radio show on Swansea University Radio)
Of course, I'd love it if it really did come via Doctor Who - Coil don't really mention Doctor Who in interviews but that kind of reference is hardly necessary - those old soundtracks are implicit in a lot of their work, you don't need to read a reference to hear one... and I don't think this is a product of Coil's esoterrorism; like Throbbing Gristle I think the esoteric aspects of Coil miss the point a little - they always seemed as likely to reference the prosaic (okay, maybe not as likely as TG) and the (Mmm) bog-standard as the occult; in fact, their version of occult seemed very rooted in the reasonably ordinary...
Off the top of my head: the Moomins, Edith Sitwell, Jarry, Dali, The Butthole Surfers, John Dee, Pasolini, Isidore Ducasse...
I'm not convinced they should have made more of the soundtracky stuff though - they're not that much better at this kind of thing than lots of other artists, before or since - and there is a certain absence of intensity in this kind of thing, the kind of intensity that's often thought to be in these kind of electronic sprawls...
On the other hand, I remember seeing the Journey to Avebury film in an art gallery somewhere - perhaps Amsterdam? In that space, there did seem room for the piece to breathe and the tiny electronic squiggles dragged me in...
Find your own space...
(And on that note - Mp3s sourced / stolen / referenced from KickabottlePunk.com and DJChronic)
2 comments:
how excellent does that box set they're putting out look? (answer: very excellent)
i'm excited that they'll be releasing individual shows, though it's probably too much to hope they'll show up on netflix at some point.
it does look very exciting... eye-poppingly so... can't quite imagine WHAT it's all going to look like / be...
they've only very rarely disappointed...
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