Rather than imposing a conventional compositional order upon these fragments, Coil seem content to let them retain something of their original instability. The result is an uneasy, sometimes beautiful collision of the intentional and the incidental, music found at the crossroads of the cult, the celt, the conundrum, and the coil.
Instability and the remains of other intentions
Some records seem to arrive fully formed; others discover their identity through the process of becoming. Originally released in 1987, Gold Is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) belongs firmly to the latter category. Sitting somewhere between the expansive industrial psychedelia of Scatology and Horse Rotorvator and the increasingly elusive territories Coil would subsequently explore, it occupies an intriguing position in their catalog. Not quite a conventional album statement, it nevertheless possesses a character and internal logic entirely its own.
John Balance and Peter Christopherson described it as a “stopgap and a breathing space – the space between two twins.” Assembled from accumulated recordings, abandoned ideas and material that had found itself without an obvious home, the album could easily have remained an archival curiosity. Instead, Coil discovered possibilities in the discarded, allowing fragments and incidental encounters to become the foundations of something unexpectedly cohesive. Their later-released, unused Hellraiser soundtrack was my own entry point into Coil, and something of that same fascination with the unconventional has stayed with me.
On Gold Is the Metal, a drunken brass band recorded in Mexico, sounds captured at a Thai boxing arena and snippets of television documentary audio all find their way into the machinery. The boundaries between composition, documentation and happenstance become increasingly porous. These aren’t simply decorative curiosities or samples employed for novelty; they become part of a wider vocabulary in which the distinction between intention and accident begins to dissolve.
There’s a peculiar alchemy at work here. Material that might otherwise have been consigned to the dustbin becomes the substance of something worth keeping. Accidents acquire an architecture, mistakes find their rhythm, and the discarded develops a life of its own. Rather than imposing a conventional compositional order upon these fragments, Coil seem content to let them retain something of their original instability. The result is an uneasy, sometimes beautiful collision of the intentional and the incidental, music found at the crossroads of the cult, the celt, the conundrum, and the coil.
Buoyant and elastic, yet remarkably alive to its age ::
Texturally, the album shifts between noise and the gradual fading of the harsher industriana of old, moving through swathes of white noise and proto-electronica, darkened with fragments of melody adding color to the palette. At times, these elements accumulate into an almost physical wall of sound, before dissolving into more spacious, elusive passages. Yet the obsession with darkness remains, a Crowleyesque milieu inhabiting the crowded spaces, ambient adjacencies and white walls of a peculiar, tamarind-sticky darkness. There are classical junctures in the monasticism of “Cardinal Points,” the pointed post-punk drudge and clamor of “Paradisiac”, the scatological residue of “Thump” and the proto-funkopolis of “Red Slur”. These disparate musical signifiers coalesce into an erudite historical artefact, buoyant and elastic, yet remarkably alive to its age.
What makes Gold Is the Metal so compelling is the way its apparent discontinuities become a kind of connective tissue. It doesn’t attempt to disguise its origins or smooth over the inconsistencies of its construction. Instead, its fractured character becomes its defining strength. The music feels simultaneously ancient and futuristic, steeped in esoteric preoccupations while remaining curious about the possibilities of emerging technology and sound. Its atmosphere is dense without being entirely oppressive, its experimentation sufficiently mischievous to prevent the darkness from becoming po-faced.
“A document of creative possibility, a reminder that the things we abandon can sometimes prove more revealing than those we set out to make. An architecture assembled from accidents, perhaps, but one that continues to stand. It’s a masterpiece of that which has been left behind. Glorious.” ~Will Wonks
There is something quietly instructive in this approach. Coil demonstrated over their ebullient discography that creative value needn’t always emerge from control, precision or the pursuit of a predetermined destination. Sometimes it comes from recognizing the potential in what has already gone wrong, from allowing an unwanted fragment to suggest an entirely different direction. The album’s title offers its own curious contradiction: something precious and enduring assembled from imperfection, instability and the remains of other intentions.
Nearly four decades on, Gold Is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) remains more than an interesting footnote in Coil‘s history. It is a document of creative possibility, a reminder that the things we abandon can sometimes prove more revealing than those we set out to make. An architecture assembled from accidents, perhaps, but one that continues to stand. It’s a masterpiece of that which has been left behind. Glorious.
Gold is the Metal (with the Broadest Shoulders) Remastered/Reissued is available on Mute / Threshold House.
