Alright, just finished reading “Everything Keeps Dissolving” by Nick Soulsby. If you are not familiar with the band COIL, COIL was Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s and Johnn Balance’s music project after they both left Psychic TV. Psychic TV was a project started by Genesis P. Orridge… and both Genesis and Sleazy where in the pioneering industrial band, the band that coined the term “Industrial Music” as well as the slogan “Industrial Music for Industrial People”, Throbbing Gristle.
This book is essentially conversations and interviews COIL had done over the years with various magazines and publications. I’m not sure I would call this an oral history so much, cause while this book does definitely get into COIL’s history in the conversations… it’s mostly about COIL’s ideas and philosophies over the years, and how they evolved.
Here’s the blurb from MITPress:
“Core members of the legendary British experimental band Coil tell its story in the present tense, as events unfold across their twenty-year history.
Between 1983 and 2004 the legendary British experimental band Coil established itself as a shape-shifting doyen of esoteric music whose influence has grown spectacularly in the years since its untimely end. With music that could be dark, queer, and difficult, but often retained a warped pop sensibility, Coil’s albums were multifaceted repositories of esoteric knowledge, lysergic wisdom and acerbic humor. In Everything Keeps Dissolving, core members John Balance and Peter Christopherson tell Coil’s story in the present tense, and from their personal perspectives, as events unfold across the band’s twenty-year history.
Accompanied by their various collaborators, Coil describe the fertile eruption of ideas, inspirations, and stray tangents that informed their lyrical and musical visions—as well as those dead paths and castoff concepts that didn’t take root. No only a worm’s eye view of Coil, these interviews provide insight into the late twentieth century’s evolving British cultural underground as channeled through two of its most astutely mercurial minds.”
I would say if you are looking for further industrial music, post-industrial music related reading, and history… this is definitely something I would recommend!! Lots to absorb in this book, and I would definitely say there’s definitely inspiration here!! My favorite section was the “The Key to Joy: 1998 – 2002”, as for me that section contains some very interesting mentalities that I found inspiring, to put to use in my own creative work.
I think any industrial/post-industrial music fan would find inspiration here!!
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