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ELpH Vs. Coil - Rating:
- Release Date: 1995
- Genre: Electronica
Review
Officially, this is released by ELpH vs. Coil, which only makes sense since ELpH is in fact Coil, the name having been adopted for work where unplanned results come out of the musical equipment in use -- a technological collaborative effort, one can say. Whatever the exact origins, the results are even more on the edge than many Coil pieces, eschewing formal song structures for exploratory efforts in sampling and instrumental rhythm. Having previously released three singles under the moniker, Coil went ahead with the full album in 1995, another interesting twist in their involved discography. Beginning and ending with murky pieces featuring the voice of Leah Hersig, wife of longtime Coil touchstone Aleister Crowley, Worship the Glitch profiles the use of random chance and possible mistakes right from the title. The exact membership is unclear -- presumably it's Peter Christophersen and John Balance at heart as always -- but whoever participated, the emphasis on machine-created sounds and results is prominent. Anyone expecting glitch/laptop techno à la Kid 606 won't find that here, but there certainly is much use of heavily distorted and treated sound throughout, which will sound awfully familiar. The overall combination of tweaked instrumentation and weird, flat atmospheres, especially in the strange use of echo, clearly had an influence on the IDM crowd in later years. An intriguing homage to an earlier gay lit figure surfaces with "The Halliwell Hammers," three versions of which are scattered throughout the record. Kenneth Halliwell was the ex-lover of noted playwright Joe Orton, who in a final fit killed him with hammer blows to the head before killing himself. For all the violence this would imply, the songs themselves are weird, jittery numbers in keeping with the album as a whole, with odd string or pseudo-string loops and mournful bell tones. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music GuideTracks
| Track Title | Composers | Performers | Time |
| Dark Start | Coil | (4:12) | |
| Opium Hum | Coil | (2:37) | |
| Caged Birds | Coil | (1:33) | |
| The Halliwell Hammers | Coil | (2:39) | |
| Clorax Hurdt | Coil | (3:00) | |
| The Halliwell Hammers [2] | Coil | (3:43) | |
| We Have Always Been Here | Coil | (6:11) | |
| Manunkind | Coil | (1:23) | |
| Bism | Coil | (4:58) | |
| Hydlepark | Coil | (6:00) | |
| Hysteron Proteron Jewel | Coil | (2:18) | |
| Decadent and Symmetrical | Coil | (1:51) | |
| Mono | Coil | (5:27) | |
| The Halliwell Hammers [3] | Coil | (3:36) | |
| Anything That Flies | Coil | (3:09) | |
| Ended | Coil | (1:13) |
