A review of Coil's "Time Machines"

This...is going to be a tough one, maybe the toughest.
So, Time Machines (originally released in 1998), according to John Balance, is meant to facilitate time travel and to create time disruption or "temporal slips" for the listener.
I have yet to experience any such event, although, as all of the tracks share their names with hallucinogenic substances, perhaps it's me that's doing something wrong.
You know, I'll just quote Balance on this one:

One of the interesting things with Time Machines is that there's a handful of responses which we've had where what happened to the listeners was exactly what we intended to happen. There would be some kind of temporal disruption caused by just listening to the music, just interacting with the music. The drugs thing is actually a hook we hung it on - it originally came out of me and Drew talking that some of the types of music you listen to - sacred musics like Tibetan music or anything with a sacred intent which often is long ceremonial type music which could last for a day or three days or something. There are periods of time in that where you will come out of time. That's the intention of it to go into a trance and achieve an otherness. We thought can we do this sort of electronic punk-primitive? We did demos with a simple mono synth and we managed it. We sat in the room and listened to it loud and we lost track of time - it could be five minutes in or 20 minutes in but you suddenly get this feeling, the hairs on the back of your neck, and you'd realise that you'd had some sort of temporal slip. We fine-tuned, well, filters and oscillators and stuff, to try and maximise this effect. It was that we were after with simple tones - somehow you could slip through.

So...yeah.
This may or may not be the case, but here is my experience with Time Machines.

The first track, "7-Methoxy-β-Carboline: (Telepathine)", is pure texture. One note which is oscillated and phased and subtly adjusted over the course of twenty-three minutes (give or take a spacial dimension or two). It's sort of like the aural equivalent of the ocean's surface: affected by the wind, the planet's motion, the creatures within it and so on. A phrase came to mind while I was listening to it: "staring at a candle in a completely darkened room, finding total focus and meaning therein."
Then again, I was ingesting a lot of Telepathine at the time.
One thing I will say, when I accedentally bumped my iPod and paused the track, the resultant silence was jarring; there's definately an all-enveloping sound created here and leaving it abruptly is quite unpleasant.

Well...there seem to be only two elements in "2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Ethyl-Amphetamine: (DOET/Hecate)", the parts that ripple and the parts that don't.  Compared to this, the first track is a symphony. Then again, this is only a scant thirteen and a half minutes and I completely understand if they didn't really have time to fully evolve and explore the track like they wanted to.
Can you sense my sarcasm?
Is my sarcasm real?
How can you tell?
Whose eye stalks are growing out of my fingertips?
Let's move on...

The trombone solo at the start of "5-Methoxy-N, N-Dimethyltryptamine: (5-MeO-DMT)" is just stunning.
Just kidding. More of the not-exactly-the-same-but-pretty-much-the-same, although, the note that makes up this track is noticeably higher in pitch and the minute variations are more dramatic (while still being minute) and come more frequently here. There seems to actually be something happening in the background, unless that's just my brain playing tricks on itself. While nothing on this album could really be considered soothing, this one is the least soothing thus far. "5-Methoxy-N, N-Dimethyltryptamine: (5-MeO-DMT)" isn't for floating, unaware, in a pool of ichor in some malignant lagoon or meditating on the cold, black infinity of space, it's for opening one's third eye...and firing optic blasts from it. Clocking in at just over ten minutes, this can barely be considered a song...relatively speaking...I mean, nothing here can actually be considered a song by any sane and established definitions.

The final, epic track of Time Machines, "4-Indolol, 3-[2-(Dimethylamino)Ethyl], Phosphate Ester: (Psilocybin)", is over twenty-six minutes long and, thusly, forced me to look inside myself and ask the hard questions: Is this pool of light in which I'm standing sentient? If not, then how could it have created the shadows which surround it? Is not creation the act of a sentient being? If not, what does this imply about God? Is guava a donut? While the other tracks felt a bit sterile and digital, this one sounds organic enough to give off a distinctly infected feel. Here is the score for a temple full of the dead, in the presence of worms. There arises a persistent, high-pitched tone like a hearing test which is all that remains when the main note fades away and a huge, thrumming, like a faulty generator, begins to float threateningly in from the abyss beyond the windows, doing nothing to make anyone feel better: the power is about to go out, then we'll be left here, alone, in the dark, with the things.
Finally, everything fades away, and we're left with something that sounds a little bit like the first few notes of "Taps". After a bit more distortion, Time Machines ends.

I've never been more afraid of being exposed to a brown note than while listening to Coil*, and I've never been more wary than while listening to this album. But, as I haven't shit myself while listening to them**, I guess it was all in my mind. Throughout this album, specifically on track two, I kept waiting for some simple yet compelling percussion to come in and for Thom Yorke to start keening about something profound. I also kept expecting the world around me to melt away into a waxy, rainbow-colored gruel, revealing the true nature of time and the Universe and the secrets of pants.
But neither of those things happened.***
Maybe I wasn't listening hard enough.
Or maybe I wasn't ingesting mind-altering substances.
Or both.
Who knows?







* Marilyn Manson has always talked about putting brown notes and ultra-high frequency noises into his stuff, but Coil's mindfuckery makes Manson's poor attempt at it look like a fart in a thunderstorm.

** Yet.

*** Although it was very surreal to listen to track four while standing in the heart of Times Square during lunchtime.