Decided to give myself a little break after the epic, aural investment that was The Remote Viewer and check out the music Coil composed for use in the 1987 horror film, Clive Barker's Hellraiser. However, it turned out that the studio thought what they had come up with was "not commercial enough" for this movie about demons dragging people to hell and the blurry line between pleasure and pain, so they went in another direction. Whether or not the folks at the studio had ever actually seen the film or not is unclear as Coil's stuff is fucking perfect for a movie like this. And (of course) the majority of the music on this release is so ridiculously tame for Coil, one has to wonder if those same studio folks had ever heard anything by the band before asking them to score the movie.
Anal Staircase? Helllooo?
In the end, the studio went with Christopher Young, who did a very boring and typical job on the score (*slow, unimpressed clapping noise made by lazy hip thrusts which result in my penis slapping my scrotum*), and Coil released what they had created as an album...an incredibly short (six tracks, with nary a one over four minutes) and, for the most part, incredibly tame album.* Along with the six "main" tracks, they included eleven tracks (nary a one over a minute and a half) of very short incidental music with titles like "Perfume" and "Airline 1 & 2" and "Cosmetic 1 & 2". These are so utterly unlike Coil that I kinda sorta don't believe it's them, especially on the final track, "Accident Insurance", which is so melodic and soft and airy and beautiful that it's absolutely jaw-dropping to think it sprang forth from the same diseased mind as did (insert, literally, any Coil track released up to this point in time).
Anyway, onto the album...
Of the six tracks, there are four that are so similar in arrangement and instrumentation that they might as well be the four movements of one, larger piece. All have common elements, such as the same (or very nearly the same) wash of painfully late-80's synth (which were probably thought of as sleek and dangerous back then), a didgeridoo and what sounds like a dentist's drill way up in the left channel. While the first, "Hellraiser Theme", has some stuff in it that's so reminiscent of Mark Snow's work on both Twin Peaks and X-Files (not to mention elements of the score from Labyrinth, mostly the drums) that I was unable to focus, the second, "The Hellbound Heart" features a twangy, broken-sounding piano and a nice progression of sound that work really well.
The third track, "Box Theme", is the first of two diversions from the blendy, sound-alike nature of the menacing 80's synth wash. It's all detuned music boxes, clicking, clanking clockwork and jagged metal bits, ready to cut one's fingers and transmit something nasty into the blood. Anyone familiar with the Hellraiser franchise knows that the puzzle box plays a major role in the mythology and this would have been perfect to usher it onto the screen and into our nightmares.
Then, the synth wash is back on the more subtle and sparse "No New World". Honestly though, "subtle" and "sparse" are just polite ways of saying "forgettable".
Next, the second detour from this shockingly mundane Coil offering, "Attack of the Sennapods."** This right here is another foray into the heart of Silent Hill. The two most prominent sounds are an electronic/mechanical chittering noise and what sounds like a horde of the roiling, unquiet dead heard through a thin door...one which they are actively looking to open and enter through. This track (plus that constant, almost unnoticed, potentially subliminal(?) high-pitched drill noise) might have been what changed the studio's mind when it came to Coil.
"Well, gosh, we don't want to scare people, do we?!"
Fools.
After this little night terror, we return to "Main Theme", the final track and probably the one that utilizes the pervasive 80's frame of mind the best. The instrumentation (sort of a backwards pipe thing) works great with the synth wash and even more so once the drums and piano join in. I'd have been happy with just this and maybe "The Hellbound Heart", as the others that mimic these take something away.
So, there you have it.
Roughly twenty minutes of the most un-Coily Coil music I have ever heard.
Music that, while very un-Coily, is very Hellraiser-y and would have made that movie even more memorable than it already is.
Hm.
This was too easy, too accessible, too enjoyable, but, don't worry, there's nowhere to go from here but down...and next week...I will get down...and, perhaps, travel in time...
* There were four more tracks from the Hellraiser sessions (about ten minutes more total) which popped up later on the b-side and rarity collection, Unnatural History II.
** Which may be a version of the name of the franchise's iconic antagonists, the Cenobites. Pinhead? Helllooo?
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