Coil was the English group founded in London in the early 1980s by John Balance, soon joined by Peter Christopherson, formerly of Throbbing Gristle and a founder of Psychic TV. Over two decades the project moved through industrial noise, the orchestral and occult songs of Horse Rotorvator (1986), the acid-house textures of Love’s Secret Domain (1991) and the nocturnal electronics of Musick to Play in the Dark (1999).
Its most direct contribution to drone music came in 1998, when Balance, Christopherson and Drew McDowall released Time Machines under that name: four long, slowly shifting electronic tones, each titled after a hallucinogenic compound, with almost nothing happening on the surface and a great deal happening in the listener’s perception. Later remastered and reissued by Dais Records, the record remains a reference point for drone made from synthesiser tones alone, without guitars, voices or rhythm.