The Golden Age of Bloodsports
Compiled by Phil Barrington
A book collated and curated by myself of Jhonn Balance’s creative writing, lyrics and other COIL tracks, with additional photography created for this project.
“For the first time ever the large majority of the writings, lyrics and performed songs of Jhonn Balance are collected in one book. Famous for leading the british band COIL into uncharted musical, magickal and psychical territories until his tragic death in 2004, Balance was a cultural pioneer who blended the occult with heartfelt emotional outpouring, experimental sound with medieval sensibility and and electronic avant-garde.
An artist, lyricist, essayist, visionary, performance artist and inspiration to a great many leftfield creatives before his death and possibly the most mysterious, traumatic and obsessive character in recent popular culture history after his passing, this book identifies key lyrical themes embedded within his vision.
From a tumultuous childhood nurturing occult promises of escape, to long chemical journeys into the wooded wilderness of moonscapes, vegetation and displeased rabbits, Balance’s world is undeniably unique.
A potent tableau of wordplay, rhythm, repetition, nature, astronomy, magick, sex, high emotion and psychedelic surrealism are all part of his writing, perfectly mirroring the ways that COIL uniquely assembled their recorded sounds, though there are other strong qualities uncovered here in this book.”
Note; Since the re-release of COIL singles* from autumn 2015 onwards, an updated 4th Edition of this book to include newly-unearthed lyrics was released on November 19th 2017.
* The first set of 8 COIL CD re-releases in 2015 did not have inserts/tracklistings with them, so I made some inserts for them here (rar file of 8 x pdf sleeves).
