In this artist talk hosted by Tristan Bath of the Quietus, long-time Coil member and experimental artist Drew McDowall will speak both about about his recent solo work, and the celebrated album Time Machines, which he "revisits" as a solo performance on Tuesday at Berghain.

Two decades after its first release, the musical, sociological, and political implications of Coil’s classic album Time Machines still resonate deeply. In 1998 he and fellow band member John Balance conceived of the album as a tool through which its listeners might be able to escape the present and the self – in their words, "music cures you of time" – and eventually compared the power of its sound to psychotropic substances. It reflects, in sound, Coil’s "psychonautic" practices and devotion to the exploration of the irrational and "unreal" – dreams, hallucinations, trances. The band’s music was a vessel for psychedelia, esotericism, queer paganism, transformative ritual, and self-exploration. In these ways, it also took a political stance against a neo-liberal status quo in valuing introspection over action, thought over productivity, music over time.

Hosted by the Quietus