Michael Baxter | Coil - The Unreleased Themes For Hellraiser (45rpm & 33rpm) - Solar Lodge Records - 1987 @mickeypenguin | Uploaded March 2020 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
I have owned this 10” record since it’s original release date, and I have listened to it over the years at both 45 rpm and 33 rpm as I have not got a clue what the correct rotating speed was, or is.
Because I have never owned a different version of this record other than this original 10” record I had nothing to compare the music with. Comparing the audio, other YouTube posts seem to favour 45 rpm, I prefer the 33 rpm sound myself, but that does not mean I’m in any way correct!
In any case I recorded both sides of this record at 45 rpm, and then at 33 rpm for this YouTube post.
Minutes 00.00 to 17.50 is the 45 rpm audio, and minutes 17.50 – 41.50 is the 33 rpm audio.
Listen to whichever version you fancy.
The tracks on the first side are taken from Coil's soundtrack to the Clive Barker film ‘Hellraiser’ which was rejected by the film studio. The tracks on the second side are a selection of short pieces that were commissioned for use as music for advertisements on British television.
A few words about the release of this record via Stephen Thrower for The Quietus. Stephen Thrower was a member of Coil in the mid 1980’s.
When was the suggestion made about Coil doing a Hellraiser soundtrack?
Clive Barker was interested in Coil early on. He showed us the Hellbound Heart when it was an unpublished novella he'd only just written. He said he was interested immediately, and there was a real strike-while-the-iron's-hot sort of feeling. He was really into the music. He'd just recently produced the script and had said pretty much straight off the bat, 'I'm going to be directing this myself, I'd like you to do the music.'
The rumour has it that he was fed some magazines by Sleazy that directly influenced the aesthetic of the Cenobites. Can you confirm or deny that?
Oh absolutely. When he came to Beverly Road, Sleazy had a collection of magazines called PFIQ, which stood for Piercing Fans International Quarterly. I think the magazine dated from the very early '80s until about '85, and the content was the kind that people became a lot more familiar with in the '90s, but at the time was completely underground. There was no over-ground, mainstream, fashionable acceptance of that material. It was very extreme sado-masochistic piercing and body modification, to quite shocking extremes in some cases. Clive was absolutely bowled over. I think he spent a fascinated half an hour quietly looking through them. He disappeared into a little wormhole for a while.
So how did the work on Hellraiser proceed?
He said 'I love extreme sound and I love rich melody and orchestration'. We said, 'No problem, we can handle both of those'. I think ‘Scatology’ had already come out and we were probably already starting work on what became ‘Horse Rotorvator’. Sleazy, when he'd been in Psychic TV had been working with string sections. We had people like Billy McGee and the string players for Marc Almond's group as friends, so we knew that if we wrote something on samplers and electronics we could then say to out friends 'now we need to work out a string part for this'. We started work but the plug was pulled before we got any further than the electronics side of it, so the music that we actually had completed by the time they changed their minds was basically the electronic realisations that were awaiting orchestration.
So when I listen the Coil's Hellraiser soundtrack it's basically an unfinished record?
Yeah. It's a little bit more than a demo but not really a finished score. If you listen to ‘Horse Rotovator’ which is the album that came next and you listen to a track like 'Ostia', which has got fairly elaborate interactions between the string section and the electronics, that's really the route down which the Hellraiser music would have gone as well.
Did your disappointment about not being able to do the soundtrack colour your appreciation of the film when it came out?
To be honest I don't see how it cannot. The production company had their own composer waiting in the wings and when Clive got into difficulties with Hellraiser because there wasn't enough money to shoot the effects that he wanted to achieve he turned to the producers and showed them a rough cut of the effects scenes. As far as I understand the conversation went something like 'Oh we didn't think this was going to be as commercial as it is. Re-shoot those effects scenes and here's some more money. One stipulation, we want our man to do the score.' I think Christopher Young was a protegee there and was evidently the next big thing as far as they were concerned. I suppose they were looking in a very hardnosed way and going 'what hit records have these guys made?' Clive took a pragmatic decision and I should think was extremely embarrassed about the situation. Although at the time we were all quite unhappy about it, I can sort of see the bind he was in.
This YouTube post is dedicated with respect to Peter Christopherson, John Balance and Ana J.
I have owned this 10” record since it’s original release date, and I have listened to it over the years at both 45 rpm and 33 rpm as I have not got a clue what the correct rotating speed was, or is.
Because I have never owned a different version of this record other than this original 10” record I had nothing to compare the music with. Comparing the audio, other YouTube posts seem to favour 45 rpm, I prefer the 33 rpm sound myself, but that does not mean I’m in any way correct!
In any case I recorded both sides of this record at 45 rpm, and then at 33 rpm for this YouTube post.
Minutes 00.00 to 17.50 is the 45 rpm audio, and minutes 17.50 – 41.50 is the 33 rpm audio.
Listen to whichever version you fancy.
The tracks on the first side are taken from Coil's soundtrack to the Clive Barker film ‘Hellraiser’ which was rejected by the film studio. The tracks on the second side are a selection of short pieces that were commissioned for use as music for advertisements on British television.
A few words about the release of this record via Stephen Thrower for The Quietus. Stephen Thrower was a member of Coil in the mid 1980’s.
When was the suggestion made about Coil doing a Hellraiser soundtrack?
Clive Barker was interested in Coil early on. He showed us the Hellbound Heart when it was an unpublished novella he'd only just written. He said he was interested immediately, and there was a real strike-while-the-iron's-hot sort of feeling. He was really into the music. He'd just recently produced the script and had said pretty much straight off the bat, 'I'm going to be directing this myself, I'd like you to do the music.'
The rumour has it that he was fed some magazines by Sleazy that directly influenced the aesthetic of the Cenobites. Can you confirm or deny that?
Oh absolutely. When he came to Beverly Road, Sleazy had a collection of magazines called PFIQ, which stood for Piercing Fans International Quarterly. I think the magazine dated from the very early '80s until about '85, and the content was the kind that people became a lot more familiar with in the '90s, but at the time was completely underground. There was no over-ground, mainstream, fashionable acceptance of that material. It was very extreme sado-masochistic piercing and body modification, to quite shocking extremes in some cases. Clive was absolutely bowled over. I think he spent a fascinated half an hour quietly looking through them. He disappeared into a little wormhole for a while.
So how did the work on Hellraiser proceed?
He said 'I love extreme sound and I love rich melody and orchestration'. We said, 'No problem, we can handle both of those'. I think ‘Scatology’ had already come out and we were probably already starting work on what became ‘Horse Rotorvator’. Sleazy, when he'd been in Psychic TV had been working with string sections. We had people like Billy McGee and the string players for Marc Almond's group as friends, so we knew that if we wrote something on samplers and electronics we could then say to out friends 'now we need to work out a string part for this'. We started work but the plug was pulled before we got any further than the electronics side of it, so the music that we actually had completed by the time they changed their minds was basically the electronic realisations that were awaiting orchestration.
So when I listen the Coil's Hellraiser soundtrack it's basically an unfinished record?
Yeah. It's a little bit more than a demo but not really a finished score. If you listen to ‘Horse Rotovator’ which is the album that came next and you listen to a track like 'Ostia', which has got fairly elaborate interactions between the string section and the electronics, that's really the route down which the Hellraiser music would have gone as well.
Did your disappointment about not being able to do the soundtrack colour your appreciation of the film when it came out?
To be honest I don't see how it cannot. The production company had their own composer waiting in the wings and when Clive got into difficulties with Hellraiser because there wasn't enough money to shoot the effects that he wanted to achieve he turned to the producers and showed them a rough cut of the effects scenes. As far as I understand the conversation went something like 'Oh we didn't think this was going to be as commercial as it is. Re-shoot those effects scenes and here's some more money. One stipulation, we want our man to do the score.' I think Christopher Young was a protegee there and was evidently the next big thing as far as they were concerned. I suppose they were looking in a very hardnosed way and going 'what hit records have these guys made?' Clive took a pragmatic decision and I should think was extremely embarrassed about the situation. Although at the time we were all quite unhappy about it, I can sort of see the bind he was in.
This YouTube post is dedicated with respect to Peter Christopherson, John Balance and Ana J.
