Zos Kia / Coil - Silence and Secrecy

This is a timely compilation released as a tribute to the work of John Gosling and to the earliest recordings by Coil. Both groups share a connected history. The music is primal and brutal revealing the interests that surrounded Coil/Zos Kia and the early years of Thee Temple ov Psychic Youth (TOPY) / Psychic TV. Nothing new is presented here, but it is timely as while Coil are now gone, aside from a ceaseless glut of reissues, John Gosling's Zos Kia are newly active again, contributing new tracks to the Hua Hua Plays For You Vol. 1 compilation, and are scheduled to appear at Vinyl On Demand's 2026 festival. In that sense this archival collection could be considered something of a reappraisal.

The compilation opens with 'Violation', an early version of Zos Kia's debut single 'Rape', taken from their 1983 appearance at Berlin Atonal, where they performed the night after Psychic TV. Featuring Gosling, Min and John Balance, with Peter Christopherson handling the mix, it captures Zos Kia at their most confrontational. Min's harrowing account of sexual assault set against the haunting, repetitive backing of Coil's 'Here To Here (Double Headed Secret)' remains a disconcerting and powerful listen.

The other Berlin recordings are similarly confrontational. 'Sicktone' layers tapes of Aleister Crowley rituals over violin skreechines, industrial noise textures and rhythms, accompanied by frenetic screams and roars, while 'Baptism of Fire' pounds forward through electronic noise, clattering percussion and shouted invocations in an embryonic lyrical form of 'Thank You'.

If the live material is primal, brutal and chaotic, the studio tracks taken from editions of the first single reveal direction. 'Thank You' is a scurrilous exercise in mapping emotional damage offering gratitude for "tunnel vision" and "the sadness I see". It carries a recognisable Psychic TV feel partly due to the scraping Alex Fergusson guitar layered over booming bass and chiming bells, as well as the production input of Genesis P-Orridge and Alex Fergusson. 'Black Action', recorded later in Hamburg with 23 Skidoo's Fritz Catlin and Raymond Watts (later of KMFDM, Pig and a regular collaborator of Gosling), pushes further into a mechanical groove with its bustling heavy throbs, rhythmic clicks and an undercurrent of flailing guitar noise.

Coil's presence is slighter but no less necessary or historically essential. 'On Balance', a solo John Balance home recording made using Sleazy's equipment, is a nascent piece of eighties industrial electronica, sketching ideas Coil would mutate further into far more stranger and structured forms to better effect. The title track excerpted from Coil's debut live performance at the Brixton Ritzy is more austere. Intended as an "an exercise in extended tension" it is reduced here to little more than the sound of amplified cicadas. Its inclusion functioning more as documentary evidence than entertainment.

Zos Kia's remix of 'How To Destroy Angels' is a radical reworking of Coil's debut release, setting the ritualistic gongs and keening swords against a restless, programmed rhythmic backdrop filled with excerpts from an early performance action, including eerie whistles and repeated cries of "Mangia, mangia" taken from Pasolini's Salò, together with brief wafts of saxophone. It is a shimmering, convulsive Burroughsian interzone, far more involving than the original, designed as a functional, beneficial tool "intended as an accumulator of male sexual energy."

It is the studio work that offers the most interesting material and provides insight into the trajectory of John Gosling who would later go on to Wall of Sound and to score fashion productions as musical director for Alexander McQueen.

'Be Like Me', their first single for Psychic TV's Temple Records, adorned in a sleeve featuring images of football legend George Best, opens with melodic piano score recalling Psychic TV's 'Unclean' and especially 'Mirrors' before exploding into a beat-driven groove of electronics, bass heavy rhythms, rapid drum rolls and guitar squall, as Gosling channels the words of cult leader Reverend Jim Jones, as he presided over the mass Kool-Aid suicide of his followers. It remains a great outlier single of the time of Temple Records, while 'Smile', from the later Zoskia Meets Sugardog, sees Gosling push further into dance culture, ahead of both Psychic TV's acid house phase and Coil's flirtations with dance music. Shorn of noise and industrial textures 'Smile' is a smooth funk laden groove of Chic styled guitars, spiralling electronic stabs and soulful backing vocals, where Gosling brings a more avant-pop sensibility through an arch spoken delivery.

'Sleazy Said', another of the more recent pieces here, is also amongst the strongest. Credited to Zos Kia and Mekon, the name of Gosling's subsequent long running Wall of Sound project. It first featured as 'Sleazy Says' on Mekon's 2013 album Piece of Work - which also included the piano intro to 'Be Like Me'. Christopherson features here on a gorgeous track combining an atmospheric chorus of gothic voices floating over sweeping synths in a stunning piece reminiscent of a dark celestial take on Sleazy's Threshold HouseBoys Choir. It quietly underlines Gosling and Sleazy's enduring friendship which continued long after their separate splits from Psychic TV.

Coming not long after 23, the expansive Zos Kia retrospective, you might wonder whether there is a need for another Zos Kia compilation, but Silence and Secrecy acts as a worthy companion piece. It also features better more fitting sleeve artwork. As a result of its fragmentary nature it is uneven, often abrasive, but also revealing. As a historical document, however, it is indispensable, capturing the formative beginnings of artists still inventing themselves. Anyone interested in the period where the members of Coil, Zos Kia and Psychic TV overlapped and before each splintered to follow their own paths will find this archival collection both intriguing and essential. Silence and Secrecy is available as a limited CD from All Horned Animals bandcamp