Master and Slave in the Music of Coil

Authors

Drren Jorgensen, University of Western Australia

Abstract

For Theodor Adorno, pop music perpetuates thedrudgery and alienation of working class existenceby providing a distraction from it. This paper turns toa similar critique of pop music, in the work of Coil.Born out of the UK industrial scene, Coil distort thepop song format, reproducing and appropriating itssounds with cynical manipulations. This cynicismshines through a mastery over the forms of popmusic and its sounds, that Coil configure withoutveering into pop's more explicit commercialism. Byestranging the familiarity of pop music, Coil point tohow listeners are enslaved by the industrial mode ofmusical alienation, by reproducing this alienation in anew way.

Recommended Citation

Jorgensen, D. (2011). Master and Slave in the Music of Coil. Sound Scripts, 3(1).
Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/soundscripts/vol3/iss1/7