Time Machines

Time Machines
Studio album by Time Machines
Released	1998 January 26
Genre	Drone
Length	73:32
Label	Eskaton
Producer	Coil
Time Machines chronology
Time Machines (1998) Coil Presents Time Machines (2000)

Time Machines is Coil's landmark drone music album, released under the alias Time Machines. It consists of four tracks which are composed of a single tone, called a drone. Each tone represents a certain hallucinogenic chemical (see track titles). It is similar to Brian Eno's early ambient albums, except instead of creating an atmosphere of calm, it facilitates time travel, according to band founder John Balance. Each tone was tested and retested in the studio for maximum narcotic potency. John Balance described the album as an attempt to create "temporal slips"^{[† 1]}

Production

When Time Machines was first released, the band was very conscious that it not be labeled as a Coil album, due to how abstract and different it is compared to previous Coil albums.^[1] This pressure has lessened in recent years as the band feels that people no longer expect a specific sound from the band.^[1] This has led to the 2000 follow-up album Coil Presents Time Machines to bear the Coil name on it.

A five-disc Time Machines box set was announced in 1998,^[2] but never developed. A two-disc version was announced in January 2006 as a future release,^[3] but there has been no further evidence on this being released either.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[4]

Sean Cooper of Allmusic gave the album four out of five stars and described it as "[e]njoyable, if a mite limited in scope."^[4]

Track listing

1. "7-Methoxy-β-Carboline: (Telepathine)" – 23:10
2. "2,5-Dimethoxy-4-Ethyl-Amphetamine: (DOET/Hecate)" – 13:28
3. "5-Methoxy-N, N-Dimethyltryptamine: (5-MeO-DMT)" – 10:02
4. "4-Indolol, 3-[2-(Dimethylamino)Ethyl], Phosphate Ester: (Psilocybin)" – 26:51

See also

• Harmala alkaloids
• DOET/Hectate
• 5-MeO-DMT
• Psilocybin

Footnotes

1. ↑ In a 1998 interview with The Wire magazine, Balance explains:

   One of the interesting things with Time Machines is that there's a handful of responses which we've had where what happened to the listeners was exactly what we intended to happen. There would be some kind of temporal disruption caused by just listening to the music, just interacting with the music. The drugs thing is actually a hook we hung it on - it originally came out of me and Drew talking that some of the types of music you listen to - sacred musics like Tibetan music or anything with a sacred intent which often is long ceremonial type music which could last for a day or three days or something. There are periods of time in that where you will come out of time. That's the intention of it to go into a trance and achieve an otherness. We thought can we do this sort of electronic punk-primitive? We did demos with a simple mono synth and we managed it. We sat in the room and listened to it loud and we lost track of time - it could be five minutes in or 20 minutes in but you suddenly get this feeling, the hairs on the back of your neck, and you'd realise that you'd had some sort of temporal slip. We fine-tuned, well, filters and oscillators and stuff, to try and maximise this effect. It was that we were after with simple tones - somehow you could slip through.

References

External links

• Time Machines website
• stickers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• "Persistence Is All" badge