COH and ABUL MOGARD’s musical meeting point

COH: Back in 1997 I met Mika and Ilpo of Panasonic, and whenever visiting London I would stay at their squat next to the cricket stadium in Kennington [The Oval]. Jimi Tenor had a room of his own at the apartment, and I recollect one morning upon his return from an exhausting US tour we all went for a egg-n-bacon breakfast at a nearby “proletarian” spot.. Around the time I accidentally found the KOCMOC vinyl elsewhere – to me it holds the vibe of the time and the atmosphere of the place. Not to mention musically it is a very amusing futuristic fusion of the talents of Mika and Jimi.

ABUL MOGARD: This is an album I particularly love and it might be when I started following Ivan (COH)’s work. Coil was one of my favorite bands and after Jhon Balance’s departure I continued following Peter Christopherson’s work who in 2008 announced the SoiSong project in collaboration with COH.Both CD releases came in very peculiar shapes and I found this, the second one, particularly touching. At the time, I was in a group called Gamers In Exile and we had been using synthesised voices in a number of our tracks so I found a real connection with this album. The combination of jazz, strange sounds, melodies and synthesised voices comes out as experimental and emotional at the same time. Something to me completely timeless. A masterpiece.

COH: I discovered about Oval from the liner notes to Coil’s Black Light District CD, which I bought when it came out.I am usually attentive to whatever references are made on the albums I like – sometimes these can be a great source of information. Oval’s 1994s Systemisch sounded very good, while Mouse On Mars were making stuff of a rather different flavour. So, when I saw the Microstoria album, I got a copy out of curiosity, and it didn’t disappoint.I seem to have a soft spot for shifting, hidden, non-obvious melodic structures. This album seems perfect at this and has proven to be a most peaceful non-intrusive evening companion.

ABUL MOGARD: I found this album in my parents’ collection. My mother loved Frank Sinatra so his voice was always present in our home and but I found a particular connection with this LP. Sinatra singing Brazilian songs written by Jobim, so there’s a sort of delicacy and peculiar song structures that I can only find in Brazilian music, all beautifully arranged by Claus Ogerman. This song influenced me a lot when I was working on my solo album “Above All Dreams” in 2017.

COH: The names of Atom Heart and Tetsu Inoue were found in the same liner notes to the Coil album. When I saw the two made a record together, I got myself a copy. Admittedly, I am not very familiar with their separate careers. I did meet Uwe
Schmidt many year later, but back in the day, the combination of names, and the record itself seemed a mysterious gem. The music bears a soft mark of the time, but it is still a great listen. Filled with the enthusiastic collaborative spirit of the 90-ies, it is elegant, immersive, with occasional disorienting inclusions of Atom Heart’s magical double-mono tactics.

ABUL MOGARD: Brian Eno has done so many collaborations and I wanted to pick one of them for this list. This one might not be the most well known but I am particularly attached to it. I purchased this album as soon as it came out in 1995 when I had just moved to London. I was working in a Burger King restaurant in Leicester Square in the night shifts and at the time I was staying with friends, sleeping on the floor of their living room in South London. Every night I would fall asleep listening to this album on headphones after having returned home on a long night bus ride. It brings back a lot of memories and I remember reading Eno’s notes which described how this album was made. Eno simply sent a number of stereo tracks to Jah Wobble who added his own sounds and rhythms treating the original pieces like samples or atmospheres to build new compositions around. At the time I found it quite an interesting method of working together

COH: Soft Cell was the band that helped me deviate from my teenage infatuation with heavy-metal, when in 1985 I first heard The Art Of Falling Apart. I guess from then on, I was looking for music that challenges the “barriers of perception”. I believe I Feel Love does fall in the category. Even though I know the song since childhood, it continues to regularly inspire me with its modernity and the ability to convey massive energy without dragging in a power-beat. I always wanted to make a COH version, and managed to refrain myself until 2016, when I felt “ripe”.. This duet was apparently a response to Donna Summer’s anti-gay comments of the time, but I feel it transcends the political message, combining a funky Bronski-twist in the arrangement with the shining decadence Marc Almond is capable of.

ABUL MOGARD: I love how this album focused on the use of field recordings of birds. The birdsongs on this release become an essential part of the music , they are transformed into something else and are mixed beautifully with the other sounds. One of the many amazing releases from the Colin Potter’s catalogue.

COH: This is a piece recorded by my friends Pita and Stephen O’Malley. I have known Pita since late 90ies, his record labels Mego and Editions Mego publishing quite a few COH releases. On a couple of them Stephen and I worked together on the album covers. Over the many years, we’ve had tentative discussions about collaborative projects – unfortunately, none of them getting to the stage where either of us would make the actual effort. With KTL, Pita and Steve managed to create this powerful, dark fusion of “Extreme Computer Music and Black Metal” as they’d put it, much of the their work empowering theatre pieces of Gisele Vienne, but also profound and cinematic on its own.

ABUL MOGARD: I found it particularly interesting how this piece of music, written originally by Richard D James, comes out so beautifully in this Philip Glass’s orchestration. I always wondered if Richard D James was strongly influenced by Glass while he was composing his piece as Glass’ rendition sounds so natural. I actually prefer it to the original version. A classic and in my opinion well ahead of its time. Nowadays orchestral arrangements of electronic music is a lot more common.