Coil, "...And the Ambulance Died In His Arms"

The Dreamer is Still Asleep - The Somnambulist in an Ambulance

Now the dreamer is still dreaming
The dreamer is still asleep
The dreamer is still asleep
The dreamer is somnambulising
The somnambulist in an ambulance
A somnambulist in an ambulance
A somnambulist in an ambulance
Somnambulist in an ambulance (repeated)
Somnambulist in an ambulist
Pissed a somnambulist, er
Pissed a somnambulist, er
Kissed a somnambulist in an ambulance, in an ambulance
I kissed a somnambulist in an ambulance, in an ambulance, ...
I kissed an ambulance
I kissed an ambulance, I pissed an ambulance
I killed an ambulance, I killed an ambulance
I killed an ambulance, I killed an ambulance
Then I killed my doctor
I said, "Physician, heal thyself:
You're in no position to heal thyself
You're no position to kill yourself"
The somnambulist in an ambulance
(repeated in various arrangements)
I kissed and killed an ambulance (repeated)
Somnambulist in an ambulance (repeated)

I, I, I, I ... (repeated)
I kissed and killed an ambulance (repeated)

Hush, may I ask you all for silence?
The dreamer is still asleep
May the goddess keep us from single visions
And beauty sleep

The dreamer is still asleep
The dreamer is still asleep
He's inventing landscapes in their magnetic fields
Working out a means of escape, he says
We'll cut across the crop circles

The seer says no
There's not much time left for these escape attempts
Look at it this way
In ten years' time
Who'll even remember? Who'll care?
Who'll even remember? Who'll care?
One dies like that, deep within it
Almost inside it
It's there for a reason

I'll cut out my old address
Attack the little book
To tear and cut the paper
To care and touch the paper

The beginning is also the end
Time defines it, time unwinds it
It will end
Like close friendships
Nothing could be further
We forget the space between people and places
Is empty
We forget, and don't notice the loss
And don't notice the loss (repeated)

Crossing into venerable degenerations
Such radiant pollution
The god with the silver hand surveys this vast,
Surveys these vast contaminations

In the heart of your heart
Your eye remains
Is the hurt you? Is the blister you call loveless?
Your whole life is a cold slow shock
Your whole life is a cold slow shock

??? time
Take a little time
To track the shabby shadow down
The pissy mists of history
Down the pissy mists of history
Take a little time
To track the shabby shadows down
The pissy mists of history

The dreamer is still dreaming
The dreamer is still dreaming

Hush; may I ask you all for silence?
The dreamer is still asleep
May I ask you all for silence?
The dreamer is still dreaming (repeated)
The dreamer is still asleep

A Slip in the Marylebone Road

Ra, bai, be, om, uyi, ucha, beyom, om... (repeated)

A slip was made on Marylebone Road
A slit was made on the Marylebone Road

A slit was made on Marylebone Road
A slip was made in the middle of the road
I sat down in the middle of the road
My bags were too heavy
They were full of medication I didn't wanna take
They were full of medication I didn't wanna take
I left them in the middle of the road
In the middle of the road, in the middle of the road

And a precious green notebook
And a precious green notebook
And a precious green notebook
In the middle of the road
A slit opened; I fell
A ??? kiss from your angel
Your angel, your angel, an angel, an angel
And two people came up to me
Two people came up to me
They asked, was I all right?
And they asked me was I all right?
I said no, I was all wrong, you were wrong for asking me
Oh
And a slit opened, a slit opened
A chink, a chink opened, a whole slit
And I slipped inside of it
I slipped inside of it

And a slit opened on the Marylebone Road
The Marylebone Road, the marrowbone road
And a slit opened up the Marylebone Road
And I left my bags there
Slit, cut, slit, cut, open, cut, slit, slit, slit, slit

And somewhere, nowhere, in a hospital
Was a horse, ill
And somewhere, in a hospital
Was a horse that was ill
And I tried to find my way there
And I tried to find my way there
And somewhere, in a wood
There are two friends waiting, two friends waiting
And I tried to find my way there
In air, ???
And I got lost in the wood
And I got lost in the wood

So someone left a biscuit trail
No-one left a biscuit trail
No-one left a biscuit trail
No-one left a list of betrayals
Someone left a list of betrayals
Someone left a list of betrayals
Has someone left a list of betrayals?
Someone left a list of betrayals
Someone left a list of betrayals
Someone left a list of betrayals

And a fracture occurred in a fracture
A dislocation, a dislocation appeared, a fraction
A fraction of what I should have had happen to me
A fraction of what is in my handbag
A fraction of what should have happened to me
A fraction of what should have happened to me as I lost it
I was all tied up in a green valuable notebook
On the Marylebone Road

Snow Falls into Military Temples

Snow falls, slow falls, snow falls, slow falls
Snow falls, slow falls, snow falls, slow falls

Snow ...???
Slow falls

Into military temples
Into military temples
Into military temples
Into military temples

Snow falls, snow falls into military temples
Into military temples (repeated)

Snow falls
Snow falls

Snow falls into military temples
With a light pauses
We're the light forces
Into military temples (repeated)

Oh no! ...???

Temples... temples...

Triple Sons and the One You Bury

Triple sons
Triple sons
Triple sons

Triple stuns
Triple sons
Triple stuns
Triple stones

As they skiff across the water
As they skiff across the water
As they skiff across the water
Triple stones

Necrodisiac, necrodisiac, someone in love
With the dead things in their lives
And you're gonna bring them home
And you're gonna bring them home
Are you gonna bring them home?
Are you gonna bring them home
With a triple son, with a triple son, with a triple son?

I look into - whatever I look into, it just confuses the issues
The desert ??? in a pool, in a black pool of desert ???
There's triple sons, there's triple sons, there's triple sons
There's triple sons, there's triple sons, your triple sons
And how are you gonna bring them home?
And how are you gonna bring them home?
And how are you gonna bring them home?

In a ???-painted galleon
In a ???-painted galleon
In a ???-painted galleon
Triple sons, triple sons, triple sons
Triple sons, triple sons, triple sons

Triple sons with a resonance to rub against
With a ???
With a resonance to rub against the ???
With a resonance to rub against the ???
Oh, there's triple sons
Oh, those triple sons
Oh, those triple sons

The one you bury: the one bright red yew berry
If you're gonna bury them, bring them home first
(repeated)

And we swallow each new red berry
And we swallow each red yew berry
And we swallow each dead yew berry
(repeated in various arrangements)
And we swallow each red you buried
(repeated in various arrangements)
The one you bury, the one you bury
The single one you bury

And I drank a cup of mercury this morning (repeated)
I drank a cup
I took a cup from a sip of mercury
And a sip from a cup of mercury
(repeated in various arrangements)
I took a cup from a sip of mercury
I took a cup from a sip of mercury
And then I ...???
I took a sip from a cup of mercury (repeated)

And I swallowed one new red berry
And I swallowed the one you bury
And then I swallowed the one you bury
Then I swallowed the one you bury (repeated)
Then I took a sip from a cup of mercury
I took a sip from a cup of mercury
And I swallowed the one you bury
I swallowed the one you bury

...And the Ambulance Died in His Arms is a live recording of Coil performing at the 2003 All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands. On this date, Coil were John Balance on vocals, Peter Christopherson on sequencers, Thighpaulsandra on keyboards, and Tom Edwards on marimba. This combination of musicians appeared on Live Two, recorded two years earlier. Where that set was abrasive and loud, this one is largely subdued, very different from the other recordings of Coil that appeared over the course of the Live series. Balance takes the mic to explain the subdued nature of the material, "We're doing a quiet set today. We've had too much shouting over the past year." Of the five lengthy tracks, four are completely new and one is a radical reworking of "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep" from Musick to Play in the Dark. Most of the set appears to be improvised, especially the glossaholalic "Snow Falls on Military Temples'" and "Triple Sons and the Ones You Bury," where Balance appears to be channeling his lyrics from another plane, suggesting phrases and then settling in on one which gets repeated and morphed into something totally new. Most of the song titles on this album are generated from those very phrases. Of all the live Coil albums that have been released, and there are a lot of them, ...And the Ambulance is one of the more satisfying. It is an excellent document of Coil's improvisatory nature, a side that was not displayed on their studio albums much, if at all. - James Mason, All Music Guide

This is the first new Coil release (and also possibly the last) to surface since the untimely passing of Geoff Rushton AKA Jhonn Balance last November. As we are assured that the title for this release was already decided upon before Balance's death, it's hard not to read it as strangely prophetic, just as it is difficult to listen to any Coil music nowadays without hearing signs, omens and harbingers of death everywhere. For a group whose music is so implicative of a rich esoteric heritage, the death of Jhonn Balance, while certainly tragic and accidental, seems somehow wholly appropriate, a corporeal sacrifice in pursuit of some higher pitch of magickal experience. These omens and beckoning mythologizations are all over ...And the Ambulance Died In His Arms, which documents a unique Coil performance at the Camber Sands Holiday Centre, part of the Autechre-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival, weekend of April 6, 2003. I was in the audience during this performance, and have been repeatedly listening to a fan-recorded bootleg of the show in the two intervening years, so this material is very familiar to me, and brings back gloriously hallucinogenic memories. This official release is superior in many ways to both my memory and the bootleg, boasting a higher quality soundboard recording, song names, track separations and packaging containing fantastic photos from the performance. The front cover is a particularly choice snapshot of Jhonn Balance in his Victorian madman costume, sporting a D.H. Lawrence/Will Oldham beard and hair combed sharply sideways. After a brief introduction of the now-familiar Coil-trademarked electronics—all shuddering gurgles, ripples, dimensional buzzes and distorted analogue melodies—the lengthy, seemingly improvised "Snow Falls into Military Temples" begins. The song is all icy ambience: a chillingly glacial combination of distorted, sidereal synths, unidentifiable percussive clatter and irregular trills on the marimba. Jhonn Balance pipes in with a series of nonverbal ululations and incantations, eventually settling on the mantric repetition of the song's title. Then Jhonn reveals the guiding principle behind this uniquely understated Coil performance: "We're doing a quiet set today...we've had too much shouting over the past year." And a quiet set it is, at least when compared to the Constant Shallowness-era, baptism-through-noise set I'd witnessed a couple years earlier in NYC. However, quiet in this case does not suggest that it is any less powerful, and in fact, there is a simmering, deliberate intensity to this material that brings it closer to the group's Musick To Play in the Dark phase than any of their other live appearances. "A Slip in the Marylebone Road" is an aural dowsing rod, Jhonn Balance recounting hazy memories of a drugged robbery near the aforementioned tube station that left him bereft of a valuable green notebook full of ideas and song lyrics. The story is told in freeform style over a quiet rhythm punctuated by Sleazy's sampled Speak-and-Spell spitting out computerized nonsense syllables. The last two lengthy tracks seem the most prophetic of all, "Triple Sons and the One You Bury" ("I drank a cup of mercury...If you're going to bury him, bring him home first.") and a radically retooled version of "The Dreamer Is Still Asleep." Subtitled "A Somnambulist in an Ambulance," a reference to Balance's alliterative mantra, impossible not to read as an eerie portent of tragic events to come. This is an indispensable live document, a set of songs never performed before or since, with a uniquely atmospheric mood steeped in morbid augury. - Jonathan Dean, Brainwashed