Four deviant love songs make up the latest EP by COH (Ivan Pavlov) with collaborators Peter Christopherson and John Balance of Coil, Steve Thrower of Cyclobe, Frankie Gothard, and Louise Weasel. The disc comes lovingly packaged in a clear slip case with amusing cardstock inserts, color illustrated and Spanish captioned, for each song. As with some of the previous EP "Vox Tinnitus", "Uncut" pairs the guests' vocals with Pavlov's precisely programmed, laptop generated chaos. "My Angel [Director's Cut]" and "Fffetish" are reinterpretations of mid '80s pop tunes, Soft Cell's "Meet Murder My Angel" and Vicious Pink's "Fetish", respectively.
On "Angel" Christopherson's (and possibly Gothard's) vocalized hums, sighs, moans, movements, watery slaps and thumps could be construed as sexual overtures more overt than anything suggested in the few lines of softly spoken/sung lyrics. "Fffetish" is as danceable as the original with driving electronic pops and hi-hat as Gothard vehemently insists "when you're near me my whole body aches" and "you are my fetish!" Thrower's "Prayer For Russell" (Moore, a gay porn actor) is more restrained and tone/drone based. His effected voice recites a barely decipherable, possibly double entendre series of lines such as "come into the waves of time" and "come beneath the waves of time". But it's Balance, unsurprisingly, who delivers the most vibrant and vigorous vocal of all. In "Health & Deficiency: Love's Septic Domain" he passionately decries the humiliation and horrors of "dirty hospitals" and daily medical methodologies: "I take 27 pills before 9 a.m. in the morning / another 35 by 9 in the evening / I have 3 intravenous injections a day / one in the thigh, two in the eye". Meanwhile, Weasel deadpans spoken lines here and there, perhaps summing it all up best with "I'm confused between sexual, murder, magick and medical ... is the difference metric or imperial? septic? fertile? furtive? or sterile?" The song reminds me of the themes explored in Coil's rendition of "Tainted Love" and the soundtrack to Derek Jarman's "Blue" and proves to be the most powerful of these cuatro canciones. Out next for COH will be a collaboration with visual artist D42 entitled "Netm√πrk" for Source Research Recordings.
 
 
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