Keenan’s main focus is on the various tendrils that TG splintered into past the collective’s collapse (or should I say “mission termination”) in 1981. This new volume contains almost 100 pages of extra material culled from Furfur, a collection of interviews with musicians and artists whose careers intersected with the bands', initially published alongside Strange Attractor's first limited edition of the book. Because I’m a weirdo, my last few years of high school were soundtracked by Coil, C933, NWW and Throbbing Gristle.

David Tibet, a Malaysian-born Crowley-obsessive armed with a Tibetan thighbone trumpet and a fascination for theology and the occult, would form Current 93. In case you didn't know, Current 93, Coil and Nurse with Wound are all bands that rose in the wake of Throbbing Gristle / Psychic TV in the late 70s / early 80s. It's great, even when it gets into some of the acts I'm less interested in, the characters involved are still fascinating.Long out of print and with the first edition demanding serious money from collectors, this much-anticipated expanded edition comes completely redesigned, with many new and previously unseen photographs and ephemera.

There's one hilarious top review on here bemoaning the fact that "hipster" David Keenan didn't get into the weeds of the various overtly nazi groups in the World Serpent orbit, which shows the sort of edgy posturing associated with some of this music. Denn die Formel geht auf: Ohne Coil keinen Techno, ohne Nurse With Wound keinen Industrial/Noise und ohne Current 93 keinen Neo- oder Postfolk. England's Hidden Reverse, the celebrated history of the UK's esoteric underground by The Wire contributor David Keenan, is getting a long-awaited republication.All of them started in the late 1970s/early 1980s, following the post-punk flourish in 1977 and 1978. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Based on several years' worth of exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands' personal archives, 'England's Hidden Reverse' is the first, definitive, biography of Nurse With Wound, Coil and Current 93.

This is such a beautifully produced book, testament perhaps to the power of independent publishers to produce work of care and precision beyond the usual bounds of the majors. England’s Hidden Reverse is an impressive, illustrated, hard backed volume coupled with a CD of music by Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Coil. Alongside these names, it also folds Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Shirley Collins, Charles Sims and AE Housman into the esoteric narrative, making for a book that has become highly influential and increasingly pertinent to a lot of music and literature produced in recent years, such as that by Grumbling Fur, English Heretic and Kemper Norton.i've always loved coil's music more than the other two, but i have to say reading about tibet's life and obsessions and worldview is by far the most fascinating; reading this definitely had me going into his back catalog, along with almost everyone here, even the smallest of players seemed to have a niche carved out somewhere, if you travel backwards enough, into the past.

This newly expanded edition of England's Hidden Reverse , the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground that includes the first, and only, biographies of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound, is based on exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands' personal archives.The discographies of the three artists at the heart of Keenan’s book exist in a constant state of flux; listening to one album from any of the artists mentioned on the cover will hardly reveal the whole of their sound. A shame really - the 'esoteric underground' that Keenan focuses on is a deeply rich seam of myth and invention, far beneath the darkest extremes of British 'alternative' culture and even the transgressive norms of the 'Industrial' music scene they sprang from; the stories of the bands are correspondingly challenging and engaging.