I have never been able to answer the question of what books, movies, or music I would choose to have with me if I were stranded on a desert island. The question simply does not make any sense to me: no matter how much I love an album, I need to be in the mood for it, and listening to it at the "wrong" time never brings me pleasure. I have dozens and dozens of "favourite" albums, and each one is appropriate for its own particular island (or archipelago).

So whenever I was asked the dread desert island question -- which was often, since I tended to hang around record collectors a lot in my youth -- I would noisily protest, and only after quite a lot of complaining would I, grudgingly and with much dark muttering, provide a list. Which I would then follow up with the caveat that the list is subject to daily change.

The list did change every day, but after some years I began to notice something. There was one disc that was always, always on the list: no matter what mood I was in, no matter how my tastes shifted over the years, no matter what bands I discovered or rediscovered or outgrew. That disc is Horse Rotorvator, the 1986 album by Coil.

On the Eve of the Apocalypse - (the air choked with horsehair) - the Four Horsemen betray their steeds - slitting open the animal throats - and in doing so release the Second Great Deluge - Horsegore - Infinite Divisibles Split - an infinity of open sewers - the Four then fashion an immense earthmoving device from the collective jawbones - The Horse Rotorvator - with which to plough up the waiting world

If the liner notes aren't enough of a hint of the lunacy and violence to follow, the title of the opening track might be. "The Anal Staircase" begins with a discordant, bombastic loop that, as it turns out, is a snippet of The Rite of Spring played backward and slowed down. Throughout the song we hear samples of a boy giggling as his father tickles him ("Get off! Get off me, you bum!") -- an innocent scene that takes on a much darker tone in the context of the song's sexual power.

The rest of the album is divided between instrumentals and songs, though neither "instrumental" nor "song" mean quite what you think they mean when Coil is at work. The track "Herald" samples 63 seconds of a Sousa-esque march that would be cheerful were it not so embarrassingly out of tune; the arrhythmic lurch of the marching band, recorded in Acapulco, makes the listener wonder just what catastrophe it is "heralding." Similarly with "Babylero," a found recording of a street musician in Mexico who sings a traditional folk song in a clear, high voice. What may have been charming in person sounds strangely frantic when stripped of its context.

Even the more melodic songs on Horse Rotorvator are peppered with samples of crickets, hoofbeats, dogs barking. Coil doesn't play anything straight, in any sense of the word. And yet, their arrangements are precise, almost classical: unlike many industrial 'musicians', Peter Christopherson is an industrial musician.

Amidst the scraps and samples, John Balance sings. Some of his songs are suprisingly traditional in their structure, but occasionally the sweet vocals and thoughtful lyrics descend into something much more Dionysiac. On "Circles of Mania," the centrepiece of the album, Balance transforms into an animal, whooping and howling and panting as he describes the orgasmic joy of being eaten alive. (Half the lines he can't finish because he's laughing too hard; many of the others are interrupted with screams.)

And yet, the song that immediately follows this lunatic ride is the quietly hypnotic "Blood from the Air," which in turn is followed up by a faithful cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who By Fire". Later we are treated to an academic essay on the relationship between love and death, delivered in smooth professorial lecture format with the gentle tattoo of a military march in the background. The album closes with a gentle instrumental meditation on The First Five Minutes After Death; this song would be reworked a few years later as "The First Five Minutes after Violent Death."

Over the past twenty years, I've asked myself many, many times why this album is the only one that has never budged from my desert island list. Eventually I decided that it was because Horse Rotorvator is, in fact, all the albums I love, all at once. It is beautiful and gentle in places, epic and pretentious in others, jagged and painful, sexual, violent, gorgeous. Though my review of it here suggests that listening to it is a chaotic and off-putting experience, for me it has never been at all like that. The nonsense makes its own kind of sense: the babblings of a mystic that resolve into truth. There will never be another album like it.

A fascinating interview with Sleazy about the creation of the album can be found on the Brainwashed site.