The Wily Filipino

England's Hidden Reverse.

Coming out in June, David Keenan's long-awaited England's Hidden Reverse -- here's the press release:

Together, Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound, David Tibet's Current 93 and John Balance and Peter Christopherson's Coil represent the real English underground in all its sexual, cultural and artistic variety. A shadowy scene whose work accents peculiarities of Englishness through the links and affinities they've forged with earlier generations of the island's marginals and outsiders, such as insane cat artist Louis Wain; writers like death decadent Eric, Count Stenbock and ecstatic mystic novelist Arthur Machen; and occult figures like Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley. In many cases, a combination of social inadequacy and the received critical wisdom that deemed their work too damned perverse, decadent or mad resulted in them being ignored in their own lifetimes and condemned to obscurity thereafter.

Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Coil have helped disinter the art and lives of such lost figures, factoring them into their portrayal of England's Hidden Reverse. Bathed in their light, Englishness is not always a pretty sight: Oh Rose, thou art truly sick.

For all that, the three groups of friends have maintained a symbiotic, yet uneasy relationship with the mainstream of popular culture, even as their beliefs and practices repel them farthest from it. Their impact goes deeper than is usually acknowledged. Coil's early pioneering work with samplers, tape loops and electronics has been soaked up and assimilated via the fringes of dance culture while Nurse With Wound's surrealism in sound and Current 93's eschatological folk music has helped re-wire the underground.

Through close friends and collaborators such as Nick Cave, Björk and Marc Almond, they retain a loose connection to contemporary pop. That said, they'd be the last people to deny that theirs remains very much a secret history. Until now.

Based on several years' worth of exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands' personal archives, David Keenan's 'England's Hidden Reverse' is the first, definitive, biography of Nurse With Wound, Coil and Current 93.

David Keenan writes for 'The Wire' and contributes a regular jazz column to 'The Sunday Herald'. His work has also been published in Mojo, NME, Melody Maker, Ugly Things, Uncut and Firm 'n' Fruity. He lives in Argyll, Scotland, with his wife Sarah.