Quality: 4.5 out of 5Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5
This isn't so much music as an experience. I wouldn't recommend listening to this album while driving or maybe even while standing. It's really a mind-warping experience of its own and may very well throw off your balance, especially on headphones. I'm actually making lots of typos while listening and typing.
Coil is well known as leading proponents of the industrial drone, and that's pretty much all you'll find here. The entire album consists of analog synthesizer drones pulsing at various oscillating rates. At its heart, Time Machines is a series of somewhat darkly hued sound painting. Fortunately, Coil are quite skilled at this sort of thing and the entire recording seems very smooth and consistent even as tones sometimes whirl off onto the stratosphere. Although this is best used as background music that has the strange side effect of turning your brain into jelly. If you're familiar with the construction of analog synths, you may want to try and pay attention as the band knob twirling is impressively controlled and effective.
There's not much point going over the tracks themselves, but it's well worth noting that they're all titled after synthetic chemical compounds. I don't know my chemistry, but I would assume of the mind bending variety. They're not named lightly as these tracks will indeed perform some sonic surgery on your brain. Time Machines comes across as a slightly dangerous album.
This is definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea. If I haven't scared you off already, I think you'll find that this disc contains something a little different than what is generally found on a CD or a piece of vinyl (or an mp3 I guess). Let Coil reprogram your mind if you dare.
