This year saw the release of The Ape Of Naples, the final album by Coil. After twenty-years of activity, Britain's oddest band came to an end following the death of its founder member, John Balance, in 2004. While the shape of the band would fluctuate wildly from album-to-album, with other members coming and going, the core of Coil was always Balance and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson. Both were former members of industrial band, Psychic TV, and Christopherson was well-known for his work with Throbbing Gristle - a band the tabloids once hysterically referred to as, "wreckers of civilisation" due to their abrasive sound and exploration of taboo subjects such as fetishism.

And while Coil was a very different outfit to Throbbing Gristle, Balance and Christopherson's fascination with the outré continued. Coil's music was influenced not only by sex and drugs, the province of a hundred other bands, but with explorations into magic and the occult. Recording sessions would be timed to coincide with the solstices, and sleep deprivation, chaos theory and electronic voice phenomenon (the alleged recording of the voices of the dead on tape recorders) all played a part in their music.

This was a band that was willing to go to the extremes of sanity for their music. As a result, that music is often deeply disturbing. Musick To Play In The Dark Volume 1, their sixth full-length album as Coil is a good example of this. Over it's six long tracks it creates a dreamlike ambience through bursts of noise, found sounds, snatches of overheard conversations, skittering electronica and Balance's intoned vocals. Strange Birds is a terrifying soundscape built around mangled birdsong and half-heard whispers.

Best of all is Red Queen, with its thunderous piano and industrial grind. At ten minutes long, it's monotonous but utterly compelling. Despite the all-pervasive mood of this 'moon music', as Balance liked to call it, there's a dark vein of humour running through the record.

Broccoli combines lyrics about the loss of your parents with the importance of remembering to always eat your greens. On the 13th November 2004 John Balance fell to his death from a balcony at his home. The rest of the band (at that point a five-piece) agreed to disband soon after. Despite this tragedy, Coil's fanbase continues to grow, and their influence can be felt on acts as diverse as Nine Inch Nails and Autechre. For twenty years Coil produced some truly remarkable, mind-expanding music, and this album is some of their best.