CoH is the alias of Ivan Pavlov, and the Bureau files him at Tier III for two reasons that reinforce each other: his standing as a Raster-Noton and Mego artist of the experimental-electronic underground, and his role as the connector who brought a clean digital sensibility into the late Coil world. He is not a founder of the tradition this archive documents, and the file says so plainly; he is filed for the junction he forms with it, and for a body of work substantial enough to stand on its own terms.
He came up through the right doors. Russian-born and resident in Sweden from the mid-1990s, Pavlov entered the scene through Raster-Noton, the label run by Carsten Nicolai, and its circle of Noto, Ryoji Ikeda and the rest of that roster. His first recordings date to 1997, and Enter Tinnitus on Raster-Noton in 1998 was the proper debut. The work that followed, across Raster-Noton, Mego and others, is digital music built from clicks, tones and exact structure, but it is not the austere wing of glitch; there is humour in it, and a lyricism, an engineer's precision turned toward something warmer than the method usually allows. The alias itself sets the tone: CoH reads in Cyrillic as the Russian word for sleep, and the music has that quiet, dreaming cast.
From the turn of the 2000s he was drawn into the Coil orbit, contributing to the 20' to 2000 series, releasing the Love Uncut EP on Coil's Eskaton imprint in 2001, and taking part in the 2004 box set ANS, recorded on the Moscow ANS synthesiser. That relationship deepened, after Coil's end, into Soisong, the duo with Peter Christopherson active from 2007 to 2010, where Pavlov's colder, cleaner approach was set against Christopherson's exotic late manner. Around the same period he made CoH Plays Cosey with Cosey Fanni Tutti, worked with the singer Annie Anxiety, and recorded as Chessmachine with Richard Chartier, so that his points of contact with the archive's world are several, not one.
The Bureau's reading. CoH is filed at Tier III as Ivan Pavlov's experimental-electronic practice and as the connector who joined that clean digital language to the late Coil world through Soisong. He is an adjacent figure, documented here for the junction he forms with the tradition and for a catalogue that holds up on its own, and his partnership with Christopherson is the thread that draws him into this archive.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene