The Threshold HouseBoys Choir is what Peter Christopherson did first when he was alone, and the Bureau files it at Tier III as part of the Coil aftermath rather than as a project that stands free of it. Announced in 2005 as a follow-up to Coil, it was, despite the name, a solo undertaking, built heavily on computer-generated vocals, with Christopherson credited as its director. The music itself is documented as his; what the file records is the shape the work took once Coil had ended and he had moved to a new country.
The name comes from Threshold House, Coil's own label and a place in the band's private mythology. Christopherson was dry about it: the choir was not strictly a choir, the title was a mouthful, and the voices were adapted from various legal sources as much as from recordings of local singers. The substance, though, is serious. After relocating to Bangkok, where he lived and worked alone, he made music in which the new setting is plainly audible, warmer and more languid than Coil, tropical in cast, and tied closely to Thai ritual and image.
There are two releases. Form Grows Rampant (2007) is the debut and the fullest statement, five parts issued with a DVD of the record set to footage of Thai rituals filmed in Krabi. Amulet (2008) is the second and last: a hand-assembled four-disc set housed in a circular Thai amulet case, made in tiny quantities for live shows and mail-order and never properly distributed, its rough, sketch-like pieces playful and bittersweet by turns. The project ran in the same years as Soisong, the duo with Ivan Pavlov, and the two share a period and a sensibility, though THBC is the warmer and more solitary of the pair.
The Bureau's reading. The Threshold HouseBoys Choir is filed at Tier III as Christopherson's first solo guise after Coil, the tropical, choir-haunted work he made alone in Bangkok across two releases. Its weight is inseparable from his own, and it is filed so that the post-Coil work can be found under its own name; the larger account of the man is at the Peter Christopherson file.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene