The Abrahadabra Letters

The Abrahadabra Letters — Coil Correspondence, 1984–1988

The Abrahadabra Letters collects the correspondence between John Balance and Anthony Blokdijk across the years 1984 to 1988. Published by Korm Plastics on 8 November 2023, the book is a hardcover of 136 pages, designed by Alfred Boland and prefaced by Nick Soulsby. Images shown reflect the actual copy offered.

The Correspondence

The letters address practical matters — live appearances, releases, the mechanics of underground exchange — but they also carry the atmosphere of Coil's early formation: personal, unstable, and charged with the same intensity that ran through the music. Balance's voice in the letters is direct and idiosyncratic, moving between logistical notes and the kind of charged personal register that defined his work with Threshold House and beyond.

Supplementary Material

The volume extends beyond the letters themselves. Two Coil-related articles from Blokdijk's own Abrahadabra magazine are included, along with an interview he conducted with Coil for the Dutch magazine Opscene. This supplementary layer places the private exchange within a wider map of underground music print culture in the mid-1980s — zines, correspondence networks, and small-press publication as the connective tissue of a scene.

The Object

The book reproduces scans of the original correspondence, preserving Balance's handwriting, decorative marks, and visual habits as they appeared on the page. The publication functions simultaneously as archival document and physical object. Balance's language and rhythms remain directly visible rather than filtered through later reconstruction or editorial summary.

Who This Is For

This publication is suited to researchers and readers with a serious existing interest in Coil, experimental and post-industrial music history, mail art, and underground print culture of the 1980s. It sits within the broader Music Books & Sound Culture catalogue as a precise, intimate document rather than a retrospective overview. The reader is assumed to bring their own context.

Related Titles

Bright Lights and Cats with No Mouths offers additional primary material from the same figure and is available in the catalogue. The Abrahadabra Letters is published by Korm Plastics, the imprint founded by Frans de Waard, whose catalogue concentrates on sound culture, experimental music, and related documentary publications. Further titles connected to John Balance are listed in the catalogue.