Initially a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to bandmates John Balance and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil's sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction. Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original - "Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience." Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for. Time Machines was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as "temporal slips" in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively "dissolve time". The compact disc edition includes reproductions of the six original vinyl stickers and comes housed in a gatefold chipboard digipack featuring spot gloss overlay.
