Recoiled is a semi-official remix EP credited to Coil and Nine Inch Nails. It is the commercial and physical release of selected tracks from the Uncoiled download-only remix compilation. It was released on February 24, 2014 on Cold Spring Records and was made available on CD, vinyl, limited edition vinyl and digital formats.
The tracks were new mixes re-created by Danny Hyde from his original source material, though they were initially believed to be outtakes from the remix sessions by all members of Coil for Fixed, Closer To God and Further Down The Spiral. Recoiled omits the tracks from Uncoiled that could be viewed as redundant and also adds an extra remix that was not included on Uncoiled.
Track Listing
CD
- "Gave Up" (Open My Eyes) - 5:28
- "Closer" (Unrecalled) - 7:41
- "The Downward Spiral" (A Gilded Sickness) - 7:59
- "Eraser" (Reduction) - 8:45
- "Eraser" (Baby Alarm Remix) - 8:54
Vinyl
A1 "Gave Up" (Open My Eyes) - 5:28
A2 "Closer" (Unrecalled) - 7:41
A3 "The Downward Spiral" (A Gilded Sickness) - 7:59
B1 "Eraser" (Reduction) - 8:45
B2 "Eraser" (Baby Alarm Remix) - 8:54
- The vinyl was released in three versions: standard vinyl, limited edition brown/black splattered vinyl and a limited edition picture disc.
Credits
- Mastered At – Hermetech Mastering
- Remastered At – The Cage Studios
- Design – Abby Helasdottir
- Mastered By – Gregg Janman
- Photography By – Marius Andrei Dima
- Remastered By [For Cold Spring] – Martin Bowes
- Remix – Coil
- Remix [Created By] – Danny Hyde, Peter Christopherson
Artwork
All artwork for both Recoiled and Uncoiled was created by Echoing The Sound forum member Marius Andrei Dima (aka MAD) and is meant to recall Russell Mills' artwork for Further Down The Spiral.
Uncoiled
Uncoiled is an unofficial download-only remix compilation made up of new mixes re-created by Danny Hyde from his original source material, though they were initially believed to be outtakes from the remix sessions by all members of Coil for Fixed, Closer To God and Further Down The Spiral. A selection of these tracks was later semi-officially released as Recoiled.
Rumors of outtakes had been circulating since 1995 and in 2012, Hyde stated that he had multiple tracks in his possession. Funds were then raised by members of the Echoing The Sound forum to acquire the tracks and the collection was put up for free download in November 2012. It was later revealed by Hyde that the provenance of the remixes was not as initially understood, and that he had personally re-created them in response to being contacted by NIN fans.[1] After the release of Uncoiled, Robin Rimbaud (aka scanner) unearthed a DAT with Coil remixes of NIN songs matching the names from the PHANTOM NIN SONGS portion of the nothing.nin.net discography (see below). The audio matched what was on Further Down the Spiral - confirming that the rumors of unreleased Coil remixes were in fact just rumors.
Track Listing
- "Gave Up" (Open My Eyes) - 5:28
- "Closer" (Unrecalled) - 7:41
- "The Downward Spiral" (A Gilded Sickness) - 7:59
- "Eraser" (Reduction) - 8:45
- "Gave Up" (Flim Mix) - 3:45
- "Gave Up" (Coldcutter) - 1:29
- "Gave Up" (In Your Face) - 1:38
- "Gave Up" (Full Mix) - 1:50
- "Gave Up" (Full Mix+) - 2:07
- "Gave Up" (More Perc) - 1:43
- "Gave Up" (More Perc No Bass) - 1:42
The Physical Component
In 2020, The NIN Hotline created a limited run of physical CD-R versions of Uncoiled [2]. The package included a professionally printed digipak, CD-R, and hand-numbered postcard. For copyright reasons, the CD-R was sent blank, and it was left up to the recipient to burn the audio. Although 200 copies were made, only 160 were distributed.
About
The original story from the torrent file:
On February 21, 1995, Stephanie Nahas posted to alt.music.nin about meeting up with Danny Lohner, who mentioned at the time that Coil had remixed Eraser for an upcoming remix album. Sometime in the next few months, someone with reliable contacts with the Coil and NIN camps let on that several remixes were completed by Coil, but not all of them made the remix album. The Nine Inch Nails discography was updated to add the following tracks to “NIN PHANTOM SONGS”
Eraser (a version with worms)
The Downward Spiral (a gilded sickness)
The Downward Spiral (fullblown)
These were added a few lines below this existing entry: Gave Up(remix by coil, used in movie Young Americans, faster than fixed version and uses the same sound template according to John Balance of Coil. fixed version appears on soundtrack)
Over the years, NIN fans helped dig up tracks on that PHANTOM NIN SONGS list, but these proved elusive. Peter Christopherson was asked in 2007 about any unreleased remixes for the launch of remix.nin.com: “Thanks for writing and listening over the years, but sorry - to the best of my recollection everything we did was already used by Trent in public, except the Broken Movie, which I understand is available from some pirate.com type sites.”
With the passing of John Balance and Peter Christopherson, I took the rumors of those remixes of The Downward Spiral and Eraser to be figments of the creative imagination of someone on alt.music.nin - as to the remix of Gave Up that appeared in Young Americans, that concretely existed. In 2012, longtime Echoing the Sound forum member Wizfan, hailing from Greece, contacted Danny Hyde:
“I had seen a YouTube video of yours a couple of years ago. You showed a box with the Nothing logo on it. Do you still have it? Could you tell us about it? We are interested in unreleased songs/remixes by Coil, NIN or other artists.”
The response he got was pretty exciting - “sure i have many unreleased versions of Gave up and closer, mixes created on the days but different and unheard even by trent I also have versions of the downward spiral and eraser mixes on a dat somewhere”
Eight months later, with the help of over fifty members of EchoingTheSound.org, remixes that have sat on DATs - some for over two decades - are now available for you to enjoy.
Special thanks to Wizfan for getting the ball rolling, to David D. Yuhnke for chasing down all the other phantom NIN tracks, Marius Andrei Dima for coming up with photography in very short order, and Danny Hyde for making this possible.
In an interview with compulsiononline.com[3], Danny Hyde explained how the remixes for Uncoiled actually came into being:
These remixes are known as the "pre-big studio-mixdown" mixes, could you elaborate on what that means and how these differ to the final issued recordings?
They were known as the pre-big studio mixes because as I said before I've got a huge, huge book which I used to type out. Before computers and printers I used to do it on the word processor from my notepads of the sessions where I scribbled everything down. I would type these up and store them and when the Nine Inch Nails forum boys said they'd heard about these outtakes and things I went back to the DATs from those days and found the rough cuts I did at my house before the big expensive one thousand pounds a day studio. What we'd do is copy the multitracks to DAT so we could take the sounds home. At my home I had a DAT machine digitally linked up to the sequencer, so I could digitally transfer the samples or the SMPTE could control the sequencer that could fire samples all through the mixing desk. I'd do a rough outline of what was happening that day. Pete would come over and we'd discuss bits and bobs and he'd join and we'd do stuff. With 'Closer' we actually worked in synch, as Pete did the same at his house and did a load of sessions. This was before Skype so we'd phone each other up and play down the phone where we were at and we knew we were in the same tempo and we knew we were in the same key as we were working to the same samples. So we knew that when we synched them ours would run and we could whittle down what we didn't need and we could synch it to the multitrack and take from that what we needed. So the pre big mix studio sessions were effectively all the pre big studio runs of what we were doing at home in the little studio. You'd do a little mixdown to DAT for your records so when you got to the big studio you could play it, if someone said "what are you thinking?" But before you set up all the machines and fired it at them you could play them that if they wandered in. And those DATs and subsequent notes those DAT created I reran a load of the sections that we had created, and I reran them exactly as we had done them. And I record all the notes, the effects, the levels and everything. If I didn't have a certain section as the DAT had corrupted or whatever I reran them again and cut and pasted between the various versions. The pre-big studio versions is exactly what it says; it's the versions that were done at home before the multi thousand pound machines were allowed to do the final mix. The final mix being all of these samples and the multitrack running through a big SSL mixing desk mixed down again to half-inch tape and the half-inch tape is sent to the pressing plant and they cut the vinyl.
Uncoiled Extended
A month and a half after the original Uncoiled release, a special Uncoiled Extended version was announced via an email sent to those who had donated to the release of the initial version. It included the following bonus tracks: a mock demo version of "Closer" with commentary by Hyde and two other Hyde commentaries, one on remixing "Gave Up" and one on the project in general.
The original, wide distribution download of Uncoiled had a mistakenly sped-up version of "Gave Up (Open My Eyes)", which was corrected for Uncoiled Extended and Recoiled.
Track Listing
- Uncoiled Commentary from Danny Hyde - 1:13
- "Gave Up" (Open My Eyes) - 5:57
- "Closer" (Unrecalled) - 7:41
- "The Downward Spiral" (A Gilded Sickness) - 7:59
- "Eraser" (Reduction) - 8:45
- "Closer" (Demo) - 5:21
- Gave Up Remix Commentary from Danny Hyde - 0:18
- "Gave Up" (Flim Mix) - 3:45
- "Gave Up" (Coldcutter) - 1:29
- "Gave Up" (In Your Face) - 1:38
- "Gave Up" (Full Mix) - 1:50
- "Gave Up" (Full Mix+) - 2:07
- "Gave Up" (More Perc) - 1:43
- "Gave Up" (More Perc No Bass) - 1:42
2018 Extras
In 2018, Danny Hyde announced that he would be releasing additional remixes (based on those from Recoiled) as part of a special release for 26 spare pieces of the vinyl that he received from Cold Spring Records. He explained further on his website:[4]
When the Recoiled vinyl records were constructed, bizarrely the factory sent me, as well as the finished records, 26 black vinyl records in clear plastic sleeve, no cover. I have pondered what to do with these for a few years. I have decided to sell them on. To make it interesting, I have labelled each, a letter from the alphabet and created a unique CD, with separate cover/sleeve label for each one. The CDs, and vinyl sleeve label are each unique for the 26 letters. Each CD contains the same 4 songs, BUT these are versions never heard before by anyone else still living. The buyer of one of these will be the only one of a possible 26 to own these versions of the songs, and ever hear them. You will not find them on YouTube, Spotify or anywhere. Of course I hope you keep these for yourself, but obviously that is not legally binding, it will be your choice, to share or not. Also you will have the vinyl record as well, of course. I have to get rid of these now; I am not sure of the time frame I will release each letter of the alphabet, but possibly a few this year, then sporadic. Who knows.
The tracklisting for the Recoiled Special CD is as follows:
- "Gave Up/Given Up" (Intense mix) - 5:57
- "Closer" - Dreamspace Mix (Moody) - 7:52
- "The Downward Spiral" (Raw Mix) - 7:21
- "Eraser/Erased Mix" (Spartial Driven) - 6:57
- Narration and Thanks - 1:16