Trent Reznor showed his left-field Anglophiliac tendencies by working with David Bowie and Aphex Twin but perhaps his most worthwhile English collaboration was with Coil, a psychedelic occult electronic group (led by Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson of industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and Jhonn Balance).
They had a track record for turning in material that was too much for those who had commissioned it - their score for Hellraiser was so frightening it was cut from the film - and it’s easy to see why most of these remixes have never been released by a major label.
Coil start from the bottom of Trent’s spiral (a muscular and grinding Gave Up) before working downwards beyond mere concepts of good and evil and the politeness of Western composition into the primal subconscious (a psilocybin-fried, ectoplasmic take on Downward Spiral). It’s a systematic deconstruction of NIN over the course of 40 minutes until they actually become Coil (on the aptly named Eraser) - a narcotic overloaded, disorientating but strangely joyous glimpse into* the maws of death itself. Masterful.
