The New Backwards is the final iteration of material that Coil had been working on since at least 1993. The first known version of these songs was a demo tape simply title
Backwards, which Coil submitted to their then-current European label, Torso Records, for approval in 1993. "Bee Has The Photos" and "Egyptian Basses", though often included in bootlegs of the demo, are not considered to be officially part of this bootleg as they were released as part of the
Songs of the Week download series and not on the supposed original demo. much of the material from the demo was further developed at
Nothing Studios, with the intent of releasing the album under
Nothing Records. During this time, the project received many different names, such as
International Dark Skies,
God Please Fuck My Mind for Good,
Fire of the Mind, and
The World Ended a Long Time Ago. However, its release was continuously postponed, and Coil would end up releasing no album through Nothing. On , Coil were invited as guests for a broadcast on Dutch radio station
Radio 4 to promote an impending live show in the Netherlands. During this broadcast, the entirety of the
Backwards demo tape was played live, marking the first official acknowledgement of its existence and its first publication. A four-disc CD-R recording of the entire broadcast was later released in an unknown quantity as
Dutch Radio4 Supplement. On the live Coil album
Live Three, a song called "Backwards" is performed. This song is an incarnation of the songs "Simenon" and "Bee Has Photos".
The Ape of Naples is considered to be another reinterpretation of the
Backwards demo, as it featured completely reworked versions of "Heaven's Blade", "AYOR" and other songs that are believed to have been originally created around the time of
Backwards. Although the album contains a lot of material from the
Backwards sessions, the material is so augmented that there are very few recognizable samples. Further material from the
Backwards sessions has since been released as
Backwards (through
Cold Spring) and
Swanyard. Track listing Three extra tracks, "Bee Has the Photos", "Egyptian Basses" and a different version of "Spastiche", have been circulated with the demos. ==References==