Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust in an EP released by This Mortal Coil, a supergroup on the 4AD label, headed up by label founder and president Ivo Watts-Russell. It was released in 1983, after Ivo had tried to convince Modern English to record a medley of "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust," two of the band's early songs with which they closed out their live sets. The band declined, but Ivo decided to assemble a group of musicians to record the medley. Members of Cocteau Twins, Colourbox and Modern English itself, along with vocalist Gordon Sharp of Cindytalk made up the band that recorded the title track of the EP.
Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins recorded the intended b-side, a cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren." Ivo was pleased enough with the results that "Siren" was made the A-side of the 7" release.
Ivo has expressed displeasure with how the "Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust" medley turned out, and it has become somewhat of a rarity. A 4AD compilation EP, only available through the iTunes Music Store in 2006, was the only re-release of the song until it was included in a box set of all This Mortal Coil recordings, entitled Dust And Guitars, that 4AD released in 2011.
Famous quotes containing the words sixteen days, sixteen, days, gathering and/or dust:
“Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph.... “Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?””
—Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette] (1873–1954)
“If you think that nobility consists of having sixteen ancestors rather than merit, great Prince, then you may—and you may also praise or condemn me.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections.... Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
animal vines twisting over the line and
slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Piles of scrapbooks, the cuttings turned by time to the colour of the freckles on an old lady’s hand. Her hand. My hand, as it is now. When you touch the old newsprint, it turns into brown dust, like the dust of bones.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)