There's also a rock band from the US with the name Screwtape, and recently I found about about another US weird sound project with the name. It's not all that unpopular, unsurprisingly.
I picked the name in 2000. Prior to that I'd been using the name N.FIOS (Noise For It's Own Sake); I liked the idea of Noise not having any attachments or decoration, an ideal I still hold to some degree. I chose it because it had the word "tape" in it, and because of the demonic association (was in a very dark mood at that time of life). Mr. Penttinen is right, it was chosen from the book, which at the time I hadn't read; I was familiar from it from the James Blish book "Black Easter/Faust Aleph Null". Funnily enough, when I did finally get the book and read it, I found this passage -
"Music and silence - how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since Our Father entered Hell - though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express - no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise - Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless and virile - Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress. Meanwhile you, disgusting little -"
- which I think is a nice co-incidence, and is something I've used as a bit of promotion from time to time.
As for any relation to Drew McDowall, no. I hadn't even heard Coil at that stage (and now that I have I don't care for the project) and I only found out about McDowall's side project one time when I was looking on Discogs. It didn't surprise me that it had already been used, and doesn't worry me now. I've been using this name for ten, getting into eleven years now. I've had bad luck before choosing names that are already used - couldn't believe it when I found out about Iron Fist Of The Sun after I had released a tape called Fist Of The Sun. Sometimes it happens.
