Category Archives: NIN

The highest point reached by a celestial or other object

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The tilt of the tape head in the direction perpendicular to the tape travel.Sometimes what drives you is fear.

A Swarm of the Sun

I really wanted to skip my post today. I had a long week, followed by a bender of a weekend. I kept playing all the new tunes I had recently received, but nothing was worth mentioning. There were even some unfinished posts I thought about finishing, but the music that I once thought was fresh enough to write about seemed stale today. I read about the Taylor/Kanye performances at the VMA’s so I figured I better watch those performances.Those would surely give me something to write about! Sadly, although I’d love to rehash the discussion about these two, BOTH their performances put me to sleep.

Nothing in the inbox was speaking to me. My last chance was in the mailbox! I found two CD sized envelopes and quickly open the one that has the international postage on it! Sweden?

I rip it open and see it’s a CD by a group called A Swarm of the Sun. I think I remember previewing this online, and I remember it was really good. I hope I’m not wrong…I need to get this post done!

I throw the CD in and begin listening while reading the press release. A Swarm of the Sun is from Sweden (right…I got that…) and the core group is Erik Nilsson and Jakob Berglund who are joined by a number of musical collaborators.

It’s right around now that I get to track two in the CD and I get that tingle…  Oh yeah…this has fucking got everything. It’s light and dark. Strong yet fragile. It’s got an Industrial sound that simmers until boiling over in a searing explosion of guitar and distortion. It’s like the song you might hear in a movie where the protagonist realizes the Zombie Armageddon is upon him. He reloads his shotgun and wipes the blood off his brow while this song plays in the background. The title is called “This One Has No Heart” and I suggest you crank the volume all the way up!


Download A Swarm of the Sun – This One Has No Heart

[continues reading press release]

The full-length debut is called Zenith, it was released August 30th of this year. The band documented the making of the album through a series of pictures on their facebook page. If you like Nine Inch Nails, and need something to fill the hole Trent left in your heart when he decided to put NIN on the shelf, then click the Amazon link below.

Guided by the blazing sun

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me: have you heard the new project from Trent Reznor?

Bonnie: no
good?
or bad?
i’m afraid bad…

me: It sounds almost identical to another NIN song…just can’t place it.

Bonnie: ohhh
well
hmmm

me: but…it’s his new wife on vocals

Bonnie: she’s hot

me: with music that sounds just like NIN…which is great but just rubs me funny.

Bonnie: yea

me: she is hot…no question.

Trent married an alien from Mars’ Bai Ling Tribe who goes by the name of Mariqueen Maandig. Mariqueen used to be in the band West Indian Girl, but now that she’s fucking on Trent’s nine inch (I hope) nail, she doesn’t need to sing for her supper anymore.

-Michael K (dlisted.com)

My first thought when I heard Trent Reznor’s new project, How To Destroy Angels, was: “The music sounds great, but the vocals, well the vocals just don’t fit.”

I wondered who this amateur vocalist could be.

Mariqueen Maandig Reznor. Trent’s wife…and she’s no amateur.

Mariqueen was a vocalist for the band West Indian Girl for 5 year span starting in 2004.

Sounding a lot like the Beach Boys on acid, Californian West Indian Girl is the pop answer to the Flaming Lips or Pink Floyd. The band is even named after a well-known strain of powerful LSD.


Download West Indian Girl – Leave Tonight

And then there is this new project for Trent and Mariqueen Reznor. How To Destroy Angels, or HTDA for short. The group also includes Atticus Ross, a past collaborator on Nine Inch Nails stuff as well as a remixer/producer/musician/programmer on many different projects including the Coheed & Cambria’s “Year of the Black Rainbow” and the musical score to The Book Of Eli.In a facebook discussion, the group answered some questions from fans…well…fans of NIN at least. Trent answered one question about what How To Destroy Angels allows Trent to do that he couldn’t do with Nine Inch Nails besides having a different vocalist.

Yes, it sounds more NIN-ish than I believe it will as we progress. To me, HTDA frees me from some of the constraints I’ve begun to feel (primarily emotionally) in NIN.
NIN is not dead and I am about to work on some material that I believe will be quite different than previous NIN very soon.

Fair enough, and I am not complaining, I love the “sound” of NIN. I just don’t get why we care about this new vocalist. (She’s hot tho…) The song sounds like an outtake from the album Ghosts or The Fragile. It even sounds a lot like the song The Fragile in my opinion.


Download Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile


Download How To Destroy Angels – A Drowning

If you think you can do better, Trent has made the multitracks for the HDTA song above and the video below available via remix.nin.com

Bonnie: here’s my issue
gotta re-listen
but her voice isn’t that awesome
it’s good
sufficent

me: yeah
absolutely
it’s very much just ok

Bonnie: i would rather hear a trip hop artists singing it
something raspy and sweet at the same time?
or maybe someone wth a french accent

me: i was gonna put in the post…if I can find the instrumentals to this song I bet I could do better.

Bonnie: hehe

Best of 2008: I feel a million miles away

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2007 was a damn good year for new music. It was propelled forward by some sort of momentous occasion in 2006 that seemed to save all of the genres. 2008 blew by quickly, though, and the albums put out were still burning the energy radiating from the year before. I don’t know that many albums could argue they were radiating their own light. I have actually had a hell of a time putting together a Top Ten.

A few of my favorites put out new albums this year, but those didn’t change the scene, they didn’t change music, and they didn’t top what they’d done previously… So, despite how many spins they got on my iPod, they still didn’t make my list.

3OH!3 Want was one of the best, and most consequential, albums of the year. We claimed it resurrected Hip Hop. These boys are so damn adorable they resurrected something.

The Matches A Band in Hope was a) better than their last album which was already damn good, b) better than anything else in their genre all year long, and 3) enough to make a giant hunk of thugness get jiggy while driving his SUV. That’s a good album.

Colour Revolt’s Plunder, Beg, and Curse, The Bravery’s The Sun and the Moon Complete, and Murder By Death’s Red of Tooth and Claw were also some of the best albums of the year. These albums contributed to rock music in their own ways, whether it was proving that rock can translate to techno in an organic way and not just in the popular way club dj’s are doing it… proving that beards and southern rock are just barely getting started with their comebacks… or proving that three guitars and a drumset are not the only formula for a breathtaking live show. 2008 is better off for having these albums and these bands around.


Fasciination by The Faint was lauded by inAllcaps as “amazing” and “mind-blowing”. Thrice once again melted minds and limbs with the next installment in
The Alchemy Index, titled III and IV Air and Earth. And Death Cab for Cutie quietly and stealthily syncopated rhyme, rhythm, and reason with Narrow Stairs.

The Offspring, always one of my favorites, surpassed any of their previous albums combined in the ability to deliver that guitar that just makes my soul sing. Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace showed that they improve year by year and even though Splinter from 2003 was hard, smooth, and fuckyeah (yes it’s an adjective), RaF,RaG was light years better. THANK YOU OFFSPRING. I fucking love you.

But the best album of 2008 was Nine Inch Nail’s The Slip. How could it not be?

[Nine Inch Nails – 1,000,000]

Everything Trent Reznor puts out is impeccable. That is a lot to live up to. And there have been eight albums at my last count. He hasn’t slipped once. He has never failed to take on new challenges or rise beyond them. The Slip was even made available for digital download, free of charge.

“Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.”

Thank YOU, Trent. It. Kicks. Ass.

The official list from inALLcaps:

1. Nine Inch Nails: The Slip
2. 3OH!3: Want
3. Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs
4. Thrice: The Alchemy Index Vols III and IV Air and Earth
5. The Offspring: Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace
6. Colour Revolt: Plunder, Beg and Curse
7. The Matches: A Band in Hope
8. Murder by Death: Red of Tooth and Claw
9. The Faint: Fasciination
10.The Bravery: The Sun and Moon Complete

she matters when everything is meaningless

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It was FATE; it had to be. I was stressing about a topic to write about for inALLcaps.com, and struggling with writer’s block. It was then that I turned on the TV and caught the last half of the movie Natural Born Killers.

I have watched this movie hundreds of times. I even wrote a thesis on Natural Born Killers in college. The epiphany came at the end of the movie: The reminder that Trent Reznor had produced the soundtrack to this excellent movie. FATE! I knew then that I had my idea!

For almost a decade I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that “The Fragile” was the best album ever put out by Nine Inch Nails. This was an epic album but it got shit on by just about everyone. “The Fragile” never got the respect it deserved.

It was the kind of album that, when the volume was cranked you could lie in bed with your eyes closed and imagine it as the brilliant soundtrack to an even better movie. This movie might have everything you would want in cinema: drugs, sex, violence, and maybe something redeeming for the twisted main character. At least that’s what happens in my version.

Let’s stop here; this post won’t be about that old ass album. (But really…if you don’t own it…buy it ASAP)

This post is about HALO 26, otherwise known as Ghosts I – IV. 4 CDs – 36 tracks.

Reminiscent of “The Fragile”, yet “Ghosts” is a completely instrumental album. The packaging and artwork on this album is amazing, just like most NIN albums of recent release. But this whole piece of work is very different then anything Nails has put out thus yet.

So let me get you started with a tune from Ghosts:

[Download Track 29]
This track is more upbeat than much of the rest of the album, chosen in order to pique your interest.

Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference.”

It’s this soundtrack concept that I love. I like the fact that I can just get lost in the music. Maybe even better than “The Fragile” is the lack of lyrics to get in the way. I wanna just let my mind wander.

I want to remind you that this not the industrial rock that you would expect from Trent. This is, as Reznor has explained on his website for the album, an unexpected surprise from experimentation. 10 weeks with no agenda and driven by impulse.

Trent elaborates:

We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.

The album was initially released digitally on the Nine Inch Nails official website without any prior advertisement or promotion. They even created their own torrent to distribute 9 tracks from the album. Actually, check out this from a text file inside the official torrent:

Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

[Download Track 7]
I want to stress again…this is not about one great track. Much like a concept album I feel like it needs to be listened to from beginning to end. You don’t have to…but just do as I say, you’ll be happier in the end. /smirk

Trent is my hero. If you had a NIN sticker on your car I instantly think you are probably someone I would like to hang out with. Check out this album, however you get your hands on it. Then comment here. I want to know what you think about this album. Truly. Let’s become friends.

This is where I would normally put the Amazon referral links here so you can buy the album and we can hope to make 10% commish. Put the best deal for this album is direct from Trent: ghosts.nin.com $5 gets you the album in digital form. Tough to pass on that right? You spend more than that on a coffee in the morning…