Nine Inch Nails - "14 Ghosts II" (mp3)
There's probably no ordinarily vocal-driven band I'd be more excited to hear an instrumental album from than Nine Inch Nails, and it's not even so much that I have any problem with Trent Reznor's vocals (although his lyrics are occasionally cringe-inducing). He knows exactly how to seethe or scream over his music to maximum effect, but the menace and angst he's perfected do a certain injustice to the textural complexity and variety of the music he creates. That's not to say that another singer could lay some shiny happy shit over his tracks and it would work, but the absence of vocals at least leaves the beats and guitars and synth squiggles to make their own statement, one that isn't locked into a one-note depiction of infinite sadness or rage. And that's why I'm really glad that Reznor made his second semi-free-internet-album-release experiment since his exit from the major label system, after that Saul Williams album with the ridiculous title that I just couldn't bring myself to check out, is the instrumental double album Ghosts I-IV.
The structure of the album -- 36 tracks spread into four parts -- is probably arbitrary and/or just a cute way to divide a Nine Inch Nails album into sections of nine, but it actually works out pretty well. Listening to this stuff for 2 hours would wear me down, but I've taken to just listening to it one section at a time, and although they individually don't necessarily feel like an album or an EP, it's just about the right serving size for one sitting (and, if it matters, II is by far my favorite of the four). But more importantly, the production values are much higher than that of the last proper NIN album, Year Zero, which was largely recorded on a laptop in the back of a tour bus, and showed that a little too much in its murky sonics and lack of a live band roar. In fact, that album's biggest highlight for me ("HYPERPOWER!") was a brief instrumental and the only track with live drums. Little on Ghosts I-IV is that aggressive or features a drummer, but much of it does benefit from the welcome return of Adrian Belew, who always made inspired contributions to NIN's 90's records.
Part of the subtext of this album, and Reznor's attendant exit from the major label system, that interests me is the refreshing uptick in activity he's engaged in the past few years. In the decade following what will probably always remain his masterpiece, The Downward Spiral, he only released one album (granted, it was a double), and he was shaping up to become one of those reclusive types who'd only come out of the woodwork with something new every five years or so. It turned out, though, that he was working through addiction and some other serious issues, and since he's kicked them he's ended up released three albums in as many years. I'm a big advocate of the idea that recording artists with higher productivity inevitably make better music and go on more interesting tangents than if they take years between records, so I hope Reznor keeps up this run he's on, even if it's being driven at least in part by a vendetta against the record industry.
There's probably no ordinarily vocal-driven band I'd be more excited to hear an instrumental album from than Nine Inch Nails, and it's not even so much that I have any problem with Trent Reznor's vocals (although his lyrics are occasionally cringe-inducing). He knows exactly how to seethe or scream over his music to maximum effect, but the menace and angst he's perfected do a certain injustice to the textural complexity and variety of the music he creates. That's not to say that another singer could lay some shiny happy shit over his tracks and it would work, but the absence of vocals at least leaves the beats and guitars and synth squiggles to make their own statement, one that isn't locked into a one-note depiction of infinite sadness or rage. And that's why I'm really glad that Reznor made his second semi-free-internet-album-release experiment since his exit from the major label system, after that Saul Williams album with the ridiculous title that I just couldn't bring myself to check out, is the instrumental double album Ghosts I-IV.
The structure of the album -- 36 tracks spread into four parts -- is probably arbitrary and/or just a cute way to divide a Nine Inch Nails album into sections of nine, but it actually works out pretty well. Listening to this stuff for 2 hours would wear me down, but I've taken to just listening to it one section at a time, and although they individually don't necessarily feel like an album or an EP, it's just about the right serving size for one sitting (and, if it matters, II is by far my favorite of the four). But more importantly, the production values are much higher than that of the last proper NIN album, Year Zero, which was largely recorded on a laptop in the back of a tour bus, and showed that a little too much in its murky sonics and lack of a live band roar. In fact, that album's biggest highlight for me ("HYPERPOWER!") was a brief instrumental and the only track with live drums. Little on Ghosts I-IV is that aggressive or features a drummer, but much of it does benefit from the welcome return of Adrian Belew, who always made inspired contributions to NIN's 90's records.
Part of the subtext of this album, and Reznor's attendant exit from the major label system, that interests me is the refreshing uptick in activity he's engaged in the past few years. In the decade following what will probably always remain his masterpiece, The Downward Spiral, he only released one album (granted, it was a double), and he was shaping up to become one of those reclusive types who'd only come out of the woodwork with something new every five years or so. It turned out, though, that he was working through addiction and some other serious issues, and since he's kicked them he's ended up released three albums in as many years. I'm a big advocate of the idea that recording artists with higher productivity inevitably make better music and go on more interesting tangents than if they take years between records, so I hope Reznor keeps up this run he's on, even if it's being driven at least in part by a vendetta against the record industry.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 01, 2008 at 11:35 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Wes : 9:57 PM