Posts Tagged ‘Nine Inch Nails’

  
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Parlour to Parlour, Episode 16: The Spring Heeled Jacks Original Swinging Jass Band

by Michael Fortes

parlour_to_parlour

I knew that the Spring Heeled Jacks Original Swinging Jass Band’s debut album, The Dicky Comstock Show, was going to be good. The band’s bassist/arranger (and a very good friend of mine), Josh Morrow, had been sending me rough mixes as he and singer/guitarist/primary songwriter Nate Dunton worked on the tracks. What I didn’t know was that the album would be so good, so engaging — magical, even — that it would be one of the most-played albums in my collection during 2007. But as much as I enjoyed the record, it was maddening to know that so few ears had a chance to hear it.

On the one hand, it’s very easy to admire the steadfast ideals of the Jacks. For one, the music comes first. Whatever works best for the song is what Josh and Nate will do, regardless of who came up with what idea. And then there’s the time and care they spend on the tracks themselves. The first rough track Josh sent to me was back in July of 2006. The final Dicky Comstock Show album was revealed in 2007, and at least one track dating back to those sessions is still being tinkered with. No, this is no Smile/Chinese Democracy kind of saga. Facebook followers of the band know this, as they routinely leak tracks in almost-finished form and in experimental remixes. (more…)

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Thursday, October 8th, 2009

The Most Disturbing Halloween EVER!: Of Scary Monsters and Super Creeps …

by Dave Steed

That’s right, folks, the most disturbing Halloween EVER! From now until Halloween, the Popdose staff are going to be thumbing through their record collections in search of the music that gives them the worst case of the heebie-jeebies. In the second installment, Dave Steed gives us six songs that continue to wig him out. —Anthony Hansen

Since we have some of the best writers on the planet here at Popdose, they of course are probably going to think outside of the box to come up with various ways to define the most disturbing, twisted, evil, or creepy music they’ve heard. On the other hand, I just cut a hole in that box, and I’m begging you to look inside.

I listen to lots and lots of metal. So when you start throwing out words like “evil” and “twisted,” it’s not hard to find that in my collection. I thought of going the evil route, but that seemed a little easy; I could give you any Deicide song and post a picture of singer Glen Benton with the inverted cross burnt into his head and just stop right there. Or I could’ve gone the twisted route by posting a Cannibal Corpse greatest-hits set and been done with it. Or I could’ve gone outside the box and posted tracks by BrokeNCYDE, who are scary because it disturbs me to think that four people have that little talent.

I’ve often mentioned to others how “creepy” a certain song is, so this seemed like the best path for me to choose. Below you have the soundtrack to your Halloween, because it’s time the adults have some fun as well. Do you live in a neighborhood where kids come to your door all night long looking for candy? Tired of it? Download these six tracks and play them on a loop out your front window, and next year the kids won’t be getting anywhere near your Smarties. But beware — they might just piss themselves when they hear what’s coming out of your little shop of horrors, so this year, instead of Tootsie Rolls, it might be best to hand out diapers. Just warning you.

And now, six of the creepiest songs ever written …

(more…)

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Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Popdose Concert Flashback: David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails, 9/16/95

by Mojo Flucke

“That guy,” my wife Kate said of Trent Reznor on the way home from this show in one of the most memorable one-line concert reviews I’ve ever heard or read, “is a grease spot on the windshield of rock and roll.”

She was there to see Bowie, obviously.

This show, like David Bowie, is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a rid–no, wrapped in a rancid corn dog. In my mind he is a great artist and a creative force, a visionary who understands how music works (composing, performing and arranging) on a level most other pop stars just can’t. Prince and Paul McCartney and Beck are much like Bowie in this regard; Britney Spears needs to hire 15 people to do the tasks Bowie can accomplish all by himself, when he feels like it.

Bowie’s also a great collaborator, having worked with everyone from Jagger to Iggy to Lou Reed to Luther Vandross to Stevie Ray Vaughan to…Trent Reznor. He understands how to make the sum greater than its parts, musically. He also knows how to glom on to the coolest music of the moment, which in the mid-1990s was….wait for it…industrial and its son, post-industrial waste.

And, sadly, he’s also had his musical slumps, like the great Derek Jeter and his 0-for-32 a few years ago. After the fumes of the brilliant Let’s Dance gave way to clunkers like Tonight and Never Let Me Down, Bowie dusted off his crap machine, recycled some more spineless pop junk, and tried to make a silk purse out of sow’s ear with some upbeat soulful jazz arrangements and noisy rhythm, putting together his Black Tie White Noise CD. Its hit single, “Jump They Say,” showed a little promise (no video embedding, just linking, the Bowie Marketing Machine decree-eth).

Then came 1. Outside, whatever the heck that was (for the record, a concept album rumored to be the first in a trilogy but so half-baked that Bowie’s never recorded the second or third part). Funky, here and there, but it sounded like warmed-over Happy Mondays or bad jungle techno in too many spots, with some jazz sounds tossed in here and there so’s we can tell it’s sophisticated. (more…)

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Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Live Music: Nine Inch Nails @ DCU Center, 11/9/08

by Taylor Long

NIN ArmyIt would go against the trail-blazing spirit of Trent Reznor to use him as any sort of guideline, but it must be said that any arena rock band should turn to Reznor’s live show for inspiration. Every aspect of Sunday night’s show at the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, was flawlessly executed, a well-conceived blend of the wants of both Reznor and his audience.

Dubbed the Lights in the Sky Tour, after a track on his recent release, The Slip, Reznor took the name and applied the basic translation in a complex presentation. Combining his innovative tendencies, his fondness for the highly conceptual, and his costly production spending habits, Reznor turned to Moment Factory, for a visually stunning, interactive design. The Montreal-based new media and entertainment company has an impressive list of unconventional clients that includes Cirque du Soleil.

Primarily centered around three screens that could be raised and lowered, the lighting effects for the current Nine Inch Nails tour respond to either physical movement (a gap in television-like static that followed Reznor’s path along the stage in “Only”), or sonic movement, like giant versions of the iTunes Visualizer. During more tranquil moments, like the block of songs from the ambient, instrumental Ghosts I-IV, the display engages the imagination, transporting the audience through picturesque scenery of swamps and deserts, pulled from the graphics that accompanied the release. (more…)

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Monday, June 9th, 2008

An Open Letter to Trent Reznor

by Darren Robbins

Okay, let me just say right off the top that I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Trent Reznor. This was purely from an artistic POV. As a huge fan of Ministry’s early industrial output (the landmark records Twitch and The Land of Rape and Honey), I saw Trent’s Pretty Hate Machine as a homogenized version of the Ministry aesthetic. It was as if someone had sawed off all the harsh, jagged edges of a Ministry record. No, let me rephrase that. It was as if someone had taken a basic rock record…you know, verse/chorus/verse stuff…and added a little industrial window dressing.

That the suburbs, malls, and amusement parks were soon littered with suburban kids with NIN logos on their chests and backs was proof positive that Trent Reznor had succeeded in making industrial music palatable for the suburbs. After all, suburban kids wanted to feel “bad-ass” too, but those Ministry records were some scary shit. NIN, on the other hand, was no more frightening than watching The Crow for the hundredth time.

So, yeah, I thought Reznor was a poseur.

That opinion did not change when I saw him have a mini-meltdown at Lollapalooza when his pre-programmed keyboards wouldn’t work. Seriously, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, and the rest of their ilk have nothing on this guy.Of course, along the way, the guy actually managed to write “Hurt,” which I heartily believe is a fucking great song, but doing so only made me expect more from the guy. If he was capable of that, then why did we keep getting albums that were, by and large, huge steaming piles of unfulfilled promise?

Because his fans accepted those albums as symbols of musical brilliance, that’s why. (more…)

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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Listening Booth: Nine Inch Nails, “The Slip”

by Taylor Long

Trent Reznor strikes again.

So, Ghosts I-IV didn’t satisfy your hunger, it wasn’t like a “real” Nine Inch Nails album, it was instrumental, it didn’t count? Well, that’s fine. ‘Cause here’s another Nine Inch Nails album: The Slip, released just last week. And not only can you download it for free, but you couldn’t pay for it if you wanted to. This album is freer than the air you breathe, and Reznor isn’t going to take your money for it. Quite the opposite, in fact: he released it under a share-alike license, meaning he encourages you to remix it, play with it, post it on your blog, put it on your radio show, use it to stimulate your own creativity. Yeah, that Reznor’s a pretty stand-up guy.

Aesthetically, The Slip sounds like a composite of Nine Inch Nails’ last two proper releases, With Teeth and Year Zero. From Year Zero it borrows some of the grit and bombast, mish-mashed together with the occasional tendency towards hooks that made With Teeth so accessible. The result is an album that those not intimately acquainted with Reznor’s output might enjoy alongside those who know all the ins-and-outs. Initiates will likely be drawn to “Discipline” and “Echoplex,” the bouncier cuts from the album, while veterans may gravitate towards the aggression and complexity of “Head Down” and “Demon Seed.”

Nine Inch Nails, “Letting You” (download) (more…)

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Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Listening Booth: Nine Inch Nails, “Ghosts I-IV”

by Taylor Long

Whether or not you’re a fan of his music, it’s hard to argue that Trent Reznor, the creative mastermind of Nine Inch Nails, is constantly at the forefront of innovation. For his last album, Year Zero, Reznor teamed up with 42 Entertainment to develop a massive viral campaign that yielded solid numbers of dedicated fans and press. Sensing the promise of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want release for In Rainbows (which some claim Reznor suggested to them), he recommended a similar technique to Saul Williams, whose album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust he helped produce and promote. Now, he’s evolved the system for his own use with his new album, Ghosts I-IV, released online this past Sunday with no one the wiser about its impending arrival, save for a few ominous “SOON” messages on his blog.

Ghosts I-IV is a departure from Reznor’s standard for two major reasons. Firstly, this is Reznor’s first collaborative album. Past Nine Inch Nails albums were mostly written solely by Reznor, with a handful of songs that credit others here and there. Ghosts I-IV was written entirely with Atticus Ross, who’s been working with Reznor in various ways for the last seven years. The second major change is that Reznor restricted the period of the album’s creation to 10 weeks, a bold move for a man who’s notorious for taking several years between completed works (the two years between With Teeth and Year Zero was the shortest — on average he takes four or five).

Though the modus operandi might have been different, stylistically Ghosts I-IV will sound vaguely familiar to Nine Inch Nails fans and soundtrack or movie score aficionados. The 36 tracks consist of instrumental, ambient pieces played on some combination of piano, guitar or marimba and a few other ethnic instruments, creating a very cinematic element at times. Occasionally it kicks into electronic industrial moments, as if to remind the listener what or who they’re listening to. (more…)

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