Reznor slips us another album

Leading up to the release of With Teeth in 2005 (a whole six years after the release of The Fragile), Trent Reznor made indications that he intended to release material more frequently. In the last thirteen months he’s made good on that promise, having released 3 Nine Inch Nails records (plus one remix album), and produced and orchestrated the release of Saul Williams’s Niggy Tardust….

He has chosen to make the latest release, The Slip, available for free in a range of digital formats, perhaps, believing he did a little bit too well out if the release of Ghosts I-IV in March. After the worrying indie rock drum intro of first song, The Slip turns out to be a solid album with a clear and strong emotional arch, and a worthy addition to the NIN catalogue (which also answers any questions you might have about what Ghosts… was all about). However, the rate at which Reznor is releasing albums, along with his minimalistic approach to album promotion, may leave a few nagging doubts in the minds of fans:

Can music created at this rate be ready for public consumption? Fans might suspect that they are being spoon-fed lesser material to maintain an income stream from their loyalty. Indeed, despite the positive review I’ve given The Slip in this post, some tracks like “single” Discipline seem overly radio friendly and have a bite-size feel to them, particularly so close to the musical, emotional, and political challenge of Year Zero.

There may also be concerns that without the typical promotional activities leading up to a release, appreciation of the material will suffer from a lack of anticipation. Additionally without any feel for the context of the creation of the music it may be more difficult to engage with it.

Like I said, these are just nagging doubts; the last year has been an exciting time for Nine Inch Nails fans, and I look forward to Reznor’s next move.

Niggy Tardust

Trent Reznor’s war against the major labels continues today as protege Saul Williams releases his new album direct to the public. Similar to Radiohead’s latest album, if you don’t want to pay for “Niggy Tardust“, you can still get it legally. However, if you’re willing to part with a mere 5 US dollars you can get it at a massive 320Kbps.

Earlier today I laid my money down via my PayPal account and can report that the record is a “Ghetto Gothic” masterpiece. Reznor’s involvement is perfectly obvious throughout. He contributes music, vocals, and production to the record that ends up having an industrial hip hop feel very similar to Year Zero.

It’s great to see the Reznor / Williams partnership blossom in this way. I remember the spectacle of Williams and his DJ winning over a Nine Inch Nails audience in Manchester with his powerful aural / poetic assult. He amusingly introduced one song by saying “This is a song about when at the end of the day, you take off your black shirt, and your still black”.

“Niggy Tardust” is an excellent record available extremely cheaply. I hope the gamble pays off and we start seeing a lot more records released this way.

No theft here

Just to make it clear that although I downloaded the Eat Me, Drink Me leak, I do not advocate stealing music, here’s a picture of me enjoying my legally purchased copy of that very album:

And what did Interscope come up with to encourage us in the UK not to settle for the leaked version? Two utterly abysmal lounge /dance remixes of Heart Shaped Glasses.

Reznor deals major labels another blow

In a recent interview Trent Reznor has expanded on his eariler comments about the behaviour of record labels and gone as far as to indicate an intention to leave Interscope as soon as possible. He says that he is contractually obligated to deliver one more album to Interscope, but if he could he would cut out the labels altogether and sell the next Nine Inch Nails record online for a meagre $4. (He went as far as to note that consumers would be able to download the record at “as high a bit-rate as you want”, a detail I greatly appreciate.)

Since MySpace and Snocap teamed up to allow artists to sell DRM free music direct to consumers I’ve been disappointed with the uptake. I was looking forward to being able to buy tracks from all those great unsigned bands I’ve come across on MySpace, but months later, it’s still a rarity to see the Snocap player on a band’s profile. Hopefully Reznor’s stand will encourage more artists to go down the direct to consumers route.

The end of album art?

One of the reasons I continue to buy CD’s and haven’t yet switched to buying music from download services is that I love album art. One of the reasons the replacement of vinyl with CD’s and cassette tapes is so lamented is the fact the packaging is so much smaller and therefore the art work printed on it can’t be as detailed. Now that with have distribution of music through Internet downloading, which of course requires no packaging, then I guess that’s the end of album art altogether, right? Well… hopefully not, as with a little bit of imagination, the opposite could be true. Computers, as digital photographs would agree, are actually very good at displaying graphics. Why not use this capability to provide vivid and detailed artwork to accompany the albums we buy on-line?

Currently, a lot of media software is capable of associating a small thumbnail of an album cover with the tracks in that album. The approach is generally to have a record of what the CD packaging is like. Why not cut out is CD packaging middleman, and produce graphics that take advantage of the rich graphical capabilities of modern computers? Then we could begin to enjoy album art as high resolution graphics suitable for viewing at full screen.

My point is that the end of physical music packaging doesn’t have to mean the end of album art; on the contrary, it could spell its return.