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Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV

This post is by way of a review of the new NIN album, Ghosts I-IV. An instrumental collection, it really showcases the devastating depth and intricacy of Trent Reznor's productions. As a long time NIN fan (I was cutting myself to 'Hurt' while y'all were in diapers), my interest in the group has waxed and waned over the years... Lyrically, Reznor's decision (from With Teeth onwards) to flip his rage and hatred onto wider social issues, rather than directing it back in a heroin-fuelled feedback loop at himself, signified a Lazarus-like return to form for the band. Suddenly it was no longer 'I hurt myself today...', it was 'Just how deep do you believe, will you practice what you preach, will you bite the hand that feeds...'

Much of With Teeth felt like a call to arms for a politically and culturally disenfranchised generation. And it didn't stop there - with Y34RZ3R0, Reznor flipped it again, releasing multi-tracks of many NIN songs for his fans to remix and upload to the site remix.nin.com. Comparable to the free download distribution option offered by Radiohead and other bands, Reznor went one further, actually giving away the composite parts of the tunes, freeing them up for re-interpretation.

As a producer willing to embrace technological change, Reznor has gone further than any other rock and roll artist. Mind-bendingly prolific, Reznor's Ghosts I-IV is a long-mooted collection of instrumental tracks that covers the entire spectrum of NIN beats and soundscapes, from mournful Downward Spiral-esque piano laments to pounding industrial beats.




Created in just ten weeks, this is more of a concept album than a comilation of offcuts. Ghosts stands up to previous instrumental remixes from Further Down The Spiral an Y34Rz3R0R3M1X3D, and in fact feels like more of a journey than these albums. Over the course of 36 tracks, Reznor slowly builds and layers soundscapes. Without the restrictions imposed by the verse-chorus-verse structures of rock, Reznor is able to layer the traditional guitar and drums of his industrial productions into a kind of throbbing techno tornado, slowly gathering pace and incorporating structures and sounds from classical, hip-hop and even jazz music.

"I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years," says Reznor on his website. "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."

The 'interference' he mentions could of course be the spectre of corporate wanks who couldn't package and sell a sprawling epic like Ghosts in the mainstream market. Rather, Reznor has released the record himself, with several payment options, from his self-run download site. It seems that the business model of giving away multi-tracks is being re-thought too - with Ghosts, you must pay for the privelege of using the master tracks. The price however is extremely reasonable, and with the amount of fun I had remixing NIN tracks for free, I'm sorely tempted to go for the higher-priced download option.

Ghosts I-IV cannot be recommended highly enough: in an era when most performers are spent by the time their first album is finished, Reznor is consisitently evolving and improving as time goes on. In years to come, we at Weaponizer believe he will be held in the highest regard, as one of the most innovative and intelligent producers / composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.







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