klog

Fresh from the success of their recent release, Ghosts, which Bronwyn has been playing non-stop since our CD arrived (and for weeks before using the MP3s downloaded from the Interweb), Nine Inch Nails has released a new album and gone even further.

Yes, this album is totally free for you to download. All they ask is that you sign up for it via their site. However, as the album is licensed via Creative Commons Non-Commercial, it is also legal for you to download via bittorrent if you prefer.

The album is available in MP3, M4A, FLAC and even 24/96 WAV (for freaks that want a 1.2GB album taking up space).

NIN are recommending that people take the album and produce remixes from it. (That site doesn’t work well in Firefox in Linux btw - fix it, please - remember I bought a ticket for your concert in the RDS way back in ‘96? Go on Trent, be a pal!)

As for the sound, I think it’s more accessible than Year Zero (although I think over time, I will prefer Year Zero) on a first listen. There is the usual layered approach to the music, where textured “landscapes” are drawn up. Interestingly, in some tracks, the layers appear to be deliberately off-time from each other (Echoplex, for example).

I was watching the Tripping the Rift film and noticed the title of the newspaper that Gus was reading.

“N Eye N” - get it?

I have no idea what Tripping The Rift has to do with Nine Inch Nails, and haven’t found anything obvious online.

Which reminds me - my CDs copy of Ghosts is on the way.

Wow! It’s been a long time since I was excited by FLA. As a teenager, I was blown away by the proto-industrial efforts in Corrosion and Disorder, and especially Tactical Neural Implant. Millennium came out with its reinterpretation of Pantera’s guitar riffs and was a hit with me as well, even if it was very very different from their previous electronic work. After Hard Wired, though, I kind of floated away to other bands - rediscovering Skinny Puppy and starting to figure out mainstream bands such as Muse, Arcade Fire, etc.

Fallout is touted as a remix album, with some mixes by the band itself, some by others, and some new songs by FLA. I think, though, that it can stand as an original album itself. There’s none of the usual rubbish that you would get with “pop” remixes (garbled and stuttered words, and poor rebuilds) - every song on this album appears to have been polished and given an individual feel. If you want a more reliable indicator of how cool this album is - even my 1-year old daughter was hyper while I was playing it. Rocking and waving her tiny little hands like an EBM poster child.

If you hanker after your industrial youth, thrashing away all night to the likes of Wumpscut, Covenant, Apoptygma Berzerk, etc, then this album is for you. After listening to this album, I wish I was in Dublin ten years younger, downing a Pernod and Red Bull on the bus in for a night in Dominion followed by an early morning on the roof of Garvan’s flat downing home-made peach schnapps.

Enough from me - I’m off to work on my KFM project.