User:Drewcifer3000/sandbox2

Background

In 2005 Nine Inch Nails' released With Teeth, an album inspired by and following Reznor's struggles with addiction and writer's block.

Reznor had become noto

"It was at the turn of the century that Reznor decided he would have to get his life in order or he was “going to die.” After quitting music to concentrate on getting clean and getting “comfortable in my own skin” again, NIN's 2005 return, the much criticised ‘With Teeth,’ he admits (again in retrospection) was him trying to find his feet with music once more. “That record in hindsight feels a little cautious to me and certainly not the most risk taking record I’ve ever made. But, it’s part of a process and when the record came out and we went on tour I felt more back to the old me and really like ‘now I want to bend the rules and do what I really feel is right and take more chances.’”"[1]

" The biggest reason, however, was that he knew he finally had the confidence to make the record he wanted. Ask him what he thinks of ‘With Teeth’ now and he’ll describe it as “cautious”, adding that it wouldn’t be his “favourite NIN record today”.

“Looking back, I can see I wasn’t completely sure of myself,” he confesses. “I got sober six years ago in June, and I took a few of those years just trying to stay alive and feel comfortable in my own skin before I jumped back into work to possibly fail.”" [2]

"I feel what I’ve got in sobriety is the ability to think again, and make music, and feel good about myself and about making music. I could never have pulled off a project like ‘Year Zero’ fucked up." [3]

" So this was quite a different process to making your last album 'With Teeth'? "I think I felt strangely at ease with myself and my confidence was back. When I look at how I wrote 'With Teeth' I was pretty afraid because I hadn't written in a long time. I was relatively newly sober, my life seemed weird- good, but different- and I was cautious through that whole process. On this record I felt like I wanted to take a chance." [4]

"That whole idea of putting up multi tracks, really was just - several years ago, bored in a hotel room... Just as an experiment I happened to have the multi tracks with me - I think I was doing press for With Teeth - I loaded up the hand that feeds, I made it as a multi track, in Garage Band.

I thought it would be cool to give the sound to people, and I knew the challenge would be to get that past Interscrope essentially giving the masters out. But they agreed."

Year Zero is a concept album criticizing the United States government's policies as of 2007.

"On his surprise 2005 comeback, With Teeth, Reznor sounded unsure of himself, sweating for a hit. He front-loaded it with mediocre radio-rock bangers like "The Hand That Feeds," pushing the kinkier material to the second half." [5]

"Downward Spiral, for example, I really thought was going to be a guitar record. I sat down with guitars, and started messing around, and the sampler became - I couldn't get enough of just messing around, and getting loops, and stealing shit off movies, and making clanky sounds... It wasn't really up to me at that point. That's what felt like the right thing to do, it was exciting.

It just started off in laptops in a bus, and I didn't have guitars around because it was too much hassle... It was another creative limitation: here's what I have to work with. The quality of the effects and instruments in there now are top-notch...

If I were in my studio... I would have done things the way I normally do them. But not having the ability to do that, forced me into trying some things that were fun to do.

That started as the idea I wanted to make some kind of, I think, instrumental mood pieces. Like I started experimenting with on Still, the bonus record from a few years ago. And everything had a melencholoy kind of tinge to it, and then I started going off on tangents. These would all just be little ventures down various paths, see what happens."

Wednesday, I was determining how many tracks would be on the record and finishing lyrics. Thursday we laid the final mix down. We sequenced it Thursday night. Friday we amstered it, Saturday we were making the PDF, putting all the artwork together, and credits. Sunday night it was out."

Musical elements

The musical elements of the Lights in the Sky Tour in 2008 relied heavily on Apple computer products, including Allessandro Cortini's MacBook Pro rig and MainStage software mixing and sampling audio in real-time.

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/mac/logicstudio/2008/tutorials/apple_logic_studio_logic_nine-inch-nails_20081216_r640-9cie.mov?width=640&height=360 http://mixonline.com/online_extras/mainstage_mat_mitchell/

Sources to read

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=886178 http://www.xrock.fm/upload/morningwoodaudio/xrmwreznorweb1.mp3 http://www.xrock.fm/upload/morningwoodaudio/xrmwreznorweb2.mp3

Live performances

Since its release, the instrumental songs of Ghosts have been implemented into live performances, typically as part of a distinct section of instrumental songs mid-way through the show. Ghosts material was performed in this manner most notably during the "Lights in the Sky" tour in 2008, immediately after the album's release. During these segments, the music was largely acoustic, and including instrumentation from a marimba, harmonium, glockenspiel, double bass, and various homemade percussion instruments, among others. Subsequently, on the NINJA and Wave Goodbye Tours, the Ghosts section has since been scrapped, as Reznor thought the instrumental songs didn't fit with the set lists.