Get Well Soon TR

Oh, how we love Trent Reznor, the man with his own NIN army.

Posted on NIN.com:

The Greg & Joe Music Video

A kick ass and laugh-your-ass-off parody by my dear friends Greg and Joe, along with a special cameo from Tommy:

EM-ARE-EYE

So tomorrow I will be getting an MRI, having an MRI, undergoing an MRI…whatever. The point is me=MRI tomorrow for participation credit in a PSYC study, researching who knows what.  Especially since a scan of the inside of my brain will produce two possible results:

1) Revealing little aliens operating my body from inside my brain, just waiting for the perfect moment to burst out and take over the world. (This could explain the Pinky and the Brain thing-don’t worry, it’s a YouTube reference)

2) A single, lone tumbleweed.

Ghosts I-IV: Trent Invites Participation

Tranquil sounds of daydreaming.  A warm, breezy day spent sipping serenity from a favorite mug, yet provocative and rare.  “A very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams“ : Trent’s description of his new Nine Inch Nails release, Ghosts I-IV, could not be more accurate, as the instrumental album offers crisp serenity to the ears. 

Perhaps its more versatile style, appealing to a larger number of individuals than just rabid NIN fans, accounts for the reported $1.6 million earned from Ghosts I-IVin only its first week.  Maybe this method of release motivated many to rally support and actually pay for the downloadable version, or perhaps the largest chunk of profit stems from the 2,500 copies, which sold out in one day, of $300 autographed vinyl purchased by his rabid followers.  Perhaps all of the above led this release to be such a huge success.  In fact Trent was so pleased with the response, he posted on the NIN website:

“First of all, a sincere THANK YOU for the response to Ghosts. We are all amazed at the reaction for what we assumed would be a quiet curiosity in the NIN catalog. My faith in all of you has been restored – let’s all go have coffee somewhere (my treat)!”

Obviously, many comments expressed his fans’ excitement over a proverbial coffee.

As expected, Trent’s genius ends not with the creative commons, label-less release of Ghosts I-IV.  If his prior marketing campaign for Year Zero, an Alternate Reality Game inviting worldwide participation in a scavenger hunt leading to a secret concert on Los Angeles, was not brilliant and revolutionary enough, consider Trent’s next progressive move: a film festival.  

On the NIN website and his YouTube channel, Trent reveals that from the begging of the Ghosts project, he envisioned artwork in the form of music that could bring together individuals of various backgrounds, locations, and cultures to progress what he initiated.  The prompt: create a video of sorts inspired by or surrounding a song from the Ghosts I-IV album.  He lends to this purpose his reasoning for the “lack of descriptive song titles and the primarily textural artwork and packaging” so as to “keep the canvas as blank as possible.”

From the NIN website:

“So here’s the plan: we’ve teamed up with YouTube to host a “film festival” around Ghosts. The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual “film festival” with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.
This isn’t a contest and you don’t win elaborate prizes – it’s meant to be an experiment in collaboration and a chance for us to interact beyond the typical one-way artist-to-fan relationship. We’ve discussed some interesting ways this could go, including multiple installments of the online “film festivals,” to broadcast TV specials, to a one-time live performance of the entire Ghosts record with your visuals involved. It really depends on how this progresses and develops.”

As one commentor stated, hats off to Trent, the poor soul who will have to sludge knee deep through numerous videos ranging from intrigue and brilliance to dull and outright horror. Honestly, though Radiohead may have beat him to a non-label online release, few musicians in the entire history of sound-making have accomplished so much to progress the sound and experience of music, let alone in a time-frame less than one year.