M. Elizabeth Williams 2008-10-13
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My Mini Cooper is a happy place, the sort of cute little car that elicits happy waves and horn toots from passersby and fellow motorists. It's the sort of car that caused me to change my usual moody music selection to something a bit more up beat, with "Island in the Sun" and "You Get What You Give" on heavy rotation on the mp3 player. Yet recently, I've found myself returning to darker roots.
A few weeks ago, Trent Reznor released Nine Inch Nails' newest album, Ghosts I-IV, a 36 track instrumental two-disk set that filled two hours of my life with sound and absorbed and enveloped me in its melancholy so completely that I almost missed a philosophy exam because I could not pull myself away from my iPod .
Ghosts is an ambitions new project from Mr. Reznor and co.: for ten weeks, the main man of Nine Inch Nails and a motley crew of other musicians, mixers, and producers played with instruments, sounds, and samples without goals or objectives, no scope or story. Driven by impulse, they translated ideas and images of places into sound. Following in the footsteps of Radiohead, Reznor then released the entire album online, DRM-free, without a record label or contract, with the CD available April 8th.
Trent Reznor explained on the official website (http://ghosts.nin.com) "I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, 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."
The first 9 tracks are free; like any good drug dealer, Reznor knows that he needs only give you the first taste of something extraordinary before you'll be hooked and back for more, and that is exactly what happened to me. Within hours of listening to my free downloads, I had forked over $10 of my cold, hard cash for a double-CD and instant download package. (The entire album is also available for download only for $5.)
Then, with baited breath, I clicked play.
Ghosts opens with the vacant, haunting score that ebbs and flows through my mind like a lost, lonely poet looking out at a vast ocean lamenting a lost Lenore or Annabel Lee from his cavernous mansion dripping with cobwebs and covered with a fine layer of dust. Everything seems delicate, fragile, dim but ready to be illuminated by something greater, something outside of everything surrounding this one thin thread connecting Reznor and myself through sound.
And then, the second track hit me, magnetized me, drew me in and held me down while it hypnotized me with its rhythm, its pulse, the very life of a song pulsating through my veins.
For two hours, an entire story played through in my head, like watching a silent film noir in grainy black and white, complete with curvaceous femme fatale and strong, talk, dark and handsome lead antihero. The phantoms wail and wander the corridors of this dark, haunted work. It dredges the depths of emotions, gracefully tracing its fingers upon the fabric of my very soul, plumbing forgotten pains, bringing to the surface images of lost, pain, and heartache; jealousy, fear, and loathing.
I shivered listening to it. Then, I clicked back and played it again.
There is a beauty and genius to an entirely instrumental album. Without lyrics directing my mind, projecting a story into my cerebral cortex, it flows in gently, almost subconsciously, flirting with the furthest regions of my unconsciousness. It allows my mind to wander, takes me to strange, dark, macabre places that I didn't know my soul could go or my heart could still feel. It teases me to the brink of being completely incapacitated by the intrinsic beauty in its madness, and just when I'm about to fall, it pulls me back from the edge and whispers in my ear "Play me one more time."
