Wednesday,
December 6, 00 - 10:00 am EST
The Onion Review of NIN's "Things Falling Apart"
While there have been
countless media publication reviews submitted from both Marilyn
Manson's "Holy Wood" and NIN's "Things Falling Apart" that I could
not keep up with, this
review from The
Onion, of all places, really represents Trent Reznor's latest
release, which deserves a posting on the site for fans to check
out if you have yet to pick up the remix EP.
Nine Inch Nails
"Things Falling Apart"
(Nothing)
The only phenomenon more surprising than the five years it took
Trent Reznor to finish The Fragile, his follow-up to The Downward
Spiral, was the highly anticipated album's commercial failure. Maybe
its epic double-disc size scared off fair-weather fans, or maybe
Reznor's electronic angst proved too ambitious and enigmatic for
those who had moved on to the more immediate, less challenging pleasures
of the rap-metal set. Either way, The Fragile's varied sonic palette
still holds up more than a year later, resonating as both an impressionistic
sonic collage and a collection of songs. Reznor, for his part, doesn't
appear too concerned with the public's fickle tastes. The new Things
Falling Apart takes some of The Fragile's tracks and roughs them
up even more, tossing them to a pack of remixers that chews them
up like dog toys. As with Nine Inch Nails' previous remix collections,
Reznor often dissects his own songs, which not only hints at a sense
of perverse creative masochism, but also acknowledges the constant
mutability of modern electronic music. With mixer Alan Moulder,
Reznor strips down "Into The Void," then rebuilds the song from
the ground up. On-U Sound mastermind, industrial music dabbler,
and longtime Reznor ally Adrian Sherwood trips out "Starfuckers,
Inc." with some of his patented dub techniques, cloaking the track
with oppressive grit and echo. Benelli's liquid version of "The
Frail" is even more subdued than the album cut, leading perfectly
to Dave Ogilvie's own fuzzy techno take on "Starfuckers, Inc." Adding
extra value to the already budget-priced collection is "The Great
Collapse," a funky but muted unreleased track from the Fragile sessions
that surely had plenty of company in Reznor's vaults, as well as
a clanking cover of Gary Numan's "Metal" that once again points
to the synth pioneer as an industrial-rock precursor. --Joshua Klein
Thanks a lot to: ash.
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