Shuffleboil Post: Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV

My review of the new (free version) NIN music is up at Shuffleboil

I include it here, because, well, that's what I do. But, go to the Boil and subscribe because there is tons o great stuff there.

Nine Inch Nails
Ghosts I-IV (Free 9 song download)

(To be fair, this reviewer only heard the free download which is a 9 track sampler from a larger, 36 track, piece. However, if this is to be regarded as a “sampler” or a “taste” then the following review is well founded and the author stands by it.)

Trent Reznor wrote on his blog that he was mildly (or slightly more so) disappointed that so few people chose to spend the measly $5 on his “Niggy Tardust” project from last year. In the shadow of the “Pay-what-you-want” Radiohead model and in response to the ridiculous overhead his record labels pass on to the consumers he forged ahead into this valley of “choice”. So, it has come to pass that there is new Nine Inch Nails music. It is called “Ghosts I-IV ” and, on the free version, there are nine tracks, all instrumental. It is, once again, free for download from the and this time it comes in a variety of options: Free, $5, $10, $75, $300 (currently sold out), ranging from purely digital downloads of the songs (free) to digi packs and hard copies and slideshows and multi-media, it’s an exhaustive attempt to try and break the stranglehold the labels have, bring the music directly to the masses, cut out the middle man and BE the new model.

There’s just one thing.

This isn’t all that great. The music, I mean. It’s more like watered down NiN. It’s ambient (Hence the Ghosts motif, I guess) and repetitive. It’s hypnotic, but anything repeated over and over again would, I think, become hypnotic. As a soundtrack it might work for a black and white silent piece about self-reflection as filmed by a self-indulgent University Film Student.

Trent Reznor is to today’s electronic innovations what Gary Numan’s Replicas was to NiN’s “Downward Spiral: Inspiration” but out-dated (albeit Numan did bounce back into the gothic/depresso/electro fold with “Pure”).

Ultimately “Ghosts I-IV” is excellent background music for one of those anti-Scientology Anonymous videos pervading YouTube. It’s decidedly NOT sexy, unlike previous NIN, there is little to no appeal to flicking on the strobe light, dropping some E and rutting like demonic escapees from “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Should you download NiN’s “Ghosts I-IV?” If you can figure out a way to get my 27 minutes back, then sure! But, if you have better things to do with your time, like eat and breath and watch reality TV, that is time better spent.