Nine Inch Nails - 2014 Tour Discussion/Speculation

[Javra]

Well numeric is used by 99.9% of the pros when it comes to recording, portable setup or not.
I think here it comes down to their particular sound (depends heavily of the cassette and tape player) and the idea of having a constant flow of sound that you bring up or down compared to launching samples. Not sure if he also plays with the speeding/slowing effect you can get with a cassette.
I think it's a really cool and interesting approach like "okay I have 4 moving soundscapes per song that I can bring when I want they define my sound palette but I can mix and alter them as I want and I can't be 100% sure of how they're going to sound when I bring them up"

Also aly mentionned that he got the idea while playing with hurt having 1 chord on each track and bringing them up / down instead of playing them on a standart keyboard

@botley You mean like in the WG version of Burn ? (Or the Echoplex version of LITS) or more like a drone that would cut at the start of the song ?

[botley]

"Burn" and "Echoplex", yes, also the early (pre-WG) 2009 versions of "Terrible Lie" and "1,000,000" that started with Trent sequencing loops.

It is pretty brilliant to have a four-track machine onstage and mix those four channels in and out to get a playable tactile feel from pre-recorded drones. IIRC that's how Pink Floyd did the introduction to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" using wine glass drones in the studio.