Random NIN Thoughts

[BRoswell]

The burden of proof lies on you in this case. The tracks have been presented as being musical sketches from that time period. I personally see no reason for them to do something like that and hide it.

[r_z]

I remember Trent talking in an interview where 10 Miles High was discussed how there were some other songs with "equally embarrassing lyrics" left. Or something like that. Maybe he was talking about the vocal versions from those 'new' instrumentals that appeared on D1?

Also, didn't Ezrin mention in his Essay for the 'definitive' version of TF how he had to sift through a lot of songs in oder to arrive on a final sequence? I'm sure that at the stage he got brought in he wasn't given any demos or just sketches to arrange a sequence for the album.

I'm still keeping my hopes up for a D2: TF release containing those songs as well as Slipping Away, The Great Collapse, AATCHB. And I hope 'Deviations' is not just Trent's way to sell us instrumental versions of his songs as anything other than... well... just instrumentals.

[Pbgut]

I love Was It Worth It, but there is no way it's from the Fragile Era

The drums sound like they were pieced together from similar "sound creation" experiments as the other tracks, and the rhythm and feel aren't that different from the intro on The Big Come Down. The guitar breakdown with the squalling guitar drone sounds pretty similar in tone to TF (the song). Many of the outtakes, including this one, we have that aren't just segues seem to flirt with the same DnB/90s hip hop beats/electronica that Trent was in love with back then. Paranoia is fun, but make sure you actually analyze it.

As for the other stuff, Bob Ezrin wrote in the TF vinyl booklet that there was four hours of music. On TFD1, we have instrumentals for 2 1/2 hours. We already know that there are vocal tracks (in whatever shape) for several of these unreleased songs; whichever ones are designated as "instrumental." I wouldn't have guessed that the original of 10 Miles High was a kind of cock-rock tune; maybe there are a lot of alternate arrangements like that. It's impossible to know if there were really four hours of music, but I don't think there's any reason to assume there was nothing else, or that it had to be finished 17 years later – and that they'd be dishonest about it. He worked on it for two years with several other people. (I do think it's possible he's used some of the tracks as a basis for later works, considering pretty much every band does that.)

[Pbgut]

I remember Trent talking in an interview where 10 Miles High was discussed how there were some other songs with "equally embarrassing lyrics" left. Or something like that. Maybe he was talking about the vocal versions from those 'new' instrumentals that appeared on D1?

Also, didn't Ezrin mention in his Essay for the 'definitive' version of TF how he had to sift through a lot of songs in oder to arrive on a final sequence? I'm sure that at the stage he got brought in he wasn't given any demos or just sketches to arrange a sequence for the album.

I'm still keeping my hopes up for a D2: TF release containing those songs as well as Slipping Away, The Great Collapse, AATCHB. And I hope 'Deviations' is not just Trent's way to sell us instrumental versions of his songs as anything other than... well... just instrumentals.

Yeah, BE said there was four hours of material! I feel like that must be a slight misremembering but we do have 2 1/2 hours of stuff from Deviations, plus maybe another 20 minutes of b-sides from the era, so who knows. I really hope we get a complete 20th anniversary edition with those b-sides and maybe the new outtakes with the original vocals on 'em, and some demos. The only problem with this is pretty much everyone who would want a collection of the b-sides 20 years later probably already has those halos. (I'm not a surround sound guy but if they don't put out the 5.1 mix too I'm worried several people on this board will die.)

[neorev]

When I see The Fragile: Deviations 1, it makes me think there will be a Deviations 2 for it. It seems to dumb to call another album With Teeth: Deviations 2. The number at the end makes me think it's the first of however many parts. If a release has only 1 Deviation planned, it would just be called The Fragile: Deviations. The way Trent and co. have been talking about The Fragile, I honestly expected more than what we go so far. Called different album's Deviations with numbers would just be confusing and strange.

Perhaps when we get the next set of Definitive Editions we'll get The Fragile: Deviations 2. Then Trent will focus on other releases like Still and etc.

[piggy]

Agreed. There will most likely be a "Deviations 2" of TF and hopefully it will be the 5.1 mix.

Now, speaking of that Bob Ezrin essay, does anyone have scans or photos of it? I've been wanting to transcribe it for the NIN wiki.

[astfgyl]

I don't think there's any reason to assume there was nothing else, or that it had to be finished 17 years later – and that they'd be dishonest about it. He worked on it for two years with several other people. (I do think it's possible he's used some of the tracks as a basis for later works, considering pretty much every band does that.)

I don't see what is so outlandish about the idea that TR/AR finished off some or all of those tracks during the process of making Deviations. And I'm pretty sure I haven't said they were being dishonest about it either.

Here is the description from nin.com...

"LIMITED EDITION 4 LP DECONSTRUCTION OF THE FRAGILE BY TRENT REZNOR AND ATTICUS ROSS CLOCKING IN AT 150 MINUTES! CONTAINS INSTRUMENTALS, ALTERNATE VERSIONS AND OVER AN HOUR OF NEVER BEFORE HEARD MATERIAL FROM THE ORIGINAL FRAGILE RECORDING SESSIONS. A COMPLETELY NEW EXPERIENCE FOR FANS OF THE ORIGINAL MASTERPIECE."

Nowhere there does it say that none of the tracks were finished off in 2015/16/17. So this idea of saying they were dishonest about it didn't come from me. Besides, even the main original album tracks have extra things added where the vocals have been taken away, and I presumed all along that they were new additions, using the type of sounds found on the album, rather than just having all those little things which were left out of the original recordings and simply putting them back in.

I also cannot understand why it is getting peoples' backs up at the mere idea that the extra stuff might have been lying around in an unfinished state.

Saying that there is over an hour of never before heard material from the original sessions does not mean or imply that it wasn't recently finished off, added to, or brought up to scratch in some way during the process. If everything was ready and done, why was AR credited in the description at all? What exactly did he do, then?

I don't think the material is there, other folks think that it is. We will have to agree to disagree until something different happens. The idea of there being more Deviations from this album involving more new material doesn't seem realistic to me (because of the fact they chose to include Claustrophobia Machine, which to my ears does not fit in any way with the rest of the album sonically), and i think that if there is to be a Deviations 2 stemming from the same album, it would likely have to be the vocal version of the same thing.

[Pbgut]

I don't see what is so outlandish about the idea that TR/AR finished off some or all of those tracks during the process of making Deviations. And I'm pretty sure I haven't said they were being dishonest about it either.

Here is the description from nin.com...

"LIMITED EDITION 4 LP DECONSTRUCTION OF THE FRAGILE BY TRENT REZNOR AND ATTICUS ROSS CLOCKING IN AT 150 MINUTES! CONTAINS INSTRUMENTALS, ALTERNATE VERSIONS AND OVER AN HOUR OF NEVER BEFORE HEARD MATERIAL FROM THE ORIGINAL FRAGILE RECORDING SESSIONS. A COMPLETELY NEW EXPERIENCE FOR FANS OF THE ORIGINAL MASTERPIECE."

Nowhere there does it say that none of the tracks were finished off in 2015/16/17. So this idea of saying they were dishonest about it didn't come from me. Besides, even the main original album tracks have extra things added where the vocals have been taken away, and I presumed all along that they were new additions, using the type of sounds found on the album, rather than just having all those little things which were left out of the original recordings and simply putting them back in.

I also cannot understand why it is getting peoples' backs up at the mere idea that the extra stuff might have been lying around in an unfinished state.

If reason isn't enough for you, here are the online diaries. One of the first phrases is "endless revisions." http://nineinchnails.tumblr.com/post...blished-on-the In the same essay, the writer asks "I wonder what happens with all those parts they don't use."

Again: paranoia is fun. But you have to analyze it. If it makes no sense, throw it out.

With pretty much any album recording session, alternate mixes/takes/arrangements are tried out. With the advent of digital recording, it became incredibly easy to tweak things and create alternate versions. That's just standard. We know from the old studio diaries posted online that there were several different arrangements of SD and WITT made in a week or two, and that was just in the last couple months of recording. With TR's obsessive work ethic, and his initial difficulty writing new material, it doesn't surprise me that there were tracks like "Claustrophobia Machine" to get the juices flowing. Nothing new was added. He spent two years working on it, with various segues and intros being cut off and added on for flow. Were the instrumental mixes made more recently? Probably. But they're just the pre-existing alternate arrangements and mixes that are made for any Pro Tools-era album with the vocals muted. I guess your assumptions are coming from not understanding how he works and how many alternate arrangements he tried but - they're not gonna record an acoustic guitar part for The Wretched (which also shows up on The Wretched remix from 2000, so - it's from that era) 18 years later just for the hell of it. It makes no sense. It's a document of the alternate mixes from the original sessions, like any other boxset/reissue, with the vocals muted.

And again, Bob Ezrin said there were four hours of music. TR said a couple of years ago that he found a large number of demos as well. Also it's pretty unusual to think or worry about the concept of many of these tracks as "finished" when they're all instrumental and several of the vinyl-exclusive tracks are little segue tracks like "Last Heard From." If that's "finished" enough to put out, why would you assume that any work was done on the rest. People are annoyed because the thinking is so irrational - like assuming that Instagram post of the Add Violence CD was fake because "you could just make your own CD with the vinyl artwork" or whatever.

"Never before heard material from the original Fragile sessions" means that all that stuff existed, probably mixed down to DAT. (There was a bad DAT audio error of the alt. La Mer on Apple Music, and there isn't any reason to use DATs any more.) "Deconstructed" means that they put an entirely new sequence of the album together from outtakes and instrumental mixes of the pre-existing alternate arrangements we know exist.

[Pbgut]

Agreed. There will most likely be a "Deviations 2" of TF and hopefully it will be the 5.1 mix.

Now, speaking of that Bob Ezrin essay, does anyone have scans or photos of it? I've been wanting to transcribe it for the NIN wiki.

Found a very large PDF of the essay on reddit: http://www.mediafire.com/file/2b7zme...nd+Nowhere.pdf


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[muse-lyre candy]

i used to think to meet the man behind the music would be the coolest thing; the cherry on top of the sundae i call my bucket list.
now i find myself realizing that at that moment in time my brain would def fail me and not one thing coherent and intelligent would come out of my mouth and it would turn into an absolute nightmare...

[Pbgut]

i used to think to meet the man behind the music would be the coolest thing; the cherry on top of the sundae i call my bucket list.
now i find myself realizing that at that moment in time my brain would def fail me and not one thing coherent and intelligent would come out of my mouth and it would turn into an absolute nightmare...

A couple of college friends got to work with him (or rather, meet him). They worked at the precursors to Apple Music in the Bay Area, where he was brought in as a consultant. I think they got to meet him somewhere around 2008-09? Can't remember. They weren't fans or anything. I was briefly jealous but then realized the same thing you did. I'd probably have fainted. TR had an outsized influence on my life since I didn't really like the role models I got at birth. And what would I say? "I listened to your music thousands of times as a teenager and basically started making hermetic electronic music because of you." He'd run out of the building.

[azad_ninja]

Howard Stern once again offhandedly insults Trent Reznor (at around the 39:10 mark):

Meh, that's just Howard schtick pretending to be big and important. He knows Trent would never do it, so he acts like a bigshot. It's tongue and cheek.

Its more annoying when he laments that Trent is cleaned up and doesnt wear cornstarch anymore

[muse-lyre candy]

A couple of college friends got to work with him (or rather, meet him). They worked at the precursors to Apple Music in the Bay Area, where he was brought in as a consultant. I think they got to meet him somewhere around 2008-09? Can't remember. They weren't fans or anything. I was briefly jealous but then realized the same thing you did. I'd probably have fainted. TR had an outsized influence on my life since I didn't really like the role models I got at birth. And what would I say? "I listened to your music thousands of times as a teenager and basically started making hermetic electronic music because of you." He'd run out of the building.

that last part made me laugh so hard i thought i might piss myself...
ty for that

[astfgyl]

With pretty much any album recording session, alternate mixes/takes/arrangements are tried out. With the advent of digital recording, it became incredibly easy to tweak things and create alternate versions. That's just standard. We know from the old studio diaries posted online that there were several different arrangements of SD and WITT made in a week or two, and that was just in the last couple months of recording. With TR's obsessive work ethic, and his initial difficulty writing new material, it doesn't surprise me that there were tracks like "Claustrophobia Machine" to get the juices flowing. Nothing new was added. He spent two years working on it, with various segues and intros being cut off and added on for flow. Were the instrumentals mixes made more recently? Probably. But they're just the pre-existing alternate arrangements and mixes that are made for any Pro Tools-era album with the vocals muted. I guess your assumptions are coming from not understanding how he works and how many alternate arrangements he tried but - they're not gonna record an acoustic guitar part for The Wretched (which also shows up on The Wretched remix from 2000, so - it's from that era) 18 years later just for the hell of it. It makes no sense. It's a document of the alternate mixes from the original sessions, like any other boxset/reissue, with the vocals muted.

And again, Bob Ezrin said there were four hours of music. TR said a couple of years ago that he found a large number of demos as well. Also it's pretty unusual to think or worry about the concept of many of these tracks as "finished" when they're all instrumental and several of the vinyl-exclusive tracks are little segue tracks like "Last Heard From." If that's "finished" enough to put out, why would you assume that any work was done on the rest. People are annoyed because the thinking is so irrational - like assuming that Instagram post of the Add Violence CD was fake because "you could just make your own CD with the vinyl artwork" or whatever.

If reason isn't enough for you, here are the online diaries. One of the first phrases is "endless revisions." http://nineinchnails.tumblr.com/post...blished-on-the

"Never before heard material from the original Fragile sessions" means that all that stuff existed, probably mixed down to DAT. (There was a bad DAT audio error of the alt. La Mer on Apple Music, and there isn't any reason to use DATs any more.) "Deconstructed" means that they put an entirely new sequence of the album together from outtakes and instrumental mixes of the pre-existing alternate arrangements we know exist.

The thinking is so irrational? Seriously? You say nothing new was added. That is a fairly unambiguous statement. Should I presume you know all of this information for a fact? Can you say for a fact what condition the original recordings were in or to what extent they were finished? Well done if you can. I have also read those online diaries before and they don't give away very much pertaining to this particular release one way or the other, except to say there were many drafts of many of the songs. Fair enough about the DAT audio error, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the rest of the extra tracks.

This is nothing like presuming the AV cd was a fake. There was photographic evidence in that case from a guy who is friends with a forum user. So how is this anything like that? I would appreciate not being lumped in with that particular instance, thanks.

Have we had any sort of confirmation either way that these tracks were all finished and nothing new whatsoever has been done to them? Or for that matter have we had any confirmation of anything that would support my feelings on it? None that I know of, so unless you have something up your sleeve in that regard, this comes down to a simple difference of opinion. You are entitled to think however you like about it, as am I.

What I do not appreciate is you trying to say that my opinion is somehow irrational, or being compared to entirely different arguments which have taken place on the forums. I have given perfectly rational explanations for the thoughts I have around the release. I have no problem being proven wrong, if there is any actual proof of anything. Your saying if reason isn't enough just sounds like you are saying it is irrefutable, where there is nothing anywhere to say for sure one way or the other.

I haven't said anywhere at all that there was definitely anything new added, either. The simple fact here is that I don't truly know the answer and haven't once claimed that I did. I expressed a feeling I get when listening to the thing.

So peace and love and all that, and unless some new information surfaces around the mixing/sequencing process for Deviations 1, I don't have anything further to add to the discussion.

[OSLIN]

Who is Josh Wink?

[Pbgut]

The thinking is so irrational? Seriously? You say nothing new was added. That is a fairly unambiguous statement. Should I presume you know all of this information for a fact? Can you say for a fact what condition the original recordings were in or to what extent they were finished? Well done if you can.

The pdf booklet says "All music is from the original Fragile sessions in New Orleans, 1997-1999." The old studio journals says that there were alternate versions of tracks, many parts that were not used. Bob Ezrin says there was four hours of music. Trent said there were a ton of "demos" - considering the state of the TDS demos, it's not hard to believe there were similar tracks for TF. Some of the tracks on the reissue barely sound like finished songs. Assuming all these people are lying to you, and not being able to extrapolate from this basic information – well, if you don't like the "i" word, come up with your own but it makes no sense. It is the least likely explanation to assume, based on all of that evidence (and the basic sentence "All music is from the original Fragile sessions in New Orleans, 1997-1999."), that they made any new music to pass it off as old music for literally no reason.

[astfgyl]

The pdf booklet says "All music is from the original Fragile sessions in New Orleans, 1997-1999." The old studio journals says that there were alternate versions of tracks, many parts that were not used. Bob Ezrin says there was four hours of music. Trent said there were a ton of "demos" - considering the state of the TDS demos, it's not hard to believe there were similar tracks for TF. Some of the tracks on the reissue barely sound like finished songs. Assuming all these people are lying to you, and not being able to extrapolate from this basic information – well, if you don't like the "i" word, come up with your own but it makes no sense. It is the least likely explanation to assume, based on all of that evidence (and the basic sentence "All music is from the original Fragile sessions in New Orleans, 1997-1999."), that they made any new music to pass it off as old music for literally no reason.

Right so, pics or it didn't happen...

Joking. That pretty much solves that argument. I'll get back in my box.

I hadn't noticed that on the pdf at all in fairness.

[niggo]

Comparing live shows from 2008 and 2017 and while I miss the heavier parts I'm glad that TR's starting to sound like himself again. In a strange way, he does sound kinda younger now than he did almost 10 years ago. Maybe cause he's successfully hitting the higher notes again. And I guess his voice not being completely fucked helps too.

[HWB]

I thought that Lights In The Sky tour had some amazing loud vocal moments from Trent, it seems like Trent stopped screaming mostly during the Tension tour, which also came with "Hesitation Marks" which featured some of his tamest vocals to date, not meaning to call any of those things bad, I actually enjoyed his vocals in HM.

But I agree, his vocals in the 2017 performances are amazing, The Wretched took my fucking breath away, those whispers he does sound so amazingly disturbing, best performance I've seen of that song easily.

[mfte]

I could not imagine TR adding additional part to those compositions. I remember an interview with him in regards to remastering PHM where he said there was a temptation to update things like outdated sounding reverb effects but that would needlessly change the spirit of the original recording.

Has anyone considered the following? There is more material from these sessions that sounds like more completed songs but he didn't want Deviations to be an experience where the focus is taken away from the original songs? I can't see him just dumping a bunch of stuff onto a release like this for the sake of releasing unheard material. Using the Claustrophobia Machine example I think there was intent behind including it as opposed him thinking "what is the least shitty I can pad this release with".... "should I include Claustrophobia Machine or that 10 min outake of Danny playing the didgeridoo?"

[astfgyl]

Look, I stand corrected about that thought I was having, but Claustrophobia Machine to me is right up there with the very worst of NIN. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and TR/AR saw fit to leave it in there so maybe it is just me.

Actually, now that I think of it, that song sort of proves the point that they probably didn't touch any of it up, because to leave it in that condition while touching other things up would surely be madness.

Like everybody else here, I would love nothing more than another 6 hours to a week of unreleased TF material. I would prefer to be wrong than right in that regard.

[astfgyl]

Another random thought, just to deflect things a bit...

Having given the last couple of days listening to Niggy Tardust, I am really surprised that TR didn't carry forward more of an influence from that than he appears to have. There are some really great ideas, both sonically and musically going on there.

[r_z]

Look, I stand corrected about that thought I was having, but Claustrophobia Machine to me is right up there with the very worst of NIN. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and TR/AR saw fit to leave it in there so maybe it is just me.

Actually, now that I think of it, that song sort of proves the point that they probably didn't touch any of it up, because to leave it in that condition while touching other things up would surely be madness.

Like everybody else here, I would love nothing more than another 6 hours to a week of unreleased TF material. I would prefer to be wrong than right in that regard.

Claustrophobia Machine reminded me of one quote of Trent's. Allegedly they made a list of artists whose music should act as an influence for what would become the new album, The Fragile. Among other artists I remember him mentioning Atari Teenage Riot, which that song bears a certain resemblance to, I think.

[astfgyl]

Claustrophobia Machine reminded me of one quote of Trent's. Allegedly they made a list of artists whose music should act as an influence for what would become the new album, The Fragile. Among other artists I remember him mentioning Atari Teenage Riot, which that song bears a certain resemblance to, I think.

If you mean it is a bad song, then I think it bears a striking similarity to ATR. Just kidding (a bit), I see what you are getting at.

While we are on the subject of The Fragile, another thought I had (while looking at 31 Ghosts IV live), was that the closest NIN ever got to reaching anything like the heights of TF since it was released was on Ghosts I-IV.

I am convinced there is the makings of an album in there that could be at least as good or possibly even surpass TF. If only he had given 2 solid years fleshing out those ideas and adding vocals to it...

Hey, imagine if the next deviations was Ghosts I-IV: Deviations 2, where they basically went the opposite way to Deviations 1, and distilled down the 4 discs to 2 and added vocals. A wide awake wet dream for me right there.

And lastly (because I am king of the long-winded post) has anybody here had a go of putting together a sort of less meandering version of Ghosts? Something like getting it down to 1 or 2 discs. I'm going to give it a go this evening.

[r_z]

has anybody here had a go of putting together a sort of less meandering version of Ghosts? Something like getting it down to 1 or 2 discs. I'm going to give it a go this evening.

Yeah, I got it down to one disc and tried to trim the fat a little. I even went to the multitracks to re-edit the endings/beginnings of some songs on there that fade into each other. The tracklist goes like this:

01. 1 Ghosts I
02. 2 Ghosts I
03. 6 Ghosts I
04. 7 Ghosts I
05. 8 Ghosts I
06. 14 Ghosts II
07. 18 Ghosts II
08. 16 Ghosts II
09. 21 Ghosts III
10. 23 Ghosts III
11. 27 Ghosts III
12. 28 Ghosts IV
13. 29 Ghosts IV
14. 31 Ghosts IV
15. 32 Ghosts IV
16. 35 Ghosts IV
17. 33 Ghosts IV
18. 34 Ghosts IV

[fillow]

I wonder if somewhere down the line Trentticus will pull a Zimmer/Morriccone/Mansell thing and do a tour or a few shows playing only score material.

[implanted_microchip]

I wonder if somewhere down the line Trentticus will pull a Zimmer/Morriccone/Mansell thing and do a tour or a few shows playing only score material.

I'd expect that to be woven into the Still-style tour Trent discussed at the Chicago Q&A.

[Kulerage]

I'd expect that to be woven into the Still-style tour Trent discussed at the Chicago Q&A.

Now I WANT this to happen

[sweeterthan]

Now I WANT this to happen

Yes, but at a place I can go to.


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[snaapz]

Where's Rob Sheridan?