Re-discovering that "Hesitation Marks" is the one and only Nine Inch Nails album that Tidal doesn't have¹ and cracking up all over over again

"Oh, you didn't want *that* one"

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¹ I think the last time I looked into this it turned out to be a Canada geoIP thing.

@mcc speaking of Canadian things

Anyway this is my periodic reminder to you that if you used to be into NIN but fell off after "with teeth"/"year zero":

You really, *really* want to locate the "Not the Actual Events" / "Add Violence" / "Bad Witch" 2016-2018 EP trio, and just listen to all three in one go as if it's a 3-disc album (I have them set up as one playlist called "Not Violent Witch").

This run of music was *incredible*, career high, and it's deeply haunted by Reznor's personal friendships with Davids Lynch and Bowie

@mcc hah, welp. the name makes it sound like really good and relatable material, we should listen to that...

@ireneista No it's really boring :( look up "While I'm Still Here (Breyer P-Orridge 'Howler' Remix)" and ignore the rest

Also https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116025650612079366

There's a track in the EP trio that exists solely because Reznor was trying to make a song David Lynch would like. Lynch asked if Reznor would appear in one of the musical segments in Twin Peaks The Return and Reznor was like sure how about we play this new song I'm working on? And Lynch was not ehh this isn't really the vibe… and so Reznor was like okay I have to make a song that is the vibe

"She's Gone Away" is literally designed to be a song that, if Nine Inch Nails existed in the universe of "Twin Peaks" but in the "Twin Peaks" universe Nine Inch Nails had never found mainstream popularity so in 2015 NIN was just touring with no budget playing small bars, "She's Gone Away" is the song Reznor would perform to the drinking crowd at the "Bang Bang Bar" outside the sleepy, haunted town of Twin Peaks, Washington with his wife playing the tambourine behind him. That's why it exists

@mcc https://www.reddit.com/r/nin/comments/1qq3jho/comment/o2y5h2s/

@jmtd well that seems excessive

@jmtd it was a mistake to allow people to sell their copyrights

@mcc and it was more or less the tonal center and focal pivot of one of the most incredible episodes of television ever made

@jplebreton Yeah

AND THE "THE NINE INCH NAILS" THING WAS UNSCRIPTED. THE ANNOUNCER GUY JUST DID THAT

@mcc the return has some of the best "accidental but works perfectly" world building, real lessons for the wiki-brains out there

Okay so it's been explained to me that actually several large chunks of the NiN library are not available digitally at all currently due to Reznor's frequent label changes and some sort of presumably temporary snafu in inter-publisher negotiations, and shamefully Tidal does not currently even have "Not the Actual Events". Copyright does not succeed at the thing our society designed copyright to do

@mcc
🏴‍☠️
Also, locally stored collection is superior to any other alternative either way.

@mcc I just finished listening to the “Not Violent Witch” playlist and it is so good!

Thank you!

@mcc Copywrong must be abolished. All creativity should exist to enhance the public domain.

Non-jokingly, my advice to you: Do not become addicted to heroin and then sign contracts with a music industry label

@mcc I will try to avoid doing either of those things. Both at once seems... bad?

@wtrmt note: if you literally mean you found the playlist on tidal, be advised that two of the 3 EPs are currently unavailable on tidal and so what actually happened is you just listened to the single EP "bad witch". Which honestly. Is a very good idea that I endorse doing

@darkling Trent Reznor tested it and it turned out to be very bad

@darkling I theorize doing both but in the opposite order *might* have turned out better

@mcc Not a precise match, but I'm thinking of the pre-'60s Hollywood star system here. That was the opposite order and different drugs, but it didn't work out terribly well either.

@mcc I’m pretty sure the heroin thing is the comparatively harmless part here

@mcc valid

@fraca7 heroin is an accelerant for misbehaving record companies

@mcc

But it's tradition.

@mcc what do you mean, "fell off after year zero", I first heard them (live, their first tour ever in Slovakia and the first "big" concert I went to) on that tour! That album is as good as any!

@pkraus Year Zero is amazing and I think there is consensus it is amazing, but IMO the album before it ("With Teeth") is a bit of a down note, and the major album after it ("Hesitation Marks") is often treated as a down note, and a lot of people don't like "The Slip" but they're wrong because "The Slip" rules

@mcc My playlist for them is a much less inventive "NIN 3EP". I really wish he'd package them up into a single album, kinda like K.Flay did with Inside Voices / Outside Voices.

@gabboman The Nine Inch Nails discography is an ocean, and almost all the islands have something amazing and unique about them.

Also Twin Peaks is SO GOOD, season 2 is kind of a mess after a certain point (the tv station forced them to drag things out more than they actually had story to fill it with so the tv station could milk out money, and some of the s2 episodes were made without the key writing/directing staff) but if you watch season 2 you get to watch season 3 which is the best part

@mcc Say « no » to record companies

@gabboman There's a lot of nine inch nails songs that do not sound like nine inch nails songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb5_hIuEk8g

@jrose If we're viewing it as a logical statement then it's important to preserve the structure that the worst possible configuration is doing both and *in that order*

@mcc I built the playlist on Apple Music, taking the liberty of naming it “Not Violent Witch”. Here it is, should anyone wants to listen to it.

https://music.apple.com/cl/playlist/not-violent-witch/pl.u-pMyl1Wbs4eeBkM?l=en

(Added hashtags for discovery)

#NIN #trentreznor

@wtrmt This is great thank you for this public service

@mcc still listening and enjoying! Thank you so much!

@mcc Nice use of "Davids" there.

@gabboman @cafkafk For the record two of the tracks on the US version of "Further Down the Spiral" are original Aphex Twin compositions

@gabboman @cafkafk Also big chunks of both Fixed and Further Down the Spiral are by Coil, a band you may not be into and whose discography is more of a minefield but who is very worth knowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Destroy_Angels_(Remixes_and_Re-Recordings)

@gabboman @cafkafk For clarity:

Coil is a band whose first-ever released song was named "How to Destroy Angels", a ceremonially produced occult work for the accumulation of gay male sexual energy. Reznor knew and worked with Coil and some time after the Coil boys had died, he happened to name the band he formed with his wife after the Coil song

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/116025752963855521

Listening to Nine Inch Nails is so complicated to me. I would just loop his music for weeks at a time, for years, it was like the soundtrack of my own feelings, and then

and now I can't listen to the old stuff, the post 2015-stuff feels right to me but the old stuff is like, a dissonant note, the thing that was going "yeah, that's what life feels like" is going "this doesn't feel like me anymore", the feeling doesn't make sense to me anymore, but here's the thing:

RT: https://mastodon.social/users/mcc/statuses/116025752963855521

Early (like, pre-2007) Nine Inch Nails is About Something. Here's what it's about: You're broken, you're irredeemable. There's something deep inside of you, something fundamental which corrupts, something broken in a way that will twist everything that happens and make it bad, make every victory sour, make you crush every opportunity and fumble every friendship. And it's not anything "wrong". It's just who you are, and it can't be fixed. That was what he was trying to say. That spoke to me. But:

There *was* something wrong with Trent Reznor. There was one, specific thing wrong with Trent Reznor, and there was one specific thing with me. This wasn't even The Human Condition or being depressed. It's just that Trent was addicted to heroin. Trent was addicted to heroin, and I had gender identity disorder. That was the One Thing. There was actually, really one corrupting thing preventing each of us from being able to be happy or succeed at anything.

And then, uh.

Those things got better.

It's just this weird coincidence. It happened at almost the same time. I gender transitioned and Trent Reznor quit heroin and sued the record companies that exploited him while he was on heroin. He's 18 years older than me but it was like we kind of grew up together. And a couple years after Reznor's giving interviews about it feeling kinda weird to play his old music and I'm sitting at a laptop somewhere thinking it's weird to listen to his old music.

But then he made the new music.

@mcc I thought it was coke and booze with Trent, not heroin?

The 2016-2018 stuff speaks to me because *we were doing the same things then*. We fixed the unfixable things that defined us and afterward were just sort of like, *still here*. And the EPs are him trying to figure out what that means. We're both still depressed and in therapy and have to live with the hesitation marks. It will never be all the way "better". But that One Thing is out of the way and it's *possible* for things to get, better than before. A different soundtrack to a different life.

@mcc my daughter is not a big NIN fan but she really likes As Alive as You Need Me to Be. I am going to the show next week

It is a particular feeling. It's more complex. It's harder.

RE: https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/116025877530302671

Note I have no specific knowledge as to the nature of Reznor's addictions, I am basing this off news articles about the lawsuits and reading interviews where he talks about what it's like to be cleaned up and the surreal nature of being an adult-shaped person with a family. I had an impression it was H based on reading between the lines on some other stuff but could be wrong.

RT: https://chaos.social/users/gsuberland/statuses/116025877530302671

@ebooksyearn I actually have not listened to the Tron soundtrack!

@mcc I can’t believe I’m about to defend copyright, but copyright works fine here! Labels otoh can rot.

@mcc it was all three, coke, booze, and heroin. Heroin was the addiction that nearly killed him in the 90s

@mxjaygrant ok. I think I knew that but on reflection couldn't point to a particular thing I knew making me know that

@mcc I haven't done the whole thing because I'm never in the car anymore and music is distracting when I work but I think it's good?

@mcc I think any of us who were "young" in the 90s/2000s and who are "fans of NIN" have a complex relation with Trent's music. It's difficult to casually listen to Trent's older work because of the content and the themes. How can anyone be a "fan" of music like that?

"Hesitation Marks" is probably my favorite NIN album and has been since it came out. It still has interesting things to say, is great music, and isn't as inherently upsetting to listen to.

@DJTentMode unclear if i could enjoy music which isn't upsetting. i'm just looking for. the new upsetting

@mcc I remember someone else on some social media platform say something like, "You either die young, or live long enough to see Nine Inch Nails become 'Dad Rock'." Which is really the most upsetting thing to consider in this whole scenario!

@DJTentMode imagine what it must have been like for trent reznor to become Dad

@mcc «it's important to do the things in the correct order»

@mcc I'm pretty sure he straight-up said "The Perfect Drug" was about heroin? or maybe cocaine? one of the "oh fuck that's a bad idea" ones anyway

@mcc also just thanks for this entire thread, it's wonderful and hopepunk

@joshg Thanks for saying so. In fact I feel real bad actually lol

@mcc fair. hope it keeps getting better.

@mcc wait, I thought Reznor started doing some CC0 thing and didn’t release any music after With Teeth/Year Zero??? I’m missing Nine Inch Nails stuff?!

@c0dec0dec0de What?

There have been exactly two "Ghosts" projects— the CC0 dump you're referring to and a later one from more recent.

If u dropped off there you're missing The Slip which is short but magnificent, Hesitation Marks which as noted above I'm not so fond of (but the remixes are good), the EP trilogy which is maybe his greatest work, several full film scores with the 12 Rounds guy (two of which won Oscars), and an enigmatic one-off Hurricane Katrina benefit https://mastodon.social/@mcc/109037958139279222

@joshg All I'm saying is I don't know. I thought it was heroin but I can't remember why I thought that. He's got *lyrics* about heroin but more than one of his songs depict fictional events.

@mcc Somehow I missed the three albums that you are referencing! But, "Hesitation Marks" was that, for me. Listening to him shift into an uptempo song in a major key with a contiguous melody was… well. I cried. I am identifying with this painfully hard, reading this toot made me want to scream out loud. My One Thing was a lot more complicated to explain but it was also absolutely there.

@mcc also this is only tangentially related but a fun hobby of mine is asking professional musicians to listen to the first 15 seconds of "Copy of A" and asking them "What is happening with the time signature and/or bassline here?" Watching the range of emotions they experience is fun.

@glyph Thank you for sharing. I do recommend the 2016-2018 trilogy at some point though. They've got some really complicated emotions in them, especially the third one which wound up being more or less directly about the death of David Bowie between the recording of the second and third EPs

@mcc @joshg my recollection of his biography was that he was addicted to alcohol and coke, and at some point someone gave him heroin which he thought was coke, and he OD'd on it. I am pretty sure he described the experience as like looking over the edge of an abyss because he actually *liked* it, but I think he eventually got clean without getting into a deep heroin addiction.

@mcc I definitely plan to listen to it. I did not drift away because of any issue with his music but I had A Lot Going On[1][2] at that time.

[1]: A pregnancy/newborn/1-year-old
[2]: A high-pressure startup

@mcc I’m currently reading James Kaplan’s “3 Shades of Blue”, ostensibly about Davis, Coltrane, and Evans but really a fairly wide ranging picture of 50s jazz in the US.

So many musicians got seriously screwed over by heroin and music labels during that time.

@mcc Also, I _also_ really disliked it that time that David Bowie died.

@mcc hmmm. That describes me alright. I’ll try that this weekend. I got into NIN with PHM and fell off about then.

@jzb about the same, the last album I listen to regularly is The Slip. I should probably give the later stuff a try. @mcc

@joshg I've got high hopes for next month!

@mcc There are a lot of sick unredeemable assholes making "music."

@mcc if you're in a Canadian geoIP region and you want to buy the FLACs of these EPs:

https://ca.7digital.com/artist/nine-inch-nails/release/add-violence-explicit-61241574

https://ca.7digital.com/artist/nine-inch-nails/release/not-the-actual-events-explicit-61241612

https://ca.7digital.com/artist/nine-inch-nails/release/bad-witch-61241509

@mcc gosh, I really didn't like With Teeth and never tried again. Thanks for the reminder.

(Apple Music has all three cited EPs, so made the prescribed playlist; https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/not-violent-witch-nine-inch-nails-2016-2018/pl.u-vxy665YIXJZd3 )

#nin #music

@ellie in my opinion both and Year Zero and The Slip are better than With Teeth. Year Zero was a Big concept album that was almost a sci fi rock opera with a whole ARG of websites from the what-if-the-gwb-administration-went-on-20-years world of the album that's probably offline now. The Slip was a short sweet one that he gave away free on his website that's a bit insubstantial made of 6 fun dumb rock tracks and then a 4-track mostly-instrumental run that's some of his best work

@ellie but year zero/the slip kinda feel like "what if With Teeth had been good?" and the 2010s EP trilogy has a pretty distinct feel.

@mcc
Oooh, thanks for the tip.. haven't listened to that one in quite a while, I actually have that one here! (Also thanks for the other tips further down-thread, I actually don't have those. Will have to investigate)

@mcc would you recommend them to a fan of the Challengers (2024) soundtrack? I've honestly been meaning to branch out in that direction