Ghost I-IV

My formative years were marked by a complete lack of interest in NIN. Pretty Hate Machine came out when I was in 8th grade, & really started to get a mainstream burn around my freshman year in high school when that "Head like a hole" song began making the rounds on "alternative" radio stations. When Downward Spiral came out, I rather liked the "I wanna fuck you like an animal" song, because as a teen-ager most definitely not getting laid, I thought playing the tune loud on the radio or MTV made me cool or something (I was so wrong); other than that, I couldn't tell you of another song. As Trent Reznor stumbled into the cultural black-hole of irrelevance, my un-interest in NIN transformed into a total mental erasure. Sometime last year, Reznor produced & released Saul William's incredible The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust. "Wow," I said to myself, "this is a solid LP & it was produced by a man who has officially become cultural detritus."

& then Rezonr, under the NIN moniker, goes & does something crazy like independently releasing a 2-hour industrial-ambient set on his website in both digital download & multi-artifact formats for prices ranging from $0-$300. Listening to some samples, I didn't exactly fall in love, but was enamored enough to take the album home, indulge it in conversation & a drink, then have sex with it. The stipulation, of course, is that we will never seriously date, but Ghosts I-IV can come over anytime it wants a booty call & I don't have anything serious going on with anyone else. Of course, this is a big step for me because I have never, until now, heard anything worth purchasing in NIN's oeuvre. While this isn't the greatest album ever, it certainly is much, much better than that Pitchfork review (click image of album to read) indicates. Much better.