Um... not to rain on any parades here, but I notice that no-one mentioned the actual quality of the music itself. [Personally speaking], I have tried oh-so-many-times to actually enjoy Trent's work, but to date, have found little to like about his improvisational genera.

I’ve listened to Ghosts I IV a number of times and am checking out The Slip as I write this. I’ve made many attempts to enjoy their work in the past… and while interesting and far more creative than I’ll ever be… it doesn’t ‘catch the heart nor the ear’. Don’t get me wrong; I dig a slab of industrial heaviness a-la Skinny Puppy / Ministry etc. as much as the next freaker, but this NIN stuff… perhaps it’s a taste that I’ve yet to acquire.

That said however, if Trent’s bold steps in ‘Open-Source’ online releases happen to stimulate other artists to follow suite, it’ll have all been worth it, but in the meantime, I find his form of genius to be one of those things that make you go “Hmmmm dude… what were you smokin”


Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com

well considering this is a board which we talk about the technical specs of audio, i'm not surprised no one brought up the question of personal taste.

I will check this out but if Ghosts is anything to go by I'm not keeping my hopes up. Ghosts was the first NIN album I had listened to and what a piece of junk that was. I'm sorry - I just don't get it. Maybe that's why I like Michael Bolton. ;-)

Nubben

Well this is more of an album proper than Ghosts was, but I don't imagine it will appeal to, or even should appeal to, a Michael Bolton fan.

It's a matter of taste. I'm not a fan of Nine Inch Nails or the whole industrial genre, but Ghosts I-IV was the one piece I loved. The Slip is more like NiN's usual work, and I enjoyed it less.


Unfortunately, my current environment is way too noisy for me to do any serious listening. Anyone else?

Yes, The Slip is more like NIN's usual work, and I enjoyed it more than Ghosts, I still think that it's worth that 5 dollars I payed for it Interesting piece of music.
The Slip has stronger mood (for me) and is more suitable for 'repeat track' listening (which I use for writing, for example). Discipline and Head Down are my picks at the moment for this kind of listening - though others may follow. It always take some time for me to digest a new NIN (and I can't say I'm finished with Ghosts in this aspect)

It's not TDS, PHM or TF, but it's more than decent. Enjoy.

This album has seemed to have taken me some time to "digest", not unlike Ghosts I-IV. I've literally grown up on Nine Inch Nails, and The Slip is very much Nine Inch Nails. I appreciate the 'edge' that's been somewhat missing since The Downward Spiral and The Fragile, but these tracks also throw in a number of poppy, more traditional elements to the mix, and the album as a whole doesn't seem to really suffer for it. It's a harder, more aggressive album -- the mixing reflects that -- yet the hooks are pretty prevalent (and they're effective hooks), so there's a level of mass-market appeal. It's a difficult album to try and summarize in that respect.

Some of the tracks are a little simplistic for my taste, at least structurally. I generally welcome when artists toss out the more traditional pop/rock-oriented song structure, and Reznor's certainly been well-noted for that with his past efforts, but The Slip is pretty straightforward. It makes it much more digestible than, say, "The New Flesh", off the vinyl edition of The Fragile, which is a pretty fascinating track sonically, lyrically and structurally, but somehow less engaging. The hooks bring you back rather than the songs as a whole, so it doesn't seem to grab you as well as it could or force you to listen actively, which is something I always appreciate.

The sound, of course, is pure bliss. Whenever I hear a new Nails album, the first thought is always "this is the kind of music I'd make if I made music", and The Slip is no exception.

Like I said before, I really do wish I could have paid for this one. I'm certainly looking forward picking up a few physical copies to give to family and friends. I'm fairly sure I'll be handing out no fewer than five copies this time (I gave out three copies of Ghosts).

I don't think the majority of the album (The Slip) is anything like NIN's ususal work
It sounds almost like the Fixed EP, a bunch of cacaphonous remixes, with the exception of maybe three of the tracks.

Broken EP, Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile and With Teeth all sound nothing like this current offering. They had more of an idea of what they were doing, more direction and more melody.

I wish Trent would start work on the next Deluxe SACD offering (or Blu-ray Disc audio even), hopefully The Fragile (as he doesn't own Pretty Hate Machine....yet)

NiN and Trent Reznor are an acquired taste. They obviously won't appeal to everyone. Ghosts seems to be more of an experimental project of NiN than intended for widespread mainstream consumption. Trent on his web site states that we are free to DL it and do our own remixes of it to see what we can create with it ourselves.

For me, one of Trent Reznor / NiN 's greatest achievements was the original Quake PC computer game soundtrack. It was actually what got me interested in industrial ambient music in the first place.

If, for some reason, you still haven't heard it, I'm sure you can pick up a copy of the Quake computer game for about $5 or $10 now. The music is on there as CD audio (tracks 2 through 11). You don't even need the full version, as I believe the shareware version of the CD has the full soundtrack in standard CD audio.

The first audio track, the actual Quake theme, is the closest to an industrial-rock score as it's the only one that has guitar in it (the first minute of the song). The other tracks are more sinister, scary, industrial ambience designed to impart a certain mood. However, they mostly do a very good job of it, especially "Start / Whispers" and "Slipgate Complex". Those two tracks start out slowly and build up to a pulsating, pounding, frightening crescendo, sort of an industrial analogy of Ravel's "Bolero".

As for The Slip album, I would venture that tracks 4,5, and 10 are more in line with what most would consider 'traditional' NiN style. They would probably appeal to casual mainstream listeners more than the other tracks of the album.

Heard Ghosts I-IX and The Slip. Ghosts is interesting as soundtrack, but it could be much better written and structured. The Slip I heard it, even though the concepts are neat, it fails miserably to deliver "actual" music. It's just all noise and distortion and that fatigue my ears quickly. NiN does not seem be a creative band musically.