Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Amazing Amazing!, 10 Mar 2008
How the hell does he keep doing it!?! I've been a huge fan of NIN ever since PHM way back in 1991 when I was 21 years old; that album just hit all the right places for me, it sounded different and exciting, it stood out from everything else and became my music. Down through the years I've grown older with each album release and every time I've been surprised and delighted; Broken/Fixed, Spiral, Fragile, Teeth, Zero and all the Halos in between, each time Trent has hit the right note at the right time; creating music that no-one else has ever come close to or could hope to.
Now that he's a truly independent musician he has released this new album firstly as a download which will be followed up with a hold in your hand CD. This is an incredible work, a vast canvas of sounds, rhythms, atmospheres and moods. Even at a 2 hour running time the album just zooms past, it changes from slow to fast, quiet to loud ebbing and flowing one after the other. There are perceptible differences in mood between the 4 Ghosts; melancholic beats leads to fast-paced walls of sound and back again. There seems to have been no instrument left unused; piano, glockenspiel, tinfoil?, that all add to the soundscape created. This album really does have it all; the heartache moments of the peaceful small notes to the blood-pumping, foot-stomping big noise. At times I'm reminded of `Koyaanisqatsi' and Philip Glass's score, other times of Kraftwerk and Joy Division. There are strong appearances from other NIN albums in here too; `The Fragile' and the `Quiet' side of the `And All That Could Have Been' double album most especially.
Now in my mid thirties, this album and this artist once again hits me like no-one else ever has; he's one of the very few artists where I really get excited about news of a new release. Trent has a talent that I feel we have yet to really see the best of, he has created an album here that is like nothing else and I can see how some fans might not take to it. I can only applaud his bravery and his commitment to try new ideas, new approaches, and new ways to make music, to make art. His endeavours very much remind me of David Lynch and Peter Greenaway who both feel Cinema is still in its infancy; that we have yet to explore the depths and possibilities of film as an artform. Trent is the same about modern music.
Keep going Trent; hopefully you'll still be doing this when we're both old and grey!
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, Important... but not Incredible., 15 April 2008
Normally, I would've asked if Trent Reznor is on crack. But given the mans fierce workrate and renewed vigour over the past three years (which has seen five albums and a live DVD, including a remix set and a colloboration with Saul Williams), as well as the prolific touring that saw the band cover the world a couple of times without a break, and the huge online concept that sat behind the brilliant "Year Zero", the only conclusion I can draw is after his previous, slovenly one-album-every-five-years approach, it appears that if anything, Trent Reznor is most definitely not on crack : and that's what makes this record and his new workrate so important.
Nature abhors a vaccum, and it appears that nature has filled a crack-filled hole with Nine Inch Nails albums. I couldn't think of a better thing to do so, personally. Taking the cue from Bowies Berlin-era instrumental forays and Aphex Twins early work, Ghosts is an epic 2 hour double album journey of purely instrumental Nine Inch Nails music. Yes, there are vocals : similar in tone and timbre to the wordless croon of Bowie, and yes, the music highlights and explores Reznor's often under noticed capacity as a producer and as an arranger, to create densely layered musical sound pictures : lost in the melee of the fierce attack of a live show and the recorded product. Whereas the other NIN records had moments of quiet and loud, light and shade, variant moments of moods between fury and despondency, Ghosts is a quieter journey. And with a quieter journey, comes the monotone view.
If Ghosts were a view, it would a American desert bus journey : a unchanging landscape that becomes almost oppressive in its uniformity. Stripped away from the confines of melody, chorus, conventional song structure and differentiation, it becomes almost boring. There's little emotional impact in the material to an extent, it becomes a uniform, background impression, and starts to fade away. The hook and versimilitude of Reznors voice and the emotional truth of his lyrics is lacking, and it allows "Ghosts" to become a lesser artistic entity. The record certainly does have an important role in the bands canon, and is a brave move, allowing Nine Inch Nails to follow their own path and their muse, free of the confines of a major label system the band have grown to despise, but ultimately its not necessarily an artistic success. It's only on the closing track "Ghosts IV : 36" (like AFX's "Selected Ambient Works 2", none of the songs have names), that the record begins to evoke a clear sense of moving the listener. It's by no means a bad record but an artistically bold statement of musical integrity. I'd much rather Reznor follow his muse - even if it results in albums like this - than become a bad parody of himself in his old age trying to constantly recreate the genie in the bottle and turning into a furious version of the Rolling Stones. Ghosts is a bold and brave move that may not please the fans, but it is an interesting and important release that, at the very least, well worth investigation.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Even further down the spiral, 24 Jul 2008
After great anticipation of this supposedly "important" release from Trent Reznor I can honestly say that Ghosts 1-4 is far from the masterpiece many fans are hailing it as.
I've been a Nails fan since Pretty Hate Machine in the early nineties and have admired Reznors collaborations and musical experimentation, but this just seems like a rush job, even though he's known to be one of the most methodical perfectionists in the industry.
Far from this being a 'soundtrack for daydreams', if your daydreams are as erratic as this then i'd suggest swift medical help. It lurches from lazy mechanical durges to off key piano akin to a Les Dawson sketch.
With little of his trademark industrial power riffs and certainly nothing remotely close to the atmospheric instrumentals he's created for movies like Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway, this double disc seems as bland as water and it's hard to understand how any of this could've stirred him into believing in it.
If this is Nine Inch Nails all grown up then i'd certainly prefer a trip down memory lane rather than sit through this monotonous and disappointing effort.
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