Since the earliest days of his career, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor has been adept at convincing his fans to fork out serious cash for expensive crap. In a stroke of marketing genius, he decided to give each of his releases — from the most trivial single to his epic late-’90s double-VHS video set — a “halo” number, goading obsessive followers to catch ’em all, Pokemon-style. From recognizing the massive potential of remixing his own songs to pressing vinyl before vinyl got big again, it always seemed like NIN was a few steps ahead of the pack.
With Ghosts I-IV, a self-released collection of 36 instrumental tracks recorded over a 10-week period this fall (and officially halo 26, by the way), Reznor has again shown himself to be a leading man in the modern rock galaxy. In spite of its monolithic four-disc format, the release clocks in well under two hours — the decision to divide the album into four parts is due to the fact that each volume of Ghosts has its own unique texture and tone.
In many places, Ghosts makes subtle references to NIN’s best instrumental moments over the years, from the heavily processed, “one-with-the-machine” sound of Broken, to the raw acoustic guitar strums of The Downward Spiral, it’s all here, minus the somewhat tiresome vocals. Moments like the heavily distorted drone of “20 Ghosts III” and the haunting banjo-esque guitar lead on “28 Ghosts IV” (no, the tracks don’t have proper names) are reassuring in their indication that Reznor is getting back to the sort of experimental sound that was sorely lacking from his last two studio albums. Indeed, longtime followers will be pleased with the return of erstwhile collaborators like Adrien Belew and Atticus Ross, who both featured prominently in the best moments of NIN’s studio albums and shied away from listless stinkers like With Teeth and Year Zero.
The most important aspect of Ghosts — the cherry atop what amounts to a quite-delicious musical sundae — is the way it was released. Like Radiohead’s oft-discussed In Rainbows, Reznor elected to self-release the album over the Internet. However, the similarities end there: Ghosts offers audio files for a relatively low price ($5), whereas Radiohead fans had to buy a retail version to obtain anything better than FM quality. Even more significantly, the album is being released under a Creative Commons copyright licence, which affords consumers significant flexibility in terms of sharing and reuse.
This was definitely a risky move on Reznor’s part, but it appears to have paid off: interest in the album was more than sufficient to take nin.com servers offline for several hours, during which time impatient fans were directed by the band to check popular sources of pirated music like the Pirate Bay. From a pocketbook perspective, in addition to any other sales, the autographed über-deluxe $300 version of Ghosts, limited to 2,500 copies and featuring quadruple vinyl, Blu-ray, multi-track formats, and other general shininess, sold out within 24 hours of its release. If that doesn’t turn the recording industry’s attention away from frivolous lawsuits and towards innovative new technology, who knows what will?
