archival

Trent Reznor on the making of The Fragile

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I’m sitting on thousands of files that I’ve cut and pasted from various websites and newsgroups over the years, and stumbled across a few gems this morning in the archive. It’s interesting for me at least with NIN returning as a live act at Fujirock in July (which I’m hoping to get to go to and review). It’s actually cobbled together from a few cut/pastes around 1998, a year before it was released, but I’ve rewritten parts of it where it sounded like a 5 year old had typed it up. While it doesn’t enlighten you to any rarities or odd stories about studio excess, it does at least feature a couple of Trent Reznor quotes. Enjoy, and comment below.

When Nine Inch Nails recorded Pretty Hate Machine in 1989, the audio tracks were not recorded digitally, but to analogue tapes. The album was later sequenced on a Mac Plus. Their second album The Downward Spiral was a different case. It was completely recorded digitally, just like Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar, which Reznor produced in 1995 in his New Orleans studio.

“Instead of recording to tapes, I played parts of the songs into my computer and after that I could make loops and stuff,” Reznor says. “If you want to write a song, just put a loop from a drum track, and then add bass and guitars into it. After that you can do whatever you like with the song: use samples, put on the vocals and so on. This way it’s easy to make remixes of a song when you have the basis of it saved in your computer.”

On his third album The Fragile, Reznor will be recording the tracks digitally as well, but he has something new in mind too. He’s going to use different background vocalists, guest musicians and many real and exotic instruments. “I’ve gathered pieces from many different music styles in these few years and I’m trying to find a way to mix them.” Trent didn’t feel he was breaking new ground writing merely on piano, which could explain why he’s drafted in a host of guest musicians to give the record a new flavour.

Trent talked about his upcoming album saying they’ve finished 20 songs, and recorded 25 more demos for what could possibly be a double album. Adrian Belew, Helmet’s Page Hamilton, Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin, Power Station drummer Tony Thompson, and David Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson all have contributed to the recordings. NIN veteran Charlie Clouser and Danny Lohner return as well.

As for the sound of the record, Trent says it’s like “Tom Waits on a bayou filtered through a funk blender and slowed down.” He also admitted that The Fragile is “not as knee-jerk muscle-flexingly angry” as his past work, but to “never fear, it doesn’t sound like a band playing. We went to incredible lengths pushing technology to do things it shouldn’t do.” The album is due out in June [NB: it was actually released in September 1999, over a year after this was written].

Trent was also approached by R&B singer Aaliyah to produce a track on her upcoming album. No word on if he’ll do it. Sister Soleil has collaborated with Trent in New Orleans on a song for the movie Stigmata, he’s also been asked to mix some material from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, a project put together by producer Mike Simpson, Prince Paul and The Automator.

Amy Blue: “Home Made”

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Clapham Junction Doesn’t Like The YYYs

We’re just in the process of buying an 8-track digital input so we can start recording a lot of (better quality) in the rehearsal space. Over the past seven years we’ve relied primarily on Simon’s slowly-dying cassette recorder that captures things in a rather sporadic fashion (plus you don’t know if it’s stopped or not halfway through a jam). We could theoretically put out a lot more free stuff that covers our other interests.. people generally aren’t fussed about instrumentals or weirdness unless they go looking for it. It’s C-Side material at best. But if it’s free, well.. score.

In terms of the new record we’ve got 9 songs recorded, one of which will need a re-record as it wasn’t our best take of the song (we’ve grown apathetic, as we’ve been playing it for 5 years now), plus we some newbies that are yet to be recorded: the fatalist, the fortress/kill them with death (it’s SABBATH), scissors (part 2… a shoegazey slip of a song), forcing the end… some more i forget the names of. We have so many songs and haven’t played the majority of them live as they’re either too complicated or sound quite weedy without a wall of overdubs. We’ll never get away from that, but we’ve tried.

In other news, I watched the Final Solution episode of The World At War last night and it put me off going to sleep. There are no words really.

If I ever get back to blogging more regularly, I’m going to make this a writing blog as I’ve got a few things I’d like to waffle about. But right now it’s Sunday and I want to kill some zombies in Left 4 Dead.

Amy Blue: “Human Cannonbomb”

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Recently we played a show at the Brixton Windmill, organised by Dan Ormsby of ‘4 of 5 Magicians’ fame. We were up first on the Sunday and had to cover two songs by a band I’d barely heard a month before, The Butthole Surfers. Simon and T*** were pretty familiar with them, having more of a grasp of the early 90s American alt scene, whereas I never really had the chance to get into that era at the time as I was far too young. Coming back to it, and in particularly to what the Buttholes were doing, I can’t help but feel slightly short-changed. Noise “experiments” don’t generally make for interesting listening, and the first Buttholes record (the one with all the distended arseholes on, or stomachs) didn’t grab me at all. I was in search of a tune, and found none.

Later on things seem to get more interesting, and on the Locust, Abortion… (whatever it’s called) record there was at least one tune that I got into— ‘Human Cannonball’, which has a killer riff and nice scuzzy sound. Simon picked the impossible track ‘Something’ which came from a terribly recorded, almost bootleg LP. Being a fan of screamy stuff, he took to it like a goat to water. We probably rehearsed the tracks about twice, maybe three times, and then performed them live. Mine was arse; I forgot the lyrics to verse two and the ‘lift’ that was needed to give it more punch wasn’t quite there. I read them from a piece of paper to save further faffing, foregoing any sense of dignity or decent stage presence. ‘Something’ was much more enjoyable to play.. we pretty much survived the thing by making noise, and Simon headed off-stage to annoy the punters by screaming into an unplugged mic. Classy.

Next up, a rehearsal where we run through only new/half-finished ideas in the run up to recording album #2. It’s a very different beast from ‘The Fortress & The Fatalist’.