THE NIN HOTLINE

So it's 4:22am and I have no business being up this late except to listen to the new modwheelmood EP. I had posted before about this and said that it was a full-length album, or "LP" as they used to call them (I'm not sure what to call them now), and now that I think about it, I dunno where I got it from that it would be a full-length release, but since this new EP is called Pearls to Pigs, Vol. 1, it's probably safe to assume that there will be a Vol. 2. Then that will match up with Vol. 1 so you'll then be able to pair it up as an album unless they're doing a History of the World, Part I thing with it.

Modwheelmood on Ice? It's only funny if you've seen the movie.

Anyway, it's really good! Five songs for $3.99 on iTunes Plus (no DRM, w00t) or for $4.95 on Amazon's mp3 download site. Pick your poison and decide. There's some slight distortion at the beginning of the iTunes version so Amazon might have a slight edge. It all depends on if you feel like spending or saving an extra dollar.

Merry Christmahannakwanzaakuh everyone!

*EDIT* I've just been informed that the distortion at the end of "Problem Me" is unintentional and that the band is working on fixing the problem by putting the song on their website. Also, Pearls to Pigs Vol. 2 comes out in February 08. Very nice.

Over at Wired, Frank Rose has compiled an extensive article about the Year Zero ARG, which goes into a great amount of detail about how the game came to be, how it mutated as fans read too much into things. If you get a rush of excitement out of assembling highlighted letters, you're in luck, as they've got a couple of bonus features you can get to if you work for it. Or... something. I haven't taken the time out to figure it out myself just yet. There is also an unabridged interview with Trent Reznor posted here. Definitely check this stuff out.

After having spent a number of days working on the 'secret project' they're teasing about at nin.com, Adrian Belew has posted a series of blogs loosely documenting the time he spent working on stuff over there. Definitely an interesting read, and here's where you can go to check it out for yourself. He's since posted a couple of photos, too.

I just got word that new NIN shirts and patches have been added to our store, including (sorely missed) $2.85 embroidered NIN logo patches, a gun/cross patch, and an unusual fist-flag patch (pictured below). A new "Beside You In Time" shirt can be had for a mere $12.99, joined by the Survivalism shirt. The knit cap has also reappeared (good timing on that one). There are more shirts/hoodies/tank-tops coming soon, but until they're actually in stock, I'll hold off on the details.


They're processing orders within 24 hours for the holidays at Goodrock, and the absolute last cutoff date for getting stuff before Christmas from them is the 20th.

There were a few dumb changes I had to make to how our archives work, and in doing that, completely neglected to update the search functionality to reflect these changes. I'm not sure what spurred me on to check them out today, but I did, and updated them appropriately. If you were one of the 160+ people who tried to search the site in the last month, sorry about that -- give it another try now.

OK, so there have been a few videos here and a few pictures there floating around at nin.com lately and we haven't really posted anything about those videos because either Saul Williams' new record is still blowing our minds or because we've been trying to get five stars playing "The Hand That Feeds" on Expert in Rock Band.

However, Trent just posted a video that is really fucking cool. When I checked five minutes ago, I wasn't able to get the video to load because YouTube hates my computer. Or something like that.

Anyway, here's the link to go to ninofficial, the official YouTube channel of NIN where the video is featured on the front page. The video has Alessandro Cortini using a Monome. It's a neat gizmo that lets you control pianos by pressing a few buttons that light up like a Lite-Brite from back in the 90s. Or something like that.

There was a picture of dogs a few days ago, too. They were greyhounds. We cannot confirm nor deny that these greyhounds will be involved with the new record, considering that we don't even know if a new record is being made right now or if everyone is just in the studio playing around with stuff. All I know is, Monome > Lite Brites + Greyhounds + Ghost Pianos = Fucking cool YouTube videos.

Or something like that.

*Edit* So I was calling this a Tenori-On earlier until pushingreality informed everyone on ETS that the instrument is called the Monome. Thanks for the correction!

JohnBron suggests we all take a few moments and vote on NPR's album of the year. I'm inclined to go along with this suggestion. Please put in a vote for Saul's latest, as it deserves to find more ears. Keep in mind, they ask that you don't vote twice, and I'd appreciate it if you followed that rule.

Similarly, Ben suggests voting over at Triple J's open poll for album of the year. It's Tuesday, what else do you really have going on?

I really should have posted about this sooner, but I had too much going on at the time. Over on Echoing the Sound, fantasticben started a thread in mid-November concerning some artwork he found at a London McDonalds.



Click on the image for a higher resolution photo. We're pretty sure David Carson has nothing to do with this, more likely an ambitious designer at some marketing company armed himself with a scanner and a copy of Fotografiks... and The Fragile font... and decided to cut the boxed McDonald's logo in half... whatever. If you want to see it for yourself, you'd better go see it sooner rather than later.

Short anecdote - we've got YROCK on XPN playing at work, and they just played the Ladytron remix of The Beginning of the End from Year Zero Remixed, followed by some words on the remix album that I can't hear because I'm too far away from the speakers. That's all... back to what you're doing.

Yeah, it's the second Sunday of December, and you know what that means! A new Meathead Perspective update, apparently. Great.

I like The A.V. Club, and I like The Onion, so I was kind of disappointed when in their B- review of Year Zero, the reviewer said such bizarre things as "See "The Good Soldier," a near-reprise of 1994's omnipresent MTV hit "Closer."" The first comment on that review asked, "Did you even listen to this record?"

Unfortunately, their review of Year Zero Remixed is another phone-in, if that. As a matter of fact, half of Andrew Earles' review of Year Zero Remixed is dedicated to panning the fan effort, The Limitless Potential, under the guise that it was something organized and run at nin.com.

It's sad that someone who gets paid to write has such poor reading comprehension skills.

modwheelmood has updated their website with a new feature friendly layout. They've also announced on their MySpace page that their digital release, "Pearls to Pigs, Vol. 1" will be released online December 25th, which might be important to you since it's a day that a fat guy in a red suit invades your house and steals your cookies and milk. The NIN Hotline and its staff cannot guarantee that Alessandro will do the same thing.

To check out all of the news and to see the revamped site, visit modwheelmood.com.

Sorry for the lack of hyperlinks, but I'm typing this on my phone.

So it's getting to be that time of year where you get together with your friends and family and swap colorfully wrapped gifts with each other. If you're anticipating another infusion of socks this season, head those well-meaning parents off at the pass and point them to our NIN merch store, because everything but the WITH_TEETH logo shirt and the Downward Spiral shirt have discontinued. If you were waiting around to pick up one of these shirts, don't make the mistake I made and assume that hell, they'll still be around in a couple years. It doesn't work like that anymore, I've been looking for the "red horn" shirt for months to no avail now. So get these before they're gone.

If you want to get these in time for Christmas, Goodrock's put up specific order-by dates:
USA orders - please order by 12/14/2007
Canadian orders - please order by 12/11/2007
International Orders - please order by 12/7/2007

These cut-off dates will likely be pushed back by 5-7 days, but the sooner you get it out of the way, the better.

The only new thing that's been added recently are a number of new Year Zero stickers and pins. There may be a couple Year Zero/Art is Resistance shirts coming down the line soon, but from what I understand, these are not available in the US yet:

As soon as we find these at respectable prices, we'll be sure to let you know, but they're not even on the official merch site yet.

On a semi-related note, if you ordered anything from Faction and have yet to receive your shirt or a refund, please visit this thread on Echoing the Sound and add your name to the list, as folks there are pursuing further action via Paypal.

I updated my dumb website, and now I'm going to bed because I am tired. Good night.