The Country Music Awards announced this year's nominees, and in the "Musical Event of the Year" award(?), vying against the likes of Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks, and Brantley Gilbert, we of course find the longest running number one song in the charts, "Old Town Road" - credited alongside Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus are the three producers: YoungKio, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross.
Keep it coming, 2019.
Thursday, 8/29/19
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross nominated for a Country Music Award
Reported by leviathant at 22:36
Saturday, 8/24/19
Ashley O gets the remix treatment
As weird as this year is, 2020's going to put 2019 to shame. But that doesn't mean 2019 isn't going to slow down any time soon, as evidenced by the quiet release of a remix EP for On a Roll (Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, Apple Music, Beatport), featuring five clubby remixes by five different DJs. I can get behind the Londin vibes of the Wax Wings (Soundcloud, Instagram) version, and Junior Vasquez feels right at home doing the thing he's been doing for a very long time. KDA's mix is house music, Basic Tape are definitely French, and the DallasK mix is where I run out of enthusiasm. It's probably amazing playing through the Coked Out Casino Pool Club's sweet-ass system. I think it's actually a pretty decent spread, from dance music veterans to dudes with less social media presence than I have. And if they're still releasing Ashley O stuff, maybe there's still a chance we'll hear "Flirt" (Hurt) one day.
Reported by leviathant at 19:05
Reznor and Ross to score Pixar's 'Soul'
We first got word of this from longtime Hotline reader Jim Penola - Disney's D23 Expo, a conference for their official fan club, is going on this weekend, and one of many announcements they've made is that they've got a new movie coming out next June, called "Soul. Quoting Carolyn Giardina's article in the Hollywood Reporter,
There's not much more we know about the music, except that music is central to the plot of the film, and pretty much everyone involved is amazing. You know as soon as a trailer comes out that even has a hint of the original score, we'll post it here. Thanks to Amir R for sending this in as well!
Music will play a big role in the film, and Soul will include original jazz music from Jon Batiste, and a score by Oscar-winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network). It opens June 19.
There's not much more we know about the music, except that music is central to the plot of the film, and pretty much everyone involved is amazing. You know as soon as a trailer comes out that even has a hint of the original score, we'll post it here. Thanks to Amir R for sending this in as well!
Reported by leviathant at 16:24
Wednesday, 8/21/19
From the archives: nine inch nails spoken
There once was a website called NIN Collector, a vast collection of information about Nine Inch Nails releases, commercial and promotional. I'm sure there's a longform article about the birth, rise, and death of nincollector.com, but the legacy of the site lives on at nincatalog.com. At one point, the legendary nin collector sold off his expansive collection - this was a memorable moment for me, as I finally secured a promotional VHS copy of the Fragility 1.0 special, which ended up leading me to a digital betacam copy that we shared in 2013.
Around the same time, Echoing the Sound user hellospaceboy (aka LTamasfi on Twitter) put a bid in on another tape from the same collection. Like the Fragility 1.0 VHS, the only known images of this tape originated from the nin collector site, and I've never been able to track down whether or not the audio from this made its way onto any bootleg CDs of the day, because although a description existed, if the audio ever made it to the web, I certainly missed it.
Fast-forward to 2019. There's a message in my inbox from hellospaceboy with a Dropbox link and some background information. I immediately put on my headphones at work and tried to multitask through what turned out to be a 46 minute long interview recorded at an incredibly pivotal point for Nine Inch Nails. Trent speaks in detail about the circumstances around recording Broken.
Trent talks about recording individual tracks, between New Orleans, Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and eventually Los Angeles, and goes into some depth about individual songs, including why Suck and Physical appear on the EP. How the popularity of the first record could have affected process on "the new record," how the media portrays Nine Inch Nails as 'industrial' despite the music being 'a far cry from that', decries the handling of the AIDS crisis and other American current events and political trends, and eventually talks about the follow-up full-length album, The Downward Spiral, sharing a surprisingly prescient vision of what the album ended up being.
You can listen to the full interview on Soundcloud below:
And if you'd like a local copy, I guess we'll test out my new hosting by hosting a zip file with the interview on our own server. If I had done this at the height of our popularity, I would have gotten a terrible hosting bill the following month, but one of the benefits of our obsolescence is that if I'm lucky 40 people are going to hit that link. Thanks again to Laszlo for sharing this insightful document of the era.
Can't wait to see what shitty headline AlternativeNation pinch off to after digesting this one!
Around the same time, Echoing the Sound user hellospaceboy (aka LTamasfi on Twitter) put a bid in on another tape from the same collection. Like the Fragility 1.0 VHS, the only known images of this tape originated from the nin collector site, and I've never been able to track down whether or not the audio from this made its way onto any bootleg CDs of the day, because although a description existed, if the audio ever made it to the web, I certainly missed it.
Fast-forward to 2019. There's a message in my inbox from hellospaceboy with a Dropbox link and some background information. I immediately put on my headphones at work and tried to multitask through what turned out to be a 46 minute long interview recorded at an incredibly pivotal point for Nine Inch Nails. Trent speaks in detail about the circumstances around recording Broken.
"Pretty much everyone I played it for before it was completely done didn't like it, because it was too much, or the things they were expecting to hear in terms of melody or being able to hear what I'm saying weren't as readily apparent as it was on Pretty Hate Machine, and those are all conscious choices... Let's just make something that's irritating and is as ugly as I feel now."
Trent talks about recording individual tracks, between New Orleans, Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and eventually Los Angeles, and goes into some depth about individual songs, including why Suck and Physical appear on the EP. How the popularity of the first record could have affected process on "the new record," how the media portrays Nine Inch Nails as 'industrial' despite the music being 'a far cry from that', decries the handling of the AIDS crisis and other American current events and political trends, and eventually talks about the follow-up full-length album, The Downward Spiral, sharing a surprisingly prescient vision of what the album ended up being.
You can listen to the full interview on Soundcloud below:
And if you'd like a local copy, I guess we'll test out my new hosting by hosting a zip file with the interview on our own server. If I had done this at the height of our popularity, I would have gotten a terrible hosting bill the following month, but one of the benefits of our obsolescence is that if I'm lucky 40 people are going to hit that link. Thanks again to Laszlo for sharing this insightful document of the era.
Can't wait to see what shitty headline AlternativeNation pinch off to after digesting this one!
Reported by leviathant at 19:55
Sunday, 8/18/19
2019 so far, more or less
2019 is full of collaborations you weren't expecting. Mumford & Sons played Hurt with Tom Morello, and there are a bunch of videos on YouTube, several of them are vertical, and miss the opening. this one does not.
GQ did a story about the Black Mirror episode featuring Miley Cyrus as Ashley O, where they talk about an as-yet unreleased cover of Hurt, "Flirt", which someone needs to leak. Charlie.
The longest running single on Billboard's Hot 100 was built on music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross. Old Town Road ny Lil Nas X suprassed Despacito and One Sweet Day after 17 weeks of being number one on the charts, and is still fucking everywhere, which is wonderful.
In other unexpected news, The Perfect Drug and Happiness in Slavery were freshly uploaded to NIN's official Youtube, but only The Perfect Drug survived. Happiness in Slavery's NSFW video is still available on Vimeo, of course.
Trent inducted The Cure into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame and gave a little speech about it.
PRG spoke with Paul Gurthrie about running lighting for Nine Inch Nails' recent tours. Hat tip to Sarah K for that one.
Fillow shared this following bit: Stringspace, a musician's collective hailing from Australia, posted posted a video of a live performance of We're In This Together, as arranged by Ollie Miller. You can watch it on YouTube.
On a related note, way back in 2015, Jo Quail recorded an all-cello cover of The Great Below, performed live in London, and no one even tweeted it at us. To be fair, there's a gap in updates on this very page between late 2014 and early 2017. Obsolescence is a tough pill to swallow! Thanks to StockAvuryah for posting it on ETS.
Alessandro Cortini singlehandedly created a market for secondhand four-track cassette recorders through interviews like the one he did with Reverb.com (now owned by Etsy, because sure). You can hear elements of Came Back Haunted and Hurt, as well as some Cortini's original works, as he demonstrates how he utilizes budget home-recording equipment in a live setting. Cheers to virushopper for the link!
There was a Marvel movie with a shirt you might have heard about, and here's a shot of the visual FX team behind that movie. If you're only just now learning about this, then you might not be the target market for the official NIN/Captain Marvel collaboration, but those shirts are still available.
Speaking of comics, former NIN art director Rob Sheridan (who likely needs no introduction to anyone here) has a comic on DC Vertigo called High Level, with the debut issue having been released in February, and the final issue of the first volume coming out before the end of the month, possibly the final Vertigo comic, full stop, as DC Comics recently annoucned the closure of the legendary imprint.
There was a lot more, but I've got a redeye to Minnesota tonight that I really should be planning for.
I borrowed liberally from the NIN Spotting thread on ETS for this little update.
GQ did a story about the Black Mirror episode featuring Miley Cyrus as Ashley O, where they talk about an as-yet unreleased cover of Hurt, "Flirt", which someone needs to leak. Charlie.
The longest running single on Billboard's Hot 100 was built on music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross. Old Town Road ny Lil Nas X suprassed Despacito and One Sweet Day after 17 weeks of being number one on the charts, and is still fucking everywhere, which is wonderful.
In other unexpected news, The Perfect Drug and Happiness in Slavery were freshly uploaded to NIN's official Youtube, but only The Perfect Drug survived. Happiness in Slavery's NSFW video is still available on Vimeo, of course.
Trent inducted The Cure into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame and gave a little speech about it.
PRG spoke with Paul Gurthrie about running lighting for Nine Inch Nails' recent tours. Hat tip to Sarah K for that one.
Fillow shared this following bit: Stringspace, a musician's collective hailing from Australia, posted posted a video of a live performance of We're In This Together, as arranged by Ollie Miller. You can watch it on YouTube.
On a related note, way back in 2015, Jo Quail recorded an all-cello cover of The Great Below, performed live in London, and no one even tweeted it at us. To be fair, there's a gap in updates on this very page between late 2014 and early 2017. Obsolescence is a tough pill to swallow! Thanks to StockAvuryah for posting it on ETS.
Alessandro Cortini singlehandedly created a market for secondhand four-track cassette recorders through interviews like the one he did with Reverb.com (now owned by Etsy, because sure). You can hear elements of Came Back Haunted and Hurt, as well as some Cortini's original works, as he demonstrates how he utilizes budget home-recording equipment in a live setting. Cheers to virushopper for the link!
There was a Marvel movie with a shirt you might have heard about, and here's a shot of the visual FX team behind that movie. If you're only just now learning about this, then you might not be the target market for the official NIN/Captain Marvel collaboration, but those shirts are still available.
Speaking of comics, former NIN art director Rob Sheridan (who likely needs no introduction to anyone here) has a comic on DC Vertigo called High Level, with the debut issue having been released in February, and the final issue of the first volume coming out before the end of the month, possibly the final Vertigo comic, full stop, as DC Comics recently annoucned the closure of the legendary imprint.
There was a lot more, but I've got a redeye to Minnesota tonight that I really should be planning for.
I borrowed liberally from the NIN Spotting thread on ETS for this little update.
Reported by leviathant at 11:02
Friday, 8/16/19
1999-2019. What's old is new again
Welcome back. Missed you, friend.
For various boring reasons, this website has been stagnating, and we've been picking up the slack via social media. During that time, the organizations that dominate social media embraced the worst of the internet. Free syndication between sites was shut down in favor of walled gardens, Facebook tracks you wherever you go, Twitter is cluttered with bots and idiots, and a lot of what I enjoyed about using "the internet" has been coöpted as a medium for selling you things you don't want or need.
It has been nearly a decade since I last overhauled this site, and it's been over two decades since I first shared an FTP password with strangers who were comfortable enough to edit a file named index.html, and although I'm pleased the news archive never catastrophically failed, some of the decoration around the edges was falling apart, and my early attempts at being mobile-friendly had definitely aged out.
So today, a more trim and updated experience launches. Some of the crust is cut, but there are some new features:
1) For the first time in a very long time, the home page has returned, serving as a gateway to other excellent fan-run sites, and as a kind of virtual "cover" for this site, balancing the more minimal look of the interior pages. Periodically, new artwork or photography will be featured on the cover of the Hotline - and it's more than just cycling out a background image. #staytuned
2) The NIN Hotline as Mobile App: If you're reading this on your phone, you may have noticed a button next to the address bar for adding this to your home screen. This site has been set up as a Progressive Web App, basically meaning the site can be run without a browser. Right now, that's basically it, but the plan is to enable notifications, so that you have the option to get pinged when an update gets posted. No promises though.
3) The archives are back. During a server migration at the previous web host, the hosting company accidentally deleted all our databases and all their backups, and that's why so much of the archives stopped working. I have my own backups (did I mention I've been doing this for 20 years?) so I've reactivated those, and you can reach them through the homepage now. Direct links to the previous NIN Hotline news archives are forthcoming - I'm still wrangling some UX challenges there, but didn't want to hold up the relaunch for that.
4) No more tracking pixels. That stuff used to be fun, but I can't justify impacting site speed just so Google or Facebook know that you like Nine Inch Nails. In a similar effort towards keeping things fast and not relying on third parties where possible, I've also completely done away with Javascript frameworks, and made an effort to build entirely on browser-native functionality. And if you want a VERY lightweight experience, our RSS feed has never gone away.
5) I did a shirt to celebrate, annnnnd to offset the cost of pre-ordering three years of hosting at Dreamhost). It's a throwback to one of my favorite aesthetic periods. Unlike previous shirts we've done through Teespring, this time we're using Cotton Bureau because CB uses ink and silkscreens, as opposed to direct-to-garment printing. DTG has come a long way, but it's still not as good as busting out the silkscreen. Just in time for jacket weather (in the northern hemisphere anyway), there are a few options: 100% cotton, or super comfy tri-blend, in both standard and junior cuts (men's and women's, if you are fluent in boomer speak), and, actually, a pullover hoodie too. This is a limited run, you have until the end of the month to place an order, and then that's it. They hooked us up with some pretty great pricing, too.
To everyone who's been here throughout the years, thanks for sticking with us. To folks who only know us through social media - welcome to our corner of the independent web.
For various boring reasons, this website has been stagnating, and we've been picking up the slack via social media. During that time, the organizations that dominate social media embraced the worst of the internet. Free syndication between sites was shut down in favor of walled gardens, Facebook tracks you wherever you go, Twitter is cluttered with bots and idiots, and a lot of what I enjoyed about using "the internet" has been coöpted as a medium for selling you things you don't want or need.
It has been nearly a decade since I last overhauled this site, and it's been over two decades since I first shared an FTP password with strangers who were comfortable enough to edit a file named index.html, and although I'm pleased the news archive never catastrophically failed, some of the decoration around the edges was falling apart, and my early attempts at being mobile-friendly had definitely aged out.
So today, a more trim and updated experience launches. Some of the crust is cut, but there are some new features:
1) For the first time in a very long time, the home page has returned, serving as a gateway to other excellent fan-run sites, and as a kind of virtual "cover" for this site, balancing the more minimal look of the interior pages. Periodically, new artwork or photography will be featured on the cover of the Hotline - and it's more than just cycling out a background image. #staytuned
2) The NIN Hotline as Mobile App: If you're reading this on your phone, you may have noticed a button next to the address bar for adding this to your home screen. This site has been set up as a Progressive Web App, basically meaning the site can be run without a browser. Right now, that's basically it, but the plan is to enable notifications, so that you have the option to get pinged when an update gets posted. No promises though.
3) The archives are back. During a server migration at the previous web host, the hosting company accidentally deleted all our databases and all their backups, and that's why so much of the archives stopped working. I have my own backups (did I mention I've been doing this for 20 years?) so I've reactivated those, and you can reach them through the homepage now. Direct links to the previous NIN Hotline news archives are forthcoming - I'm still wrangling some UX challenges there, but didn't want to hold up the relaunch for that.
4) No more tracking pixels. That stuff used to be fun, but I can't justify impacting site speed just so Google or Facebook know that you like Nine Inch Nails. In a similar effort towards keeping things fast and not relying on third parties where possible, I've also completely done away with Javascript frameworks, and made an effort to build entirely on browser-native functionality. And if you want a VERY lightweight experience, our RSS feed has never gone away.
5) I did a shirt to celebrate, annnnnd to offset the cost of pre-ordering three years of hosting at Dreamhost). It's a throwback to one of my favorite aesthetic periods. Unlike previous shirts we've done through Teespring, this time we're using Cotton Bureau because CB uses ink and silkscreens, as opposed to direct-to-garment printing. DTG has come a long way, but it's still not as good as busting out the silkscreen. Just in time for jacket weather (in the northern hemisphere anyway), there are a few options: 100% cotton, or super comfy tri-blend, in both standard and junior cuts (men's and women's, if you are fluent in boomer speak), and, actually, a pullover hoodie too. This is a limited run, you have until the end of the month to place an order, and then that's it. They hooked us up with some pretty great pricing, too.
To everyone who's been here throughout the years, thanks for sticking with us. To folks who only know us through social media - welcome to our corner of the independent web.