UTTERMEDIA

Trent make toilets. Reznor make air conditioning units. You may or may not know this. You may or may not know Trent Reznor. Chances are, you’ve heard of him recently.

David Fincher, probably best known for Fight Club, and best forgotten for Alien 3, called upon Trent Reznor to pen an original score for Facebook movie, The Social Network. Once frontman of industrial pioneers Nine Inch Nails, his more recent works saw strong collaboration with Atticus Ross, a British-born producer.

A film based on the modern phenomenon of social networking with a dozen blasé references to coding and programming was certain to have a fairly technically meticulous soundtrack. Reznor is no stranger to this. Once a straggly long-haired goth, frontman to a camp industrial band, his roster matured slowly but surely with a somewhat techie approach to recording, utilising live instruments and convoluted effects through pedals, filters and pre-amps.

Since Nine Inch Nails released “The Fragile” in 1999, it isn’t unusual to hear instrumental soundscapes reaching 6 or 7 minutes per track. Perfect OST material, which was only really properly realised with Tony Scott’s “Man On Fire” and Zack Snyder’s “300”.

Reznor has (in my mind) created perfect overtures for all those movies you write in your head whilst on the bus, in bed, or just day dreaming. Clear highs and rumbling lows, it seemed criminal that only a handful of producers had sourced his music for scenes. Renowned artists such as Clint Mansell and Philip Glass have been masters at this craft for some time, so it’s perhaps a difficult accolade to pinch. This is the difference between scores and soundtracks; a score has to be just right, just perfect, to fit. A soundtrack just needs to evoke basic emotions. It’s fairly easy to chuck Sum 41 over a frat party scene in any early ’00s movie.

Some of the tracks on The Social Networks score are from NIN’s “Ghosts I-IV”, released a few years ago. I didn’t know they were in the film until I saw the film. But it soon became apparent that the earlier work was an automatic “audition” for the job. The track in question, with eastern plucky guitar riffs, fitted just perfectly into the oriental restaurant scene. A match made in Chinatown.

Reznor’s dark history is still fondly apparent in his instrumental work. The harsh scratchy guitars and pounding beats are long gone, but the twisted melodies and unusual flat harmonies are still clear. Apply this to an upbeat drumtrack, and you have the perfect accompaniment to young people getting drunk and getting rich. Music to feel cool to.

Facebook, Nine Inch Nails, Napster… none of them wanted to get rich. Zuckerberg didn’t care for ads. He just wanted adds. Trent Reznor didn’t care for money. He just wanted to make music. Sean Parker created Napster and changed the face of the music industry, forcing artists and labels to become bitter or better. Nine Inch Nails felt the pressure too, and evolved. 

Around the time of Ghosts I-IV, NIN also released “The Slip”; an album available free, for £5, for £10 or for £50. How much do you pay? That’s your choice. A short amount of Googling will unearth Reznor’s new-age approach to acquiring digital media, similar to the techniques of Thom Yorke and Radiohead. Soon after, NIN launched remix.nin.com, a user-submission website where fans can upload remixes from original band multitracks. 

All of the above ties in a nice parallel with Facebook; user-submitted content. The users make the choices and create the content. The creator just provides the tools and the platform.

Perhaps if a hugely successful musician (no discredit to Reznor) had scored The Social Network, things would have turned out differently. For one, Reznor is largely still unheard of – he’s a ‘blank’ to most people. They have nothing to reference him to or to base him on, nothing to skew their opinion. Secondly, he’s been gently honing his own skills out of the public limelight with relatively successful albums and tours notching up his discography whilst the rest of the world are unaware. Underground is the only way to really describe it, the same way that ‘The Facebook’ began, things start in bedrooms, back rooms, and make-shift studios.

Facebook is all about socialising, which in a sense is ironic, as you are confined to your computer more often than not when you are using it. Sure, you can use a mobile device or smartphone, but it’s still an individual experience in engaging with others. The early angsty and bleak NIN material was all about isolation, and I for one can imagine Reznor holed up in a dark room, “programming” until the early hours, much like Zuckerberg. And now, suddenly, Facebook is huge, and so is Reznor.

Two very awkward but very talented gentlemen coming into their own and finding their calling. Once, Trevor Reznik in cult movie “The Machinist” was the only sly reference to Nine Inch Nails in film. Now, two entrepreneurs coincide in a way that neither would ever have expected. I like this.

Vodka. Not at all my favourite drink. Vodka to me is like the relative you never call. You have fond memories, some creepy memories, but it’s best for both of you that you just ignore each other’s phone calls.

As a physical liquid body, there’s not much to it. It tastes okay. You can’t savour it. You can’t tell many vodkas apart from one another unless you have some sort of outerworld lizard tongue. As an inebriating liquor, it certainly does the job.

Vodka has a special ingredient. No one ever mentions it. Everyone is aware of those facts that come rolling out when you’re tipsy… it’s made from potatoes, it is odourless, it is made with coal.

BUT… that face you pull. That face when you’ve had a fair amount of non-vodka spirits and ales to drink, but you are happy drunk, and you are with good people, in a good place, and you visit the toilet. The toilet welcomes you and you welcome the toilet. There is no sick. Just piss. You piss, and whilst you piss, you crane your neck over to the mirror. The mirror looks back at you, and you’re fucking smiling. Smiling like a dick. Like a dick who is drunk but totally okay with it and nothing is a problem. Nothing is a problem because you’re happy, and you look okay for someone who is so drunk that you’re pissing all over the carpet. The carpet that should never have been laid in the toilet in the first place. The first place you look when you see that mirror is straight into your own eyes. Your own eyes look back at you and you either say “Heeeeyyyyyy” or your brain says it for you.

You know that feeling. You’re wobbling on your feet but you’re fantastically in love with everyone and everything and you just want to drink more and more.

Vodka, however. On a fairly empty stomach, can make you feel like that, after say 2 or 3 glasses, with or without a brown, caffeine, caramel and sugar based mixer.

Vodka picks you up, dusts you off, and may even have the common courtesy to offer a reacharound. Vodka is that reassuring rub on the upper back, and then a cute little smack on the arse as you walk back to the fridge for more brown, caffeine, caramel and sugar based mixer.

I’m writing this quick, because I don’t have much vodka left. And I know once it’s gone, even though it’s a “no hangover drink”, I will read this in the morning and never want to drink it again.

But just remember, vodka drinker or not, it is always one phone call away from you, and when you pick up that call, it’s a fucking hoot.

Photo by me. 2005. I think.

It’s not so much a fear, more of an adverse intrigue. And it’s not all types of plughole either. I have no idea when or where it began, all I know is that some plugholes and other similar apertures fill me with questioning and unease.

Sink plugholes I am okay with. Bath plugholes I am not. Not many people sit at the ‘tap end’… for one, the taps don’t feel so great on your back, and the plug chain can interfere with the more sensitive parts of your body. But I can never sit at the tap end, even if I’m sharing a bath with someone. I cannot, under any circumstances, remove the plug before I have left the bath. I cannot let my feet or toes touch the overflow hole just below the taps.

I guess part of it is the cleanliness OCD in me… no matter how much commercial plug cleaning fluid you dump down there, it’s still going to be full of hair, spiders, gunk and spunk. It’s safe down there… it’s not going to back up and flood the bath, unless you’re really unlucky. But then your kind friends nominate you for some naff Channel 4 ‘house cleaning’ show. It could be a fear of the unknown. I know where that pipe goes, but only as far as the end of my front garden. From there on, it’s a rusty labyrinth of muddy twists and turns; dark, damp, smelly, cold. It goes on for miles and miles and miles. Like a London Underground for skin and scabs.

It doesn’t stop there. Swimming pools. I love swimming. I love swimming pools. My parents have a pool, and I swim at my local health club a lot. However, the pool cleaning process involves, again, some pretty unnerving water traps, plugholes, vents and gutters. Subconsciously, I always avoid swimming over a grate, or swimming up to a plastic flap, lapping water back and forward like a dead pigeon flapping in the road.

The above ‘fear’ makes slightly more sense… people die in swimming pools. They shouldn’t, and they don’t mean to, but unfortunately they do. People die in baths too, but that’s usually intentional. With pools however, we’ve all heard about the poor girl who’s long hair is sucked into a floor vent. No one notices she is gone, until someone trips over her and summons a fully unprepared lifeguard. When I was about 10, I went to an incredible water park in Portugal. The day after, a kid my age got his head stuck in a water trap and drowned in seconds. Swimming pools are gradually eating the population alive.

I did take reassurance in the fact that this aversion would never really inconvenienced me. It has always been easy to avoid the ‘tap end’ or to swim away from horrible white plastic death-traps. I wouldn’t scream if I came up for air right in front of a hole. I wouldn’t whimper if a plug suddenly popped out of a nice relaxing bath. That reassurance did disappear for sometime though. I have no idea how I found it, or what got me there. But on a regular day at work, I found this…

Holy mother of God. Surely it’s just a sculpture, right? A seating area with the floor just out of view? A giant sub-woofer? No, it’s a fucking plughole. A great big industrial sized plughole, capable of moving thousands of cubics of water per minute. Where does it go? How long does it go for? Would you die? What amount of pressure would you be put under if you were sucked in? How many are there in the world? Are there any near me?

The above image ruined my entire day. I spent 6 hours Googling and Wikipeding every scrap of information I could find about this glory hole. There are dozens of them all over the world. They are overflows for reservoirs. No human being would ever survive the journey. Yet I found myself WANTING to try it. WHY? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be sucked into a glory hole at 70MPH, disappearing into a deep, dark, dank cave, tossed and tumbled and finally spat out into a catchment area, my body turned inside out from the sheer force of the water. Yet that morbid intrigue in me wanted to have a little swim and accidentally get caught in the draw of the glory hole. Oh God. How would I shake this feeling?

Their actual name is a “Bell-mouth Spillway”. The one above is one of the highest in the world, at the ‘Hungry Horse Dam’. I wonder why they call it that? A Google image search brings up all kinds of horrors. Climbers and explorers abseil down disused spillways… I can handle that. That calmed me down a little. Some keen bloggers had uploaded photos of a disused spillway. And suddenly, to me, it became a beautiful piece of hidden architecture, no longer a colossal H2O vacuum trap.

I learned that there are no spillways near me, and even if I do visit one, I’ll be quite safe behind a fence, or in a car. So the unease and suicidal tendency soon disappeared, and I returned to my aversion of regular household plugholes. I can’t avoid them, I can’t not use them. I’ll just always have that strange nagging “What’s down there?” question in my head.

Thankfully, I don’t fear the dark, heights, or perhaps even death. Just rusty metal apertures. And plasters. I really hate plasters. You know what? Imagine a gross crumpled used plaster, floating in a manic flapping sucking water trap, in a quiet sterile pool, where YOU are swimming. Sweet Jesus.

A brief look at some of the disregarded moments at the December 2010 student protests. Click images for larger versions.

A policeman with a first aid logo on his baton.

A student trying to burn some concrete blocks.

A photographer with a ridiculous moustache. 

There is really no synopsis or summary I could muster to introduce ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ with the deserved adequacy. A tenacious and raw album, it marked Trent Reznor’s first commercially successful album as Nine Inch Nails. More electro and synth than industrial, the scratchy guitars and undeniably MIDI drum tracks stamped a faint trademark for NIN’s catchy but dark soundscape.

Originally released in November 1989, the album appeared through TVT Records, an indie US label now probably better known for their tumulus relationship with PHM’s publishing rights. A short album by today’s standard, Reznor has always held a place in live performances for the early material. Uncharacteristically, the live band rarely wavered from the original structure of the songs.

21 years on, Reznor regained the control of the master recordings, and naturally a rerelease was imminent. Today, 22nd November 2011, Pretty Hate Machine is rereleased, remastered and artwork reimaged.

Pretty Hate Machine, for me, is that album that has always had pride of place clattering about in my car glovebox. It’s always the last thing I pack when I move house. It’s always that first album that I sync with my iPod. However, it’s never quite been that album that you first play on your brand new speakers or headphones.

For me, Pretty Hate Machine was a soundtrack to a point in my life where I was exploring society, sex, money, freedom and mischief. A point in my life which shaped me as a person, a point in my life where I learned as much good as I did bad. On or off the rails, Pretty Hate Machine just kept playing and playing and playing, and it never got boring. I still have the vinyl and 3 different CD pressings, in a very sturdy box, in a very dark corner of my attic - probably a handful of my most treasured possessions. To mature with an album is a beautiful thing.

The production is tight, and the mastering is fairly well balanced, yet at times it sounds “4-track” and the basslines (which sound great live) are lost in the mix. The guitar can be overpowering in chorus’ and the album as a whole was probably transfered a little quiet on the final mix. These aren’t problems, just observations that I would make if I were hard pushed to find fault.

However the new mix has dusted down and reassembled the intricate tracks with near-perfection. The synth basslines now push through enough to give each track a harder groove, as a result the guitars no longer sound quite so tinny. The sampling and foley seems to have had a lot of tweaking with some of the perhaps once insignificant sounds now grabbing your attention where they never used to. Sin, especially, sounds deeper, with the attack on the keys rethought.

The most beautiful thing about the whole remaster however isn’t what Trent has done, but what he hasn’t done. The vocals haven’t been touched. Not even tweaked. In today’s musical climate, it’s wholesomely refreshing to hear natural, emotional and somewhat flakey vocals over a track that has quite obviously matured over time.

The artwork has been reimaged tastefully, but frankly, if Rob Sheridan had offered up a whole new piece, it would have been equally glorious. There is a really insightful interview here about the cover art, and how the original source files were lost altogether. As a photography and designer, I was in geek heaven reading this. When you lose, mislay or forget to save original artwork, there really isn’t much you can do. You can’t “enhance” an image, no matter what American crime shows tell you. You have to work with what you’ve got, and in this case, recapture an original concept in a modern light. When you hold an album so close to your heart, it’s almost as much a pleasure to peruse sleeve art and cover details as much as it is to listen to the music, especially in an age when the physical release becomes less prevalent, and focus is rightly or wrongly on instant sales via digital outlets.

That part of a record that you can barely hear, but gives you goosebumps every time? It could feel almost invasive if someone fucked with that. But perhaps the artist knows that the avid listeners wait, every single time, for that very bar? And perhaps by tirelessly playing the same song to different crowds for decades, the artists knows that just turning that instrument up one tiny bit will make every single one of their hair’s stand on end, harder and straighter than ever before?