There’s been an awful lot that’s happened for Nine Inch Nails and their sizeable fanbase in the lead up to the release of Hesitation Marks.
The eight studio album from the industrial rock behemoth has inspired Trent Reznor and his revitalised lineup to embark on a tour of the world’s music festivals, with a new, visually ambitious live show inspired by Talking Heads, which Reznor promised would hit Australia in the near future after snubbing Soundwave 2014 because it wasn’t “the right vibe”.
The lead-up to Hesitation Marks has also seen the NIN ringleader losing bandmates to in-fighting, collaborate with director David Lynch and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, praise Kanye ‘Yeezus’ West as the year’s “most dangerous entertainer, dripfeed a succession of new material through online leaks and live shows, including polarising fans with upbeat synthpop, but now all that anticipation and buzz reaches its end-point as Hesitation Marks is released on 3rd September.
But with less than a week until its official release date, Reznor has made the album available to stream in full, online – as the band tweeted overnight. An interesting turn considering Reznor’s latest comments on the value of the record: “I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself.”
Our new album #HesitationMarks is now streaming worldwide in its entirety (via @guardian outside the US & Canada): http://t.co/Stg4wknM6j
— nine inch nails (@nineinchnails) August 28, 2013
Besides, Reznor is a pioneer in that particular field, Hesitation Marks is the first full-length Nine Inch Nails album since 2008’s The Slip, which was given away as a free download, and in a new interview with SPIN, Reznor discusses being back on a major label, Columbia Records, for the new album while discussing the value of his music in today’s digital landscape.
“Nine Inch Nails feels bigger than it ever has,” he begins. “Is it because we’re on Columbia? Is it scarcity? I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel bigger in the sense that we’ve desperately adopted some new clothing style. It feels organic, and it feels good not to be worrying about whether or not we shipped vinyl to the cool record store in Prague.”
Reznor adds: “I know that what we’re doing flies in the face of the Kickstarter Amanda-Palmer-Start-a-Revolution thing, which is fine for her, but I’m not super-comfortable with the idea of Ziggy Stardust shaking his cup for scraps. I’m not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I’m saying my personal feeling is that my album’s not a dime. It’s not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself.” It’s worth noting it is hardly the first time Reznor has been cagey on the topic.
Following the free album stream, Hesitation Marks will be issued on on CD (for US$10 obviously), deluxe CD, and vinyl, while Pitchfork reports that Reznor is going one better by offering an alternately mastered ‘Audiophile Version’ of the new album to those who’ve pre-ordered or purchased the record directly from the band’s webstore. A long-winded tumblr post from the band notes while there’s a subtle but important difference to the two versions.
While “the majority of people” won’t notice the difference, for the sonic obsessives “with high-end and an understanding of the mastering process,” the differences will be most rewarding. Or as engineer Tom Baker articulates it, the Audiophile Version “highlights the mixes as they are without compromising the dynamics and low end, and not being concerned about how “loud” the album would be. The goal was to simply allow the mixes to retain the spatial relationship between instruments and the robust, grandiose sound.”
Catering to aural purists and providing great fan service all while handling major labels and music festival promoters his own way, without compromise; all while working behind the scenes to revolutionise streaming music services? Just a few reasons why Trent Reznor is arguably one of the most influential figures in today’s current music landscape.
