Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I-IV

Trent Reznor has released the new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV, via his new imprint, The Null Corporation, on nin.com.

Download it now.

The double CD of 36 instrumental tracks was recorded over a period of ten weeks last fall.

This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens during that time gets released as... something.

The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.

We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.

The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we're able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we've ever created.

More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.

- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008

Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. You are free to share and remix the work under certain conditions.

The first nine tracks (Ghosts I) and a beautiful 40-page pdf are available as a free download at ghosts.nin.com. There's a $5 download (320k mp3, FLAC or Apple Lossless) that includes all 36 tracks and a $10 2xCD version which will ship April 8 via RED Distribution. All physical CD editions purchased online include immediate access to a free download as well. A $39 4x vinyl edition (on 130 gram vinyl in a double gatefold package) will be available through Artist in Residence (A+R) and retail stores on April 8.

The deluxe edition ships on May 1 and includes the 2 CDs, a data DVD with all the multi-tracks for remixing and a 24 bit/96 kHz Blu-ray disc. Finally, the ultra-deluxe $300 limited edition adds vinyl and two Giclee prints in luxurious packaging--limited to 2,500 copies numbered and signed by Trent Reznor. I opted for the ultra-deluxe and the 2xCD.

The fan response to the new album caused the download servers to slow to a crawl. It took my friend and I about an hour to even get the download link after many errors. We ended up buying the $5 download off Amazon because we grew tired of waiting for NIN's online store to deliver the goods.

And the music?

Awesome.



Update: All 2,500 copies of the $300 ultra-deluxe limited edition sold out in less than 36 hours.

Update #2: Check out the Califaudio video submission in the NIN Ghosts Film Festival.