{"id":6786,"date":"2009-04-01T17:56:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T00:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=6786"},"modified":"2019-12-23T14:04:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T22:04:33","slug":"why-i-wish-nins-strobe-light-was-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2009\/04\/01\/why-i-wish-nins-strobe-light-was-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Wish NIN&#8217;s &#8216;Strobe Light&#8217; Was Real"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:4277,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.nin.com\\\/strobelight&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20161118214306\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.nin.com\\\/strobelight\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-07 03:16:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 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09:49:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-14 09:49:49&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:404},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:4289,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.ninja2009.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260307043519\\\/https:\\\/\\\/ninja2009.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/ninja2009.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-16 05:39:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-16 05:39:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2009\/04\/01\/why-i-wish-nins-strobe-light-was-real\/strobelight-cover-art\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6787\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/strobelight-cover-art-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Produced by Timbaland!\" title=\"Strobe Light Cover Art\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-6787\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>The April Fool&#8217;s joke that got the biggest laugh out of me today was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nin.com\/strobelight\/\" title=\"NINE INCH NAILS: STROBE LIGHT - NEW ALBUM\">this gag from Trent Reznor<\/a>, promoting the release of Nine Inch Nails&#8217; newest album, &#8216;Strobe Light&#8217;, produced by R&amp;B\/Hip-Hop\/Pop producer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Timbaland\" title=\"Wikipedia: Timbaland\">Timbaland<\/a>. If that&#8217;s not enough to get a laugh, there&#8217;s the beautiful tracklisting that spoofs alt.goth culture while coming up with totally off-the-wall ideas for potential collaborators for such an album&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>intro skit<\/li>\n<li>everybody&#8217;s doing it (featuring chris martin, jay-z AND bono)<\/li>\n<li>black t-shirt<\/li>\n<li>pussygrinder (featuring sheryl crow)<\/li>\n<li>coffin on the dancefloor<\/li>\n<li>this rhythm is infected<\/li>\n<li>slide to the dark side<\/li>\n<li>even closer (featuring justin timberlake and maynard james keenan)<\/li>\n<li>on the list (she&#8217;s not)<\/li>\n<li>clap trap crack slap<\/li>\n<li>laid, paid and played (featuring fergie of the black eyed peas and al jourgensen)<\/li>\n<li>feel like being dead again<\/li>\n<li>still hurts (featuring alicia keys)<\/li>\n<li>outro skit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As the day wore on, I started thinking about just why this particular joke appealed to me so much, and why &#8212; as horrid as this may seem to some people &#8212; yes, I wish this one wasn&#8217;t a hoax. If this were a real album, I&#8217;d <em>gladly<\/em> pay good money to pick it up.<\/p>\n<p>Sometime back in 1990 or 1991, I found &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Nine+Inch+Nails\/Pretty+Hate+Machine\" title=\"Last.fm: Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine\">Pretty Hate Machine<\/a>&#8216;. I don&#8217;t even remember quite how I found it, though I think it was a cassette being passed, copied, and dubbed around the Anchorage alternoscene at the time, spreading the word the way good music does &#8212; via word of mouth. You know, exactly the way the music industry does everything in its power to prevent. Anyway.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no exaggeration to say that I got <em>really<\/em> into NIN&#8230;perhaps even minorly obsessed. As the years went by, I grabbed every bit of music I could find that escaped from Trent&#8217;s clutches. All of NIN&#8217;s albums and singles, bootleg CDs of live albums, side projects, other bands that he did remix or production work for&#8230;anything I could find, I snagged. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelhanscom.com\/19960227\/nin.html\" title=\"nine inch nails\">This archived page<\/a> from my first website (circa 1996) catalogs everything I&#8217;d managed to track down at the time (including the Butch Vig remix of &#8216;Last&#8217; which, when I found it, I&#8217;d had to download in five or six chunks and then piece together into a single 2MB .mp3 file in order to listen to it&#8230;and since the track is four and a half minutes long, you can guess that it was highly compressed and not very good quality).<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the point is I was <em>huge<\/em> into NIN and, more broadly, anything that Trent worked on. As far as I was concerned, he could do no wrong. A big part of why I was such a fan was the breadth of style that Trent&#8217;s work encompassed. While yes, all of Trent&#8217;s work fits solidly in the &#8216;industrial&#8217; \u00fcber-genre, there was a definite sense of progression and evolution to his work between 1988 and 1994. Songwriting, production, the sounds and techniques, all of it grew from album to album.<\/p>\n<p>After &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Nine+Inch+Nails\/The+Downward+Spiral\" title=\"Last.fm: Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral\">The Downward Spiral<\/a>&#8216; and its associated remix albums were released, Trent took a bit of a break. During that time, the occasional article would come out detailing Trent&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trent_Reznor#Personal_life\" title=\"Wikipedia: Trent Reznor: Personal Life\">personal struggles<\/a>, and occasionally there&#8217;d be a interview or two, usually something along the theme of, &#8220;what will NIN do next?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In one of these interviews &#8212; and sorry, but I haven&#8217;t got a <em>clue<\/em> when, in what magazine, or in what context this appeared in &#8212; Trent was talking about how he&#8217;d been listening to a lot of hip-hop, and getting to know and working with a lot of pop and hip-hop artists. He talked about how they&#8217;d been influencing his music, and said something about how his next release would probably piss off a lot of his early fans, because of his new inspirations and the new directions he was going to take. About the same time, he did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Puff%2BDaddy%2B%2526%2BThe%2BFamily\/Victory+Remixes\/Victory+%28Nine+Inch+Nails+remix%29\" title=\"Last.fm: Puffy Daddy and the Family: Victory (Nine Inch Nails remix)\">a remix of Puffy Daddy and the Family&#8217;s &#8216;Victory&#8217;<\/a> that absolutely <em>floored<\/em> me. I don&#8217;t like &#8216;gangsta&#8217; rap, I&#8217;m by <em>no<\/em> means a fan of P-Diddy, but Trent&#8217;s work on that song took the inner-city extroverted rage of the &#8216;gangsta&#8217; and wrapped it in the distortion-ridden black-clad self-destructive introverted rage of the industrial genre and made it <em>work<\/em>. Okay, so that description doesn&#8217;t exactly make it sound appealing, but hey, that&#8217;s what it sounds like to me.<\/p>\n<p>This really exited me. I&#8217;ve never been much into rap (and especially hardcore &#8216;gangsta&#8217; rap), but I&#8217;ve often found that that&#8217;s less to do with the rapping &#8212; I&#8217;ve heard some <em>incredible<\/em> rapping over the years &#8212; and more to do with the boring, unimaginative beats and the violent, misogynistic lyrics. Rappers who could do something interesting were fine, and when I&#8217;ve found them, I&#8217;ve been more than happy to toss money their way (I&#8217;ve got a pretty good collection of both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Beastie+Boys\" title=\"Last.fm: Beastie Boys\">The Beastie Boys<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Public+Enemy\" title=\"Last.fm: Public Enemy\">Public Enemy<\/a>, among others [yes, I know&#8230;could I <em>be<\/em> any more of a middle-class white boy?]). Most of it just didn&#8217;t catch my interest.<\/p>\n<p>But if Trent could combine his songwriting and production skills with the catchy pop hooks and lyrical skills of some of the best of the hip-hop world? I was <em>really<\/em> looking forward to seeing what would come out. After his years of coming up with music that I loved, I trusted Trent to find good artists to work with, and even if I didn&#8217;t end up liking everything that came out of this &#8220;new direction,&#8221; I felt sure that there would probably be more than a few gems that would make it worthwhile.<\/p>\n<p>So I waited. Sometimes more patiently than others, but I waited. And eventually, word came out that there was finally going to be a new Nine Inch Nails album. Finally! The day of release, I went to the store and got my copy of &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Nine+Inch+Nails\/The+Fragile\" title=\"Last.fm: Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile\">The Fragile<\/a>&#8216;, took it home, put it in my CD player&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and that was one of only a few times that I&#8217;ve bothered to actually listen to that album straight through. For the first time since I&#8217;d discovered him, Trent had created a Nine Inch Nails album that, to my ears, was simply &#8220;more of the same old thing.&#8221; Only it was a little more disappointing than that, it actually felt like it was <em>less<\/em> of the same old thing. It felt to me like he&#8217;d just taken all of the moody, introspective, instrumental or near-instrumental noise collages from &#8216;The Downward Spiral&#8217; and its two remix albums and stretched them out into two discs worth of droning, with a few tracks that he&#8217;d thrown a drum kit at for a little variety.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, I was let down.<\/p>\n<p>I still have a lot of respect for Trent&#8217;s abilities, and I&#8217;ve kept an eye on his work since then, but &#8216;The Fragile&#8217; was the last full album of NIN&#8217;s that I&#8217;ve bought. I gave the five-dollar version of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Nine+Inch+Nails\/Ghosts+I-IV\" title=\"Last.fm: Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I-IV\">Ghosts I-IV<\/a> (which only has Ghosts I, or tracks 1-9 of the full album) a shot, and have been grabbing whatever he releases for free as they&#8217;ve been announced (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/music\/Nine+Inch+Nails\/The+Slip\" title=\"Last.fm: Nine Inch Nails: The Slip\">The Slip<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ninja2009.com\/\" title=\"NIN|JA 2009\">NIN|JA 2009<\/a> tour sampler), but still, none of it grabs me. It all feels like as much as Trent has been doing a bang-up job creating (from what I&#8217;ve heard and read) incredible live shows, online &#8216;Alternate Reality Games&#8217; for his albums, and telling the music industry to take a flying leap, his music just doesn&#8217;t seem to have gone anywhere since the mid-1990&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Or, perhaps, I&#8217;m just a stodgy old Elder Goth wannabe, pining for the good old angst-filled days of his black-clad youth. It&#8217;s a possibility.<\/p>\n<p>So, when I see the hoax promo page for &#8216;Strobe Light&#8217;, I laugh at the silliness of it all&#8230;but I also wish, just a little bit, that it wasn&#8217;t a hoax. That Trent had actually followed through with his threats of oh-so-long-ago, gathered together with pop and hip-hop artists, blended and mangled their talents with his, and produced something <em>truly<\/em> interesting, bridging the brainless shiny of the pop world, the brainless bling of the hip-hop world, and the hopeless angst of the goth\/industrial world into one bizarre, but brilliant, whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the day wore on, I started thinking about just why this particular joke appealed to me so much, and why &#8212; as horrid as this may seem to some people &#8212; yes, I wish this one wasn&#8217;t a hoax. If this were a real album, I&#8217;d _gladly_ pay good money to pick it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2035,2043],"tags":[13,80,3588,651],"class_list":["post-6786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-personal","tag-life","tag-music","tag-nine-inch-nails","tag-trent-reznor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}