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Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo score was released this past Friday, and I spent a good chunk of my weekend listening to it; I’m glad to report that, yes, it’s pretty fuckin’ great. But if, for some reason, you’re still not sold, here are two more things which will hopefully entice you:
That might be a misleading headline, and I apologize if you came here thinking you were gonna see news of live dates for How to Destroy Angels. Actually, just the opposite – The PRP reports that during a recent online fan Q&A, HTDA announced that they “have no plans to tour in the immediate future and will instead be focusing on their full-length effort which is expected out early next year.”
Which is news that I’m actually okay with. For one thing, it doesn’t say they’ll never tour – just not right now. For another thing, it means they’re working on new music, and even though their EP just came out this week, I could certainly stand to hear even more. And, finally, there’s the fact that the idea of a HTDA live show just doesn’t really get me that excited. Not that I don’t like them – I obviously do – but other than Trent’s usual sweet live light show, I can’t really see this group being all that exciting in a concert setting. It’s obviously very technology-driven music, and in the past I’ve found shows where most or all of the people on stage are playing synths and computers to get kinda tedious after awhile. Of course, I would go see HTDA live and hope I was completely wrong about that – and those aforementioned Trent light shows are always 110% kick-ass – I’m just saying, if I don’t attend a HTDA concert before 2011 or whenever, I’m not gonna bang my head against the wall.
The above photo is from the shoot for the video of “The Space in Between,” by the way, and you can check out more here.
-AR
I know I mentioned this on Friday, but I also know that a lot of you spent the last three days destroying a vast percentage of your brain, so I just wanted to remind you: as of today, the debut self-titled EP from How to Destroy Angels – a.k.a. “Trent Reznor’s new project with his wife” – is available for free download.
As we’ve been saying all along, it’s basically Nine Inch Nails with female vocals – which isn’t a bad thing. The sad news is that the group has already released half the tracks in some form or another, and, unfortunately, I think we’ve already heard the album’s best material. That’s not to say I don’t like the remaining songs; I had just hoped that HTDA had some ace up their sleeve that they were waiting to unveil. But nothing really tops “A Drowning” and “The Space in Between.”
Of course, you may very vocally disagree with me, as is your right to do so; and one way or the other, the album is free, so you really have nothing to lose by at least checking it out. Download it here.
-AR
I will switch teams for Trent Reznor right now and I don’t care who knows it. He really is just making a strong play for the title of “Coolest Dude EVER.”
It was exactly a month ago today that we first heard about How to Destroy Angels, Renzor’s new project with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross; and it was just a few days ago that we heard that the group’s debut EP would be coming out July 6. Well, that release date either only applies to physical copies of the album, or has been scrapped, or was never real to begin with, ’cause now HTDA have announced that they will be GIVING THE EP AWAY FOR FREE in 320 kbps mp3s THIS TUESDAY, June 1. If you “pre-order” the album right now – pre-ordering in this instance basically amounting to joining an e-mail list – you can download a new song, “The Believers,” right now.
I don’t think that Nine Inch Nails have ever made a bad video, and Trent Reznor isn’t about to start now – the new clip for How to Destroy Angels’ “The Space in Between” is provocative, possibly pretentious, morbidly beautiful, and wholly memorable (which is really the entire point of a music video, I suppose). Insofar as what the video “means,” well… I’m not entirely sure I know. Assuming the titular “in between” is some kind of purgatorial state, well… I guess we can interpret the fact that Reznor and his wife/vocalist Mariqueen Maandig are lip synching while clearly “deceased” as being somehow related to said purgatorial state. I’ll have to ponder it some more, though.
Whatever the heck the video is supposed to mean, it is, like I said, morbidly beautiful, and the song is gorgeous. As with “A Drowning,” it pretty much sounds like NIN with a female vocalist… but I have absolutely no problem with that.
HTDA will release a six-song EP sometime this summer. Longtime NIN collaborator Atticus Ross is also involved in some capacity; he’s the dude smoking a cigarette and watching T.V. in this video.
-AR
It was just last week that we first heard about How to Destroy Angels, the new outfit from Trent Reznor and his wife, Mariqueen Maandig; and now here we are, and Pitchfuck already has the group’s debut song, “A Drowning.”
So what do we think? Personally, I fucking love this song. I predicted that HTDA would “sound more or less like late-era NIN,” and it does; swap out Maandig’s vocals for Reznor’s, and this basically sounds like a hybrid of “All the Love in the World” and “The Line Begins to Blur” from With Teeth.
It was just a few months ago that Trent Reznor announced that not only was he working on some new material for Nine Inch Nails, but also some new material for “something else that isn’t Nine Inch Nails.” Of course that got us all foaming at the mouth – What non-NIN project could Trent be working on? WHAT NON-NIN PROJECT COULD TRENT BE WORKING ON???
The answer, it would seem, is How To Destroy Angels (a process that is apparently quite different from training your dragon), a new outfit he’s starting up with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig. There’s already an official website for the group, which is very NIN in design, and word of an EP to be released this summer.
I wasn’t really a fan of Maandig’s last band, West Indian Girl, although my problem with them wasn’t her vocals – it was just that the music wasn’t my pace. But the below teaser video for the group would suggest that HTDA is going to sound more or less like late-era NIN, presumably with some combination of Maandig and Reznor on vocals – which is fine with me. The last time I can recall hearing Reznor doing vocals with a woman was when he did some backing stuff for Tori Amos on her song “Past the Mission,” which I thought was pretty swell… so I’m game for whatever.
-AR
No, Trent Reznor won’t be fucking you like an animal anytime soon: he has apparently tied the knot with some chick named Mariqueen Maandig, formerly of a band I’ve never heard of called West Indian Girl. A half-dozen reader e-mails pointed me to Pink is the New Blog, where photos from the wedding have been posted, and I wanted to re-post them here for two reasons:
Enjoy the pics.
