Nine Inch Nails gives the music biz (and fans) The Slip

Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

So you’re a Nine Inch Nails fan, and as you’re waking up your week officially begins with the Monday morning announcement that there is a new Nine Inch Nails album available for download.

For free.

Reznor writes:

Click HERE to get the new full-length nine inch nails record: the slip

(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me)

From that point, there’s nowhere to go but up, right?

In the past two months, Trent Reznor has used the power of the internet to unexpectedly release a 36 track instrumental Nine Inch Nails album, a brand new single that was released to radio and fans less than 24 hours after it was finished, and now a complete album.

Not bad for a guy that was formerly chained to the major label system of releasing a new album every 2-5 years.

The Slip is available in a variety of formats, and for those of us that still love the “hold it in your hands, love it, touch it, feel it” physical product, Reznor promises a traditional retail release on CD and vinyl in July.

This link has everything that you need to know about The Slip, but here are my favorite words from Reznor:

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

Download The New NIN Album Now (YouSendIt link)

or register and download it via nin.com here.

And as for the actual music – it’s great! As I hit the third track “Letting You,” my mind is thinking “WOW, this track sounds like it could have easily slipped off the shelf of songs from the Broken sessions!” The album clocks in at 43:45, and it goes by quickly. As my friend Chris said this morning to me, “before I knew it, it was over. So I hit play to let it go again.” Chris calls it his favorite album since The Fragile.

For me, I dunno – I really dug With Teeth, both album and tour, so I guess I’ll say that The Slip sits somewhere around that level, or perhaps slightly above.

Someone put it well in a blog posting that I saw elsewhere on the web – if you’re thinking that this is a collection of leftover tracks, your thoughts will quickly change once you hear The Slip. Clearly this is 43 minutes of newly realized and recorded material.

Billboard has more info on the origins of the new album, and also a choice quote from NIN manager Jim Guerinot:

“T[rent] let me know there was some new music coming and the next thing I knew there was a full-length record done…. It’s very exciting to be finishing mixing on Thursday, mastering Friday, finishing artwork on Saturday and having the world hear it [Monday morning]!”

Bob Lefsetz shares his thoughts on the new album, and throws in a mention of the infamous Nine Inch Nails performance at Woodstock ’94.

I hadn’t thought about that for a while. If you weren’t aware of Nine Inch Nails prior to that Woodstock performance, you certainly were on the morning after, because it’s all that everyone was talking about.

They weren’t blogging about it – this was the stuff we were talking about in the hallways at school, at work, on the phone….category “did you see THAT last night,” and EVERYBODY knew what THAT was.

Nine Inch Nails – Terrible Lie / Sin (live at Woodstock ’94)

This new album gives me the same excitement that I felt on the morning after that Woodstock performance. It gives me the same excitement that I felt in 2005, watching a renergized Reznor and crew deliver one of the best performances I had seen in years, on the With Teeth tour. Today, we got that same excitement for free, and it’s anybody’s best guess on how that excitement will be delivered in the future.

But with Trent, we’ll be very interested to find out.