Always the hipster bridesmaid, I made it to the second SoundCheck on South William Street last night. Good times… the genius of it is that it starts at seven, so if you’re working in the morning you can drink cheap cocktails for four hours and still get the last bus home. (Also, one of said cocktails essentially amounts to Tequila Yop, which you will agree is an intriguing prospect.)
I was fully prepared for the music to go completely over my head, so much so that when the deliciously pneumatic opening beat of Closer kicked in it didn’t occur to me that it might actually be Nine Inch Nails. Kudos to the man who threw that on, you made my night. The guy I was with functions better than I as a musical barometer and the sets seemed to pass muster, though for my money they could do with a bit more liveliness if they want to hit proper funsies.
They were projecting An American Werewolf in London on the wall, and while there was no sound I did get to see it three times so I can confidently say it’s the best film ever made. Highlights include a progressively decaying best friend, dream sequences involving what appear to be zomb-Nazis and a puzzling scene wherein some Americans piss off an entire pub full of Welsh people by pointing at something out of shot.
Anyway, to summarise: B+, would attend again. And next time I’m going to take some French fancies instead of just staring at them all night.
over the past few days have distracted me from GTA IV (which is so much fun, I’m serious you guys).
Firstly: good podcast on Friday. Nordies!
Secondly: the new Dark Knight trailer was put up yesterday. There are some things in it that I maybe didn’t strictly speaking want to know, so you might want to avoid it. It occurred to me after watching it that I had decided, more than a year ago when the first teaser came out, that I didn’t want to find out too much, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. In my defence, they are throwing down a pretty relentless campaign.
Thirdly: a new Nine Inch Nails album was released today as a free download. The first few tracks are not necessarily anything special (I’m undecided) but it gets very good. Includes spiffy post-apocalyptic triptych.
Coming soon: original material!
Trent Reznor’s latest wheeze, much like his previous, has been described in many quarters as “doing a Radiohead”. I don’t know, did people describe every CD release for the first few years as “doing an ABBA“?
It’s worth noting that Yorke & Co. never intended to revolutionise distribution, whereas Reznor most certainly does. The system in place for Ghosts I-IV represents a return to the drawing board after the disappointing results of the Saul Williams experiment; in other words, Reznor is committed to figuring out how to make this work. If someone with his profile can make a proper financial success of such a venture, who knows what it’ll kick-start.
Now obviously, NIN had a hefty fanbase in place before they came within shouting distance of a self-published album, and it’s true that anyone can start vomiting content onto the internet without a hope of meaningful success, but once the trails are blazed it will start to become a more and more viable route for emerging artists. Grim tidings abound, but it seems to me that should the new models be proven, the changes in the cultural landscape will be hard to predict.
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