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Albums under consideration: Fixed, Further Down the Spiral, Things Falling Apart, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. Selected tracks from each.

This is the sound of your song being fucked up beyond repair.

(My visceral immediate reaction to any number of tracks on the various Nine Inch Nails remix albums that have been released over the last twenty years.)

That is just fucking strange.

(My joyful response to seeing Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, snazzily attired, picking up Golden Globes and Oscars for their score to The Social Network. Also, my reaction to Reznor’s newfound fatherhood last fall, and my firmly held certainty that unlike fellow new dad Elton John, Reznor is helping to change his fair share of poopy diapers.)

This week, I step well outside my comfort zone in the world of film and into that of music, to consider the idea of the remix album as a sequel in its own right. I will do so by examining an artist that has created companion pieces to most of its studio recordings, projects that are at least as engaging, focused, and creative as the albums proper, and in one instance, better than all of those.

I was 13 and had just started high school when Pretty Hate Machine was released in October 1989. As with most of my music purchases in the years of 1988-1991, interest was piqued by the band name, the album title, and a brief introductory profile in Rolling Stone from that summer. (Taken together, those somehow constituted “word-of-mouth” and “buzz” for me at that time.) The chief anecdote I recall from the short RS piece is that Reznor gave a cassette demo of the album to a visitor at his uncle’s place of business (where he was working at the time) and the hapless woman went fleeing from the waiting area upon hearing it. I still don’t know how much truth there is in that account, but it hints at a sense of humor on Reznor’s part that often gets overlooked when discussing the band (not that NIN makes it easy to find that humor sometimes).

I have listened to NIN continuously for over 20 years and yet I don’t immediately think to name them when asked for my favorite bands. (I am not entirely ready to consider them in the past tense, for as far as I am concerned there are no farewell tours in the music industry, not even after death.) When I finally saw the band for the first time in 2008 in Portland (on the Lights In the Sky over North America tour) I was floored by the band’s energy and drive, swept up in the swelling emotions of the crowd, and impressed with the stage and light design, even more so knowing that the cost of the tour was self-financed, with no label footing the bill. But what I must acknowledge is that NIN’s latter-day music — and that of Reznor as the figurehead of the band and in his solo endeavors — means more to me now at 35 than Pretty Hate Machine did at 13 or The Downward Spiral at 18.

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