New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Further Down The Spiral (Halo 10/ June 1995)
Tracks under discussion: At the Heart of It All, The Beauty of Being Numb.

What appeals to me about this and Things Falling Apart is how both feel complete as albums “despite” consisting simply of reworkings of existing material (with a few new tracks mixed in). In this case, the remix lasts nearly as long as the album from which it is spawned. Something else noteworthy is that since the album’s singles (i.e. the well-known tracks) are often released accompanied with remixes, it’s not always the best known or best-liked tracks that show up on the NIN remix albums. Further Down the Spiral is a case in point. There is a slightly different take on “Hurt” but no “March of the Pigs” or “Closer”. Multi-part takes on Mr. Self Destruct, and several versions of Piggy and Eraser comprise the lion’s share of the running time. The tracks that attract me are the ones that explore a legitimate tension in the material by allowing in an “outsider”: Aphex Twin’s wholly original contribution “At the Heart of It All” and secondary contribution to the track “The Beauty of Being Numb.”

At around the same time that Further Down the Spiral came out, Aphex Twin had released the single “Ventolin.” I saw the EP for the song (with six different “remixes” of the song, many having nothing to do with the single version) available used for $1 on CD and bought it apropos of nothing, because, well, if I hated it, it was only a dollar lost. When I first heard “At the Heart of It All” I immediately placed it as being by the same artist, simply by virtue of how much it sounded like the various takes on “Ventolin.” The seven-minute instrumental alternates bell-like percussion with radiator steam beats in the foreground and an ominous orchestral refrain in the background. Coming at just the halfway point in the album, it provides an unexpected transition to the closing tracks.

“Numb” is part NIN (first half), part Twin (second half) and the “robots making lounge music” vibe of that second part as it fades out into the “straw-sucking” effect that is used at the opening of “Eraser”, is what helps me persist in labeling this NIN’s “easy listening experiment.” As gloomy as befits an album that is branched out from The Downward Spiral, I consider this more a Gothic work, and despite what the title indicates, the music tends to swell as much as it does crash and break. A distorted sample of Reznor’s never-cresting scream (which I now think of as an aural equivalent to Edvard Munch’s infamous painting) used throughout and particularly on the closing track “Erased. Over. Out” is both bone chilling and yet oddly hilarious. Once again, there is that humor poking through.

Things Falling Apart (Halo 16/ November 2000)
Tracks under discussion: Where is Everybody? (Version), Metal, 10 Miles High, Starfuckers, Inc. (Version)

Perhaps it shouldn’t still surprise me to learn that my opinion always seems to run contrary to popular and critical taste at the oddest times. When I finally decided to read up on this album, my favorite of all of NIN’s releases, I was floored to uncover that it is held in the lowest regard not simply in the band’s catalog, but for the label Nothing Records as well. I will grant that a remix album that attempts to condense the 23 song sprawl of The Fragile into 50 mins and does so with not one, not two, but three passes at Starfuckers, Inc (my vote for weakest NIN single ever), a B-side and a Gary Numan cover has the deck stacked pretty high against it - which makes its success that much more confounding and exhilarating.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5