The Trent Reznor Experience

Thu 3rd May, 2007 in Features

Fans of Nine Inch Nails noticed something odd on this year’s European tour shirt. Some of the letters stood out, and when put together they spelled – œiamtryingtobelieve’. From that, an enterprising fan found iamtryingtobelieve.com, a website describing a dystopian future in which the US government has abandoned the separation of church and state and started putting drugs in the water supply, where giant hands are seen reaching down from the sky and snipers target sporting events. Clues on that site lead to others, as did USB sticks hidden at NIN concerts, the album’s liner notes and the disc itself, which shows hidden messages when heated slightly by being played. Down the rabbit hole the fans went.

This campaign surrounding Year Zero is called an – œAlternate Reality Game’, like The Lost Experience that tied in to Lost’s second season or the game that promoted the movie A.I. It’s halfway between viral marketing scheme and consensual hallucination, a combination of puzzles, scavenger hunts and interactive fiction.
Reznor was inspired to create this Year Zero experience when he realised the album marked a change in his music, replacing his diary entries from the heart of darkness with a story about where the world is headed. He describes it as, “less about me and more about the world; that being the direct result of either, in sobriety, paying a bit more attention to what’s going on outside my head or the fact that the world seems to have gotten a bit more insane recently.”

Shifting his focus from the personal to the political wasn’t easy, and trying to avoid the obvious pitfalls of editorialising in music has shaped the way he approached Year Zero. “I tried to come up with a way to comment on that that wasn’t immediately polarising or cringe-inducing,” he says.

“I’m not telling you – œDon’t vote for George Bush’. I’m not telling you to do anything, but morally I feel that if a handful of people come through the experience and maybe pay a little more attention to things that are already happening in the world right now, I think that’s mission accomplished. All set to a backdrop of music you can dance to.”

Another pitfall he’s eager to avoid is that of over-advertising. There’s the potential for Alternate Reality Games to become just a shiny high-tech version of a pamphlet drop that requires the audience do half of an ad firm’s work for them.

“I know that at the end of the day it will function as some form of marketing, it will make people aware of this thing. I didn’t know what level it would happen at, but the minute you get a company like a record company involved I was afraid that the very first thing I’d hear is – œWe need to work a way of selling ringtones to people into this thing!’ Something whorish and shitty that wasn’t in any way appropriate to the experience I wanted.”

To that end, he didn’t even approach his label to warn them that he’d be leaking mp3s off the album as part of the game, leaving them on USB sticks hidden at select concert venues. Anticipating that they might have second thoughts about that, he let the label find out after the fans did.
“There’s many, many, many missed business opportunities here and the reason they’re missed is because I don’t want it to taint the most important thing, the experience. I want the fan to go, – œWhat is this thing? Holy shit!’”

One of those missed business opportunities came when the entire album was streamed on the nin.com site so that fans could hear the whole thing for free before it came out. They were treated to an album of riotous noise and distortion, from the angry fuckshitup rock of Survivalism and Capital G to the incongruously swaggering battlefield poem The Good Soldier and the foreboding fascist march of Hyperpower! (with Josh Freese’s drumming providing the goosesteps).

It only added to the buzz, and helped to solidify the fact that the album can be enjoyed even by those who aren’t caught up in the game. “I think that the record stands on its own, is a strong album, but if you know the backstory it becomes a richer experience, like the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist.”

On the subject of a movie, Reznor says he’s planning to talk with people about actually making Year Zero: The Movie after the tour, but when he was planning the album and the experience to go with it, “the idea of filming a movie seemed impossible to do in a short amount of time, and a hassle, and just writing the story and putting it out felt mechanical, it didn’t feel as immersive as I wanted this to be. So I ended up doing what I did, which was making a War Of The Worlds thing. I wanted it to feel real.”

War Of The Worlds is a good point of reference. With the game he has made a work of fiction that pretends to be real, like Orson Welles’ panic-inspiring radio broadcast version from 1938, and with the record he has essentially made a sci-fi concept album, like the Jeff Wayne version of War Of The Worlds from 1978. The words – œsci-fi’ and – œconcept album’ sound ominous sitting next to each other, bringing to mind prog rock, zithers and portentous narration. Reznor is aware it had the potential to alienate even his permanently alienated fans.

“I was a bit scared at the beginning because it felt like a leap for Nine Inch Nails, it felt like something I want to make sure I do the right way. It was ripe with potential to be a giant misstep. Which at the point I’m at now made it more exciting, made it something it felt more necessary to do. I think I need to risk failure, not play it safe.”

Five things you don’t know about Reznor
Trent Reznor likes to talk, delivering passionate statements about whatever crossed his mind. We wouldn’t want you to miss these words of wisdom, so to that end we present a few choice quotes that didn’t make it into the interview:

Trent Reznor On…

Ringtones: Ringtones! Fuck ringtones. That whole idea is absurd to me. It cheapens music.

His Idols: Bands like the Cure and Depeche Mode, those were the bands that I aspired to be like, that have 20 albums, that are around for 20 years or more, that grow over time.

Chart-toppers Jay-Z, Britney Spears and Fall Out Boy: That shit sells today, and when it doesn’t sell tomorrow there’s another bunch of overstyled impostors willing to take their place.

The Recording Industry’s Woes: I think a lot of their past crimes are coming up to haunt them, including the doubling of the price of music when CDs came out under the lie that it cost more to make them – it’s cost less to make them.

Making Commercial Music: I think there’s a balance where you can make money and you can make a good product – I hate to use that word – but you can still do it with class, you can still do it intelligently.

• Article courtesy of Rave Magazine