Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I-IV

[Drinsic Darkwood]

http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home

This came out of nowhere, I hadn't heard anything about it. It's an instrumental double album (or quadruple EP, heh), and you can download the first volume/EP for free at the site as well as stream sample tracks from all across the album. The download is only 5 bucks, and it's pretty damn impressive - your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, Apple Lossless (hadn't even heard of that one), all DRM free, plus a 40 page pdf booklet, and shitloads of visual extras.

There's also a $10 physical CD double album that includes the digital download, as well as a $75 Deluxe Edition or a $300 signed LE with vinyl.

So far I'm really liking what's available for free on the site. I'm a poor motherfucker, though - I figure I'll be grabbing the $5 download as soon as their servers are un-fucked (overwhelmed currently).

[Aardor]

Wow, this did come out of nowhere. I am excited and will be getting either the cd version or the $5 version tonight.

[Fairweather Pure]

I'll buy the 5$ DL later today and listen to it at work tonight. Thanks for the link.

This wasn't exactely out of nowhere though. I remember reading something about a new release date for a NIN album, but it was just announced a few weeks ago with no details other than a date. I forget where I even saw/read about it, but the info is milling around in my brain somewhere.

[Drinsic Darkwood]

Compared to the marketing for Year Zero (or any previous NIN album), I'd safely say that nothing but a rather quietly announced "2 weeks" release date qualifies as "coming out of nowhere". Maybe it's just a test, i.e. how well will an album released by NIN with virtually zero publicity/marketing will perform. From the current server traffic on the site, the answer seems to be well.

[Fash]

Well... Duh. He's doing it himself, so there is no massive marketing campaign by the record companies. Luckily for the artists realizing this path, just releasing it in this fashion brings loads of free press.

[Fairweather Pure]

Servers have been hammered all day, but I did get the DL.

[Siji]

The whole thing behind Story Zero was rather cool, actually. They did a write up in Wired magazine I believe it was about the backstory that they built into it, the clues, puzzles, etc..

Trent's always going to be the Pretty Hate Machine guy. He'll always be the one who wrote the music that brings back exceptional memories of a time that's now gone.

[Funkmasterr]

I bought the 10 dollar version, and to this point have not been able to download it. It kept timing out when I tried earlier in the night last night, then at some point they brought the site down and when I went to sleep it still was not back up. Guess I'll try again when I get home!

[Drinsic Darkwood]

Yeah, the servers were brought down for maintenance. Seems to have worked, I had no trouble after they came back up. Interesting to note that all 2500 of the $300 LE packages sold out already.

I'm enjoying the album so far. It's far from amazing, but I do think it's good. I think about half the tracks could've been cut to make one great instrumental album, but at $5 it's like free extra music. Plus... playlists.

Also, I think it's pretty cool that NIN personally uploaded the first volume to various torrent networks (The Pirate Bay for example).

[Siji]

As someone that likes NIN, I was fairly disappointed in this release.. it's seems like a collection of experimental noise. I knew going in that it was going to be instrumental, but there's no melody or catchiness to it that would make me want to listen to it again.

[Dregor Thule]

I'm looking forward to hearing this for that exact reason. Further Down the Spiral is still one of my favorite NIN albums simply because it makes some excellent background music while I'm gaming!

[Fash]

Same... I wasn't really interested in downloading it till a dude at work said it was all instrumental.

Background noise rocks, and heightens my concentration on other things. Just starting to listen to it now