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| Ghosts I - IV | 
 enlarge | Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Label: The Null Corporation
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $7.97
You Save: $9.01 (53%)
New (52) Used (25) from $7.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  174 reviews
Sales Rank: 2347
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.5 x 5 x 0.6
MPN: 26
UPC: 766929908628
EAN: 0766929908628
ASIN: B0015FQZ94
Release Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Paradigm Shifter March 3, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Trent Reznor has laid the groundwork for music distribution. Trent Reznor is God. Well, maybe he had lots of help and a few Talking Heads fans to back him up, but he has done it, RIGHT! Fork over 5 dollars on the NIN site and you get 320kb download with a large free collection of above average landscape photography, PDF, and the whole thing is carried off but with hardly any pretense minus that of being a premier musician and all around artist trying to expand their box, a prison that Trent Reznor has finally busted I might add. NIN have taken things to a new level that has actually set precedent for the paradigm. And to boot, if you want bigger and better CD/Vinyl sets he says 10 dollars to 300 dollars, depending how rabid you are over his sexual presence on this earth, of course with various trinkets and the obligatory signature signed with His own blood.
Ghosts 19 I stole because it TOTALLY sounded like superior Skinny Puppy 1990. You figure the terrible ninties. GET that. HAHA. NiNties. Uh........ Ghosts 6 I come back to because it reminds me of the good ol' days with SAW Vol. 2. How it so could fit on there, perfectly, and yet it sounds as if TRez had these sound in him his whole life, which, he has, only he was forced into making texture pop with voice, (damn that voice) decrepit and decayed as his pop may be. 31 Ghosts is amazing for the wailing banshee guitar, courtesy of Adrian Belew?, and it is welcome that one of my favorite King Crimson guitarists is given more due NIN time than usual, as he appears on many tracks. Reverse that and 13 is a beautiful piano driven peace ode to death, breathing courtesy of Trent? What a great track, though, I really dig the Fragile leftover Ghosts 34: a compliment that was, because the sound is reminiscent of certain tracks that were Tony Tiger GREAT back in 1999, I even hear them using some of the same equipment I think. Ghosts 28 is tonal and tribal, a stark representation of landscape maybe, gently rolling along the hills, the sound invading every crack and crevice, raw and harsh.
Another track I truly enjoyed was Ghosts 24 from III that does what Prodigy should have been doing after Fat of the Land NO ******* kidding. Ghosts 5, to take a stark detour, is mostly Sergio Leone leftover depression.... Oh.... yeah... most people don't have this type of depression.... 21 is like a mishmash of Into the Void and every trick Trent has learned from two decades of experience in layering his music.
All the material is excellent, in my opinion, and if you are familiar with Still, than you know where this collection is going, just above and beyond the pretty and sombre lamentations found there.
Ghosts I-IV looks very promising, and the entire package is worth any music lover's time, and that it will for all this to sink in. Just Being a NIN fan of The Fragile and TDS in particular, this new work is complex as those and even more stunning in many other respects, just as Still was a nice complement to And All That.... Ghosts is the complementary side of Year Zero, evoking everything from Debussy's La Mer to Autechre's Confield to Aphex Twin Druqks; even the buzz saw guitars and streaming bass lines of punk and new wave era Cure come through with ZING on Ghosts 4. I honestly don't know what to say about the preceding track because it alone is worth the price of admission to download this whole album. Ghosts 3 is amazing. Very Richard like but then again it is wholly the creation of Trent. I love the sickly tangy guitar instrument at 2:00, with the overlaying distortions, voices, synths, etc. and of course the bassline! Can't forget that NIN bass line, morphing into guitar, swooning around beats and loops and Lalalalalal yeah the point is that many of the tracks are evocative mind trips that serve headphones, amps, and darkness well.
TDS is almost universally admired if not for songwriting then production and arrangement. The Fragile was a masterpiece in its own space and mind, forging ahead the new digital era with samples and tracks galore, incisors bared solemnly with nary a hint of hope to be redeemed; Left disc ended on The Great Below, one of the most poignant and interesting odes to love and death that NIN has ever written. THAT was followed by something we previously hadn't heard from NIN. The Right disc was amazing and fresh, including a rap, a shoutout, and complex instrumentals that further divided NIN from the LAME industrial landscape. The gigantic transducer eating beats surely convinced the bassheads of the blatant talent, too.
I began to get the feeling that The Fragile was something special, broken and marred, but put together and soothing in the way that suffering, knowing suffering, leads eventually to change, slow as it might happen.
So after that whole experience in my late teens, five years later With Teeth was slightly disappointing, and a bit weak in the lyrical department. I kept wanting to hear the vicious instrumentals from before, or even unsubtle rage of Somewhat Damaged; instead, it was all chorus and pomp, and the raw emotion was definitely missing, though, some songs were inevitably quite provoking. Year Zero was definitely the Rockstar side revived, I enjoyed it because of the abrasive beats and the creativity of the song lyrics; the choruses seemed more appropriate and less in your face and that helps when you tire of a songs pop structure with repeated listening.
But this, this record I do not hold, Ghosts I-IV, is the Miles Davis spectre of an unconventional time working through world wide conflicts that affect individuals, as we may reflect in our art as the Jazz Master did with his bands for decades: the poets, painters, directors, etc. all do this is different ways. We who love to learn and share want something better than what currently is, and we are working on all levels to adjust our realities to what is happening, the tragedies that we know should not be taking place in our human world, the idea that things changed on an invisible level lead to change beyond, and if that thin line of inspiration comes from these little pieces of plastic and paper then YAY, the world is getting better right?
Are you full of BULLSH**, crank? Are all artists full of this stuff you call Bullsh**?
Well, I don't know, but the record is supremely satisfying; an aura exudes from this album that is the perfect representation of NIN's instrumental vision. They are pioneering not quite radical but comprehensive postmodern sound. Good things can only come from this, along with other artist's to follow, even novelist's and poet's should take notice, the internet is the Argus, you are a part of us, taking this music industry beyond what it is now, taking the entertainment industry and edging one notch for the artist alone, as a man or woman, only 400 more blows till we kill the uncouth blubbery PIG that never wanted to share its profits.
I, Disciple 16, rarely buy in stores anymore; actually I don't at all, though, BMG online has enabled me to collect dozens of double sets, remasters that I could not get any other way. I don't think, if you look hard enough, the industry is dead, it was just waiting for the intro to a new AGE. As a consumer, you had to be wary, and if you weren't, BubblePop METAL would and will be sold to you with dumptrucks, peddled on the radio because you haven't the time to choose.
Oh well whatever nevermind crank get on with it OKAY this isn't going to change everything, but at this stage corporate rock has killed the radio and we all know it. Radio aversely affects what is popular and 'they' want to sell us everything we don't need to hear, nothing daring, all angst and facades, veils of illusion. This distribution model shows us that ART carried off with great taste can survive by the consumer alone. The late 60's period this is not. We have to start choosing what we want, and now we have a line that has been crossed, successfully.
So beyond the advertisement for this album, Ghosts exists in the senses that imply change, reflection, and the will to follow through these harsh times. I can recall instrumentals like Just Like You Imagined, Complication, and A Warm Place that changed my mind on who Trent was becoming. Indeed, like the reformation of classical music in the 1900's, but fully modernized with an even larger palette, this album tries to do what pioneering artists like Schoenberg, Cage, and Eno were doing then, not aversely changing everything, but doing things in slightly esoteric ways. After the press reviews and eventual release, people will start changing their minds about NIN again. And that is because all great artists are dynamic, and those who pigeon hole people like Trent deserve to get that slap in the face, though, they can still hate and fill their life with super indie SH**, this is the record that set the benchmark. I feel that the music is alive in the artist here, and very well recorded, mixed, and mastered. There is no way a site like Pitchfork should be giving this anything below a 9, and we shall see about that soon......... and we have a 5.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes! the reviewer is obviously a syntactical genius who obviously knows NIN by heart, just read the review folkie, there need be NO CONvincing.
I fully award this work five stars for the 1 free side alone. Terrific setup and expert presentation for all the various packages laid out perfectly on NIN's website. A great surprise. A better foundation.
P.S. I will now actually go listen to the album. Trent, Trent, can I leave now? (weeping)
Excellent album March 4, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I knew there was a "big announcement" upcoming but a 36 track album would have been my absolute last guess. I grabbed it off Amazon because the NIN site was down. Thanks for supplying us with an alternative!
When I first started listening, one of the first things that crossed my mind was how much it reminded me of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2. A lot of atmospheric ambiance floats through the entire album adding yet another layer to a rich sonic landscape.
As the album progresses, the instruments become more varied. The beats at times become more intense, faint guitars scream in and out and occasionally, you're given a quick glimpse at some level of humanity through miscellaneous samples and sound effects. Something sounds like breathing here, a child's laugh there... Ghosts.
In the end, I think Trent and crew have taken their level of experimentation to a whole new level and created something incredible. Despite being an instrumental, this has quickly become one of my favorite Nine Inch Nails albums. I feel it's a good culmination of everything he's accomplished thus far. The influences are too varied and extreme to not be appreciated.
And for $5?! Thank you Trent.
whoa April 8, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This album is great, obviously some tracks take a while to grow on you but most just hit home on the first listen. It really does show just how talented Trent is and how his soundscape evolves as an extension of himself. This is essential for any NIN fan or anyone who just wants some really surreal sounds to propel them away into a dream. Get it! Can't wait for more volumes Trent. U rule dude. THIS IS MUSIC.
 A bit difficult as a whole, but many excellent individual tracks. May 13, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
The revitalization of Nine Inch Nails might be the coolest story in popular music this decade. Eighteen whole years after Trent Reznor's first album made him an idol of alienated teenagers throughout the land, he mounted a powerful comeback with Year Zero. The teenage angst was replaced by ominous prophecies of doom, and the soundtrack was a combination of harsh digital noise with some of Reznor's most accessible songwriting, with a modern electronic production.
After that, Trent regained his confidence. Instead of disappearing for five years, as he had done before, he took only a year to release Ghosts I-IV, an entirely instrumental double album that greatly recalls Aphex Twin's 1994 exercise in minimalism, Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. Even the presentation is similar -- two discs of untitled tracks, each represented only by a photograph. Except Trent does it better. Many of the photographs (not included in the CD package, unfortunately, but you can download them for free from NIN's website) are beautiful. The muted shots of sky and water fit the mood of the soft tracks very well.
More than that, Ghosts I-IV is generally more enjoyable than Aphex Twin's opus. Even the less memorable tracks are, at least, listenable, and most of them are fairly short, so even if your attention starts flagging here and there, at least the record still moves between tones fairly briskly. Whereas Aphex Twin's record had a lot of really beautiful pieces, but also a lot of blatant listener abuse. (2:11, anyone?) This record is not like that. There are loud and cacophonous parts, but they are tame by NIN standards, they tend to be brief, and Reznor's pop sensibility keeps any one sound from overstaying its welcome.
However, as with most double albums released by popular musicians, the length is an obstacle. The thing is, all four volumes of Ghosts are fairly similar. Each volume has a couple soft piano bits, a bit of grinding guitar, some weird ambient noise, and so on. It makes it seem like the record is less varied than it really is. Different parts of the record offer different variations on certain basic ideas and tones, but if you listen to the whole thing in one go, it does call attention to Reznor's reuse of those tones. It is better to listen to each volume separately, as many reviewers have recommended. Within each volume, the tones tend to cycle, from loud to soft to in between, so it doesn't feel like any one component is dominant.
Also, in my view, the sludgy guitar tracks (I-8, II-10, III-23, IV-29) tend to be unremarkable. Reznor was never much for solos. With the exception of III-27, the most "solo-like" track, the guitar mostly just grinds out basic rhythms. In an instrumental album, without Reznor's newly powerful voice (and Year Zero featured his best vocals to date), this just isn't very interesting.
But fortunately, Reznor does much better with other tones. Ghosts features his best, most elegant piano compositions (I-1, II-13, III-22, IV-36). In I-1, the opening track, the piano is joined by a very soft, eerie synthesizer melody that really sets the "ghostly," slightly uneasy dreamlike mood suggested by the album title. In II-12, there is an effective switch from a similar piano melody to a strident mid-tempo rhythm played with increasingly loud feedback, an example of a Ghosts track with internal development.
A couple of songs complete the Aphex Twin connection. The queasy echoing sound in II-15 is very Aphex-like, and not too different from, say, 1:2 on Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. Interestingly, the drums in this track and many others have a kind of rough "organic" sound (as opposed to, say, the very mechanical electronic sound of Year Zero). Then, II-17 uses a very Aphex-like echoing production for a simple guitar rhythm, and III-25 rounds things off with a "bubbling" mixture of odd ambient noises. Though, granted, queasy ambience has always appeared in Trent's music, for instance in "The Downward Spiral."
Occasionally there are tracks that don't quite fit into any of the main templates, like II-14, which is based on a shrill, vaguely martial faux-Eastern riff, or III-24, the most "techno-like" song, which brings in danceable beats and electronic bass in addition to the sludgy guitar. A couple of times, Reznor channels his inner Peter Hook and produces some satisfyingly deep bass riffs (I-5, II-18). Especially notable is the interplay between the bass and keyboards in II-18. In III-22, another introspective piano lead is off-set by the effective contrast of crashing drums and a jangly guitar counter-melody.
If I had to choose, I'd say that the second volume of Ghosts is the best and most varied overall, but the single best track on the album is IV-28. There is first a long stretch of tentative guitar strumming, which gradually mounts into a steady, rhythmic build-up, softened by gentle production. A similar technique is used in IV-34, with a piano break. If Aphex Twin were to release such a thing now, it would be hailed as a breath-taking return to form.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to rate this album on a five-point scale, since you can find tracks on it to fit any rating. The sheer volume of material means that you'll find stuff you enjoy and stuff you don't, and the very loose concept makes it a bit hard to tie all the tracks together and listen to the album as a coherent whole. But it is definitely very different from anything Nine Inch Nails have done before, and it firmly identifies Reznor as a singular musical voice, which perhaps we knew all along. "Industrial music," if that label still applies to NIN, has never had its boundaries pushed as far as on this album.
2 hours of music for $5? How can you beat that?!? March 3, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Move over The Fragile and Year Zero, bow down to your new king Ghosts I-IV.
This is an absolutely amazing instrumental album that ranges from quiet piano type tracks ala Still to complete noise mixes ala Driver Down from the Lost Highway soundtrack.
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