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| Ghosts I - IV | 
 enlarge | Artist: Nine Inch Nails
Label: The Null Corporation
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
Buy New: $7.89
You Save: $9.09 (54%)
New (54) Used (27) from $6.84
Avg. Customer Rating:  175 reviews
Sales Rank: 1379
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:
 Ambient Trent March 4, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Trent Reznor has been full of surprises for his fans over the last couple years and this new work certainly will surprise and amaze anyone with the attention span to explore it. There's a lot of music here--all instrumental as noted elsewhere, but with a tremendous range of moods and textures. Each section (I - IV) seems to have its own atmosphere, but even within each of these sections, Trent provides incredible variety. Those seeking something like "With Teeth" or "The Downward Spiral" may be bewildered. This is not an album of rock songs exactly. It is more like some of Trent's remix work, but even that doesn't quite prepare you for the subtle delights of this CD/download. Mr. Reznor's decision to leave the majors was a courageous and savvy move, but it wouldn't mean as much if he did not use his new freedom to experiment and challenge his fans with some new musical horizons. This he does!
Ghosts is dreamier and more spacious than most of Trent's previous albums. It's more like a NIN version of an Aphex Twin ambient work, or perhaps a mutant Brian Eno CD. But make no mistake--this is pure Trent, with plenty of haunting piano melodies, squelchy sounds, complex rhythms, and crunchy guitar parts. I just want to give you some kind of aural reference point. If, like me, you have always enjoyed Mr. Reznor in the role of sonic architect--the way he sculpts amazing sounds, rhythms, and textures even in his more straightforward songs, you will get a lot of pleasure from this offering. Here's hoping this is just the beginning of a rich creative period for both NIN and other innovative musicians taking Trent's lead and breaking out of the old music business paradigm.
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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