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Working Together
“Atticus and I have a working situation where often we’re inspired by each other,” says Reznor.
Prior to “With Teeth,” he worked with Ross on two other projects:
Tapeworm and 12 Rounds. “We realized that we have a similar aesthetic and
working together seemed fresh and immediately lots of ideas popped out,” says Reznor.
“Once I get some parameters set up to work within, it’s a lot easier
for me to execute my ideas,” he says. “We’ve
narrowed down how we work and what we’re trying to work on. This
album has come out very different than ‘The Fragile.’ It’s
more song-focused and less sprawling.”
NIN: Solo For The Most Part
Reznor explains that, despite his
heavy collaboration with Ross for the engineering of the record, NIN is still
a solo project. The only part where external performances come into play is in
the percussive realm. Reznor and Ross spent several weeks recording Jerome
Dillon playing drums for “With Teeth” in New Orleans, following
that up with having Dave Grohl guest perform on a few of the tracks once
recording operations shifted out to Los Angeles.
“We usually use real drums, some analog synths and some guitar and those are
pretty much the only instruments on the record,” says Reznor. “The
creative process with Nine Inch Nails has always been minimal. On the last
record, ‘The Fragile,’ Keith programmed, I played everything, Alan Moulder helped
with engineering and sound shaping sort of stuff, and someone would play drums on
the occasional track.
“It’s never been a ‘Let’s everyone sit around and jam’
type of arrangement,” stresses Reznor. “There were people who played
parts in occasionally, but it’s never been any sort of a collaboration. And
with this album, I’m not even pretending that it is. It’s just the two of
us going at it.”
A New Approach And Line Up
While writing the music for “With Teeth,” Reznor actively tried to picture what the music might look like
while it was being played live. “I tried to see it as if it was just somebody playing a real drum
kit in a room, and a couple guys with
Minimoogs and guitar pedals,” he says. “A
band that rocks within that format. So I asked myself how that could work. By trying to
execute something that followed that plan, we stumbled into some stuff that we never would
have come up with in ‘The Fragile’ era. We’re in a different kind of mindset now,
it’s been fun, and that sort of inspiration has really defined the record.”
In addition to cleaning up his health, Reznor cleaned house, keeping only Jerome Dillon from the previous line up for the coming tour. “I’ve
said this before, but I don’t want to go out with the same set up as we had
last time,” says Reznor. “I think it worked and we did it well. But if I did it again, I would be
living in the past. It’s tough sometimes to say goodbye to something, but I
think that has run it’s course. And I’m not saying I’ll never
play old music. But I think the format has been documented, we played a million concerts and it’s time to risk failure at something else.
“We’re trying to keep it fun, too, being open minded, trying new things and
being adventurous,” he says. “If there’s one kind of music I hate, it’s corporate-safe
sound-alike bullshit. It infuriates me to hear it.
“I’m sure I fucked my career up by not putting
out enough stuff, but that’s not why I’m doing it,” says Reznor. “We’ve never been the type
of band where somebody sits down and says, ‘Book your tour because you’ve got this much time to get your record done, and then we’re going to
shoot your video.’ The most important thing to me is making great
music and the rest of the world has to fit to that schedule. That is — to me — the
most important thing. And in my own brain, I’ve had to work some issues out
to be able to make music. But I’m fortunate that I’m in the space that I’m in
right now, where it feels good.”
Previous page: Synths: Soft and Hard for “With Teeth”
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Nine Inch Nails
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A Different Audio Equation
An interesting thing that Ross brings to the equation is that he programs
much differently than Reznor does on the computer. “Atticus’ perspective in
the world of recording, programming and arranging is interesting because I
was always one to work pretty strictly MIDIwise, leaving millions of things
running in MIDI so I would be able to tweak and fuck around with until the end,” says Reznor.
“But he’s more of an
audio guy that uses Pro Tools as a tape deck and he is excellent at manipulating
audio which is beyond my skill set,” he adds. “Mine is that I can do anything with a
sampler or a keyboard, but once it’s in the computer, I look at it like it’s on
tape and don’t fuck with it much.
“So it’s shifted the way I work,” says Reznor. “I would never
lay down a drum beat out of a sampler or something like that as audio
until I was completely done with every possible fill and arrangement and
shifting of time and feel that I could possibly want to do. I would be really
hesitant to even get into the world of audio editing because I can’t
MIDI control it. But, with Atticus, I can now play in stuff like it’s audio
and treat it like a tape deck and somehow it ends up being presented back to me
in a way that I never would have done if I was the one cutting it up or moving it
around.
“It’s so different for me because I learned on all-MIDI sequencers that might have
audio thrown in — in the world of StudioVision where you just prayed to god
that you got it down on tape before it crashed,”. he adds. “So audio is the last thing you
wanted on your computer because it didn’t work. So it’s interesting to me
now because it does all work.”
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Interviews