7/14/2023 0 Comments Spiral netflixIn the excellent book on Welsh band, Manic Street Preachers, Daniel Lukes sees 1. With the song Heart’s Filthy Lesson, the conflation of ‘exit’ and ‘abyss’ echoes Reznor’s spiral concept where endings, as in self-erasure or death, also mark entrances such as spiritual rebirth from a place of decay facing-up to “becoming” and the prosect of suicide. The Downward Spiral uses nihilistic emotional force suggestive of the death of romance, while crafting songs that mask hooks with noise, feedback and experimentation with subverted classical forms of the screeching and droning viola all damaged hearts wearing their abrasive wounds. He sets NIN and Trent Reznor’s work somewhere between the poetry of Baudelaire and the music of Velvet Underground. In Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Artists list, published in 2010, Nine Inch Nails appeared at number 94, with the entry written by Bowie. The ‘Berlin trilogy’ albums would be represented in the sonic power of force and restraint also employed on Iggy Pop’s solo records of that time, co-written and produced with Bowie Iggy’s tracks, Mass Production and Nightclubbing being proto-NIN songs throbbing with an industrial grind and the sheen of weary, misanthropic sleaze. These two records would also inform Nine Inch Nails’ music, through Monster’s use of paranoia, railing against totalitarianism and self-destructive urges and Bowie’s interest in Nietzschean philosophy of the Superman and fears of creeping insanity. In a Studio Q interview from 2013 Reznor explains that the first Bowie record he listened to was actually Scary Monsters : “Bowie’s coldest scariest, and most seductive record, even though it wasn’t friendly” from this he worked backwards to discover Hunky dory. Beyond Berlinīut Bowie’s influence on The Downward Spiral goes far beyond Low. Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral When you think it’s going to explode and it doesn’t, it’s over.” It is this use of dramatic tension that so surprises and unsettles the listener and exemplifies the shock and awe, twists and turns that drive the album. Reznor underlined his interest in contrasting dynamics speaking to Kerrang in April 1994 about Bowie’s Low and Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, two ‘Berlin’ records, which sit alongside Bowie’s “Heroes” in detached manic style and expressionist-style album covers: “You may still be expressing extreme emotions, but instead of loud guitars it’s the silence of restraint. It displays so many of Low’s studio innovations: non-standard structures of shorter, poppier songs and experimental instrumental tracks that seem to start and finish at random, Spiral would also reflect Bowie’s emphasis on deployment of mood and textures over straight hooks and choruses. IN REMEMBRANCE OF DAVID BOWIE ON HIS BIRTHDAY – – Īlong with Pink Floyd’s The Wall Reznor has frequently stated that he drew on Bowie’s 1977 album Low as a key influence for The Downward Spiral. Outside and Trent Reznor’s The Downward Spiral – two records that would spark a deep and productive friendship. It is a powerful and fascinating slip of the ear, and until I checked the lyric sheet years later, that was how it stayed lodged in my brain. But this incidental perhaps betrays a deeper connection that goes back and forth between Bowie’s album from 1995, 1. I remember once mishearing a line from the David Bowie song Heart’s Filthy Lesson, mistaking ‘abyss’ for ‘exit’.
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