I hope they cannot see......

Well, dear friends, today is the day. Just a shade under half a year too! I mentioned previously that I am little tentative to post the last album because all this fun has to come to an end. But, a mission is a mission and you don't get to check it off as completed till you get it all done. As promised, I will post the iMix on iTunes for those of you who may wish to have a copy of the music. I still listen to it all the time, but I recently have made a "New Hotness" mix as well which I have been working on for a month that I will post too. So you have 2 possible lists from me if you are looking for some beach/travel music. If you search iMix for "SVC best of 07" and "Summer Hotness" you should find them in the next couple of days when iTunes posts them. Feel free to holler at your boii if you can't get it to work.
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This album should come as no surprise to those who know me on a more intimate level, but my number 1 album for 2007 is.......
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Nine Inch Nails "Year Zero": What can I say about Nine Inch Nails? Well I guess I can start out with Nine Inch Nails for dummy's which basically means that Nine Inch Nails is not so much a band as it is Trent Reznor's call sign. He uses a band for the live shows and certain recordings, but he does all of the production himself. He is a fantastic producer behind many other albums as well and help put Marilyn Manson on the map. He started as a helper in a studio and was paid partially in studio time. This is where Trent got his start on going solo since he could not find anyone to agree with him on a musical direction. He was influenced by Prince to do it all himself. Thus, the studio time he earned is what gave him the ability to lay down one element at a time, then mix them all. Trent's first album "Pretty Hate Machine" was one of the first independently produced albums to go platinum.
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Why do I love Nine Inch Nails? It's the way Trent mixes such strong ideas and music so perfectly. When musicians get aggressive, the result is usually sloppy. Sometimes that sloppyness is good, because there is nothing nice and easy about anger. Somehow, and I can't really define it, Nine Inch Nails captures the entirety of anger, agression, despair, and paranoia. Your favorite musicians have a way of being the voices you hear in your head, and when the mood is dark, there is no ones voice and music that quite hits me like Trent. He is calm and then not. He is crazy and unabashidly uncensored. Lots of other musicians are these things, but Trent seems to access it on another level. His visuals are also so unique and the videos are generally fantastic. His live shows are out of this world and he is always ALWAYS remixing his songs. The good news is that he is so secure in his ability, that he often lets other musicians, even common fans, remix his songs just so there can always be a new twist on an old favorite.
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Lets face it, to really be a Nine Inch Nails fan, you don't roll like Dick and Jane. Nine Inch Nails fans, (most of them are shithead teenagers who think they know, sucked in by NIN's cool logos and images) are people who have a connection to the macabe. They are closet horror fans and posses a darker soul than regular people. They have usually experienced real pain and despair at some point, or have found themselves attracted to it. I knew the first time I saw the video for "Closer" just before I started high school that I had to know more about this band and where it came from. It wasn't the peep show/gross out shock factor that attracted me, but rather the way Trent seem's so at home in the chaos. Like someone who grew up in a completely different world than everyone else and was honestly de-sensitized to the horror. Selling that genuine-ness is why NIN is so successful despite its very un-popular subject matter. I know I can't sell this kind of sickness as art to someone who can't get past the images. So I won't, but there is something so re-freshing about uncensored images and a beautiful song with ugly lyrics.
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"Closer" is the number 1 played song on my iTunes. I have it on just about every one of my playlists and its the only song I have never gotten sick of. At this point, my iTunes has it as being played 209 times. It's haunting, it's real, it's dirty, it's awful, it's wrong, and it's awesome. As similar as the style is from album to album, NIN is pretty diverse once you start to dissect the songs. But the similar industrial thump to most of the songs is something that once you let it in, It will always be near and dear to your heart or you'll never get it. You either love NIN or you don't.
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So why is "Year Zero" number 1 on the list? It's because its back to basics (somewhat) for Trent. Between 1995-2003 Trent was lost in some sort of "where do I go now?" period. The follow up to the smash album "The Downward Spiral" a 2 disc monstrosity of mix and matches called "The Fragile" was universally dis-credited and although I personally feel it was a great album, I think Trent felt as though he had lost the touch with his audience. He hid after that album, just doing some producing on the side. And although his new creativity was so fresh and easy early in his career, "Year Zero" is not mix and match because as a more mature musician, he needs a universal direction of story to be successful in popular music. "Year Zero" is a story of a future society in violence and despair based on the current government propaganda and egotistical/overconfident attitude of powerful nations. Something that most people can identify with due to the war and universal distaste towards President Bush.
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But, this isn't why I like this album so much. I like this album because Trent seems convicted. And when Trent seems convicted, I am convicted. Because when it comes to crazy, it isn't cool unless you believe it. So, its good to have Trent back, if only for a little while.
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Song Samples: Survivalism, Me, I'm Not, The Great Destoyer (hang in there on this video, it gets awesome) Capital G
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