Me buying this record was a direct result of seeing them at a festival a few years earlier. Nine Inch Nails is the musical brainchild of singer and writer Trent Reznor. Reznor is a creative mastermind, so much that he does most of this alone. Studio albums are made by him alone, but while touring he chooses some musicians to accompany him. Grudgingly, his long time touring partner Atticus Ross was admitted to the now two man band, though he was already working with Reznor since 2005.
I love the looks of this album. It I suppose it is what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, showing the beauty of decay. Wabi-sabi is all about showing things that are not complete, or maybe once were, but have now rusted or are broken. It shows there’s always something left to finish and things are never complete. This might be a lesson for the self-admitted perfectionist Reznor.
Reznor has also been very active for the freedom of music, especially copyrights. Something unheard of, it goes even so far as him publishing the original studio tracks so that people can do the mixing themselves, according to their tastes. He also published some of his music under a creative commons license.