The other threads are open for help, and 'wow, this is awesome' etc, because they link from the front page. But, yeah, go ahead and post reviews and the like here.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2011 05:43PM by YKWYA.

"The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" Soundtrack Review - Once again, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have composed the year's best score

Jonathan Lack at the Movies posted:

I think Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross may be my new favorite contemporary film composers.

At least, that’s my gut instinct after the duo write my favorite score of the year two years running. Last year, Reznor – he of Nine Inch Nails fame – and Ross collaborated to score David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” creating a bold new experimental sound that gave the film a potent sense of immediacy while redefining the power of ambiance. I’ve listened to that soundtrack album more times than I care to count, and I wasn’t the only one who took notice – even the Oscars, not exactly known for awarding work that breaks the mold (which is why “King’s Speech” won Best Picture and not “Network”), gave Reznor and Ross a 100% deserved Academy Award for Best Original Score.

This year, David Fincher returns with his latest directorial effort, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” based on Stieg Larsson’s gritty Swedish novel, and has brought back Reznor and Ross to do the music. As much as I’ve been looking forward to the movie – as a huge fan of the book and an even bigger fan of Fincher, I’m ridiculously excited – I think I’ve been anticipating the soundtrack even more. As “Network” indicated, Reznor and Ross’ experimental sound seems like a perfect match for Larsson’s dark, contemplative, and harrowing material, possibly freeing them to go even further in directions only hinted at on “Network.”

The soundtrack album was released digitally today, a few weeks ahead of the movie’s opening. Short version? It’s everything I hoped for and so much more – in fact, the highest praise I can give this score is that when I go back and listen to my beloved “Social Network” soundtrack now, it sounds boring. That is one hell of an accomplishment. For the long version, continue reading after the jump…

To begin, let’s discuss the presentation of the album, because it’s quite impressive. Most soundtracks deliver a condensed version of a film’s score, designed to fit onto a single CD (eighty minutes or less). Perhaps using their Oscar clout, Reznor and Ross have opted to go in a different direction, releasing their entire, uncut compositions, a 39-track, 173-minute magnum opus that is fifteen minutes longer than the film itself. It will be packaged on three CDs when the physical version comes out on December 27th, but today, you can purchase the soundtrack digitally via iTunes or directly from the Nine-Inch-Nails store, the method I personally would recommend as you can, for the same price as iTunes, get the album in a higher bitrate (I personally paid the extra two dollars to buy it in Lossless Audio – 44k CD quality – which, given the nature of the sound, is well worth it).

Suffice to say, it’s an extraordinarily comprehensive album. Not only does it include every last second of the score, but is bookended by two vocal tracks, one of which should already be familiar to audiences: the album opens with “Immigrant Song,” the Led Zepplin cover (sung by Karen O of the Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs) created for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” teaser trailer. Thanks to this relentless, spirited recording, that teaser quickly became one of my favorite film previews ever, and I’m very happy to see the full, uncut song appear on the soundtrack. It’s an absolutely mesmerizing piece. The album ends with “Is Your Love Strong Enough?,” a cover of the Bryan Ferry original by Reznor and Ross’ side project, How to Destroy Angels, that I assume will play during the film’s closing credits. It too is quite good.

But it’s the material in-between these tracks that is of most interest, and as I said above, I have no hesitation in calling this the best film score of 2011, even without having seen the movie. In fact, it’s easily entered the upper pantheon of my favorite film scores, and trust me…I listen to a lot of soundtracks.

That being said, I cannot guarantee others will feel the same way. The sound for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is bold, brave, and experimental, always exploring new musical envelopes and never attempting a sound that could be called conventional. There are few recognizable instruments heard here; instead, it is a collection of electronic sounds, ambient noise, and numerous sonic elements I cannot describe. It’s impossible to tell where most of the sound comes from (one prominent ‘instrument’ sounds like a beat up tin can being beat inside a room with lots of reverberation), but Reznor and Ross know exactly what they are doing with all of it, arranging all this noise into precise, captivating compositions.

Part of what makes the score work is that Reznor and Ross clearly have a strong understanding of musical theory. If they didn’t, how could they so effectively subvert and play with the conventions? The only prominent recognizable instrument (besides drums) is the piano, which many tracks are built around. The piano can be described as a key basis for music itself, so building these compositions around the piano gives the score an incredible sense of musicality, of clear and engaging melodic structure. As crazy as the score gets, experimental and wild and often rambling, there is order, an instantly identifiable base that gives the music shape.

Even when the piano isn’t present, Reznor and Ross’ musical mastery is always on full display. To me, the most brilliant thing about the music is that most of the pieces are built around singular, simple riffs: a melody, a motif, a phrase, a cadence, a drum break, or even just a simple, random sound. Not unlike Beethoven’s 5th, where the melody is played, broken down, and then rebuilt, Reznor and Ross take this musical idea, whatever it may be, and twist, build, and play with it over the course of the piece, layering new sounds on top of it, deconstructing and reconstructing the initial sound, or simply going in haunting, hypnotizing circles, always ringing absurd amounts of sonic power out of such simple phrases. “Oraculum,” the album’s absolute best track, is a perfect example of this, a drum break that, over the course of seven minutes, becomes an epic, sprawling, heart-pounding race; “Hidden in Snow” is a calmer but no less brilliant example of the same concept – this time built around a gritty chime – while “Pinned and Mounted” provides a forceful demonstration of the composers’ profound musical skill.

There are two other kind of tracks present: one is all about forward momentum, action and thrills usually built around drums, while the other is ambient: slow, contemplative, and meandering loops of experimental noise. The ambient tracks may test some listeners’ patience, as they are the most overtly avant-garde. I myself was on board for all of it; the ambient tracks play an essential role in creating the atmosphere of the score’s sonic landscape, and some are brilliant in their own right (“Perihelion” or “Under the Midnight Sun,” for instance). Part of what makes the soundtrack’s presentation so riveting is that it’s entirely gapless – the tracks all bleed into each other, and the transitions are flawless. It is, essentially, one giant piece of music, and no single track is expendable. The ambient pieces set the mood, clean the palette, prepare us for the next big composition; they complete the musical tapestry.

It’s hard to discuss the score in any further detail; it is so wildly unconventional that, by design, it escapes easy classification or description. I will say that the sound quality is absolutely fantastic, probably a result of the music’s largely digital creation. Not only is every sonic element crystal clear, the stereo channels perfectly utilized, but there are also vast amounts of depth and nuance to the sound, little details here and there flitting about in the background to enhance the soundscape. You will want this soundtrack in the best quality possible - $14 on the Nine-Inch-Nails store for lossless (1400+ kbps) is an absolute steal – and you should listen with the best headphones possible. I have studio headphones, and the effect is simply incomparable.

What more can I say? Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have crafted a masterpiece here. I say that in full confidence without having heard the music in its cinematic context – this soundtrack is so phenomenal that it works as a standalone piece of music, separate from the film. Once again, I will put the caveat out there that the music won’t be for everyone – if you like your instrumental tracks to stick to a symphonic setting, then this isn’t you cup of tea. “The Social Network” score should be a good litmus test. If you enjoyed it, you will enjoy this even more. If not? Stay away.

As for me, I couldn’t be happier with the results. Reznor and Ross took everything they learned composing “The Social Network” and brought their skills to a whole new level, crafting not just the best score of 2011, but arguably one of the defining pieces of modern film music. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” – the film – end up on my year-end top ten list on strength of score alone.

Album Rating: A+

5 Great Cover Songs Of 2011

posted:

Trent Reznor and Karen O, 'Immigrant Song'
Album: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The biggest hurdle when playing Led Zeppelin is capturing the core essence of the band's performances. Unlike Bob Dylan or The Beatles, whose words and melodies are identifiable in any style, Led Zeppelin's songs are harder to interpret. While equally iconic, the group's musical identity is so entwined with its members — Jimmy Page's searing guitar solos, John Bonham's ferocious drumming and, most of all, Robert Plant's soaring vocals — that it's less malleable in someone else's hands. Which makes the brilliant pairing of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O in "Immigrant Song" that much more impressive; they honor the original's explosive spirit while transforming the sound into something more sinister. The song is part of Reznor and Atticus Ross' score for the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — a cover-song-movie of sorts that remakes the Swedish films based on the popular Stieg Larsson book series. This treatment of "Immigrant Song" is an absolute stunner: Reznor's pulsating industrial electronics grind with abrasive intensity that serves as a perfect bed for Karen O's unsettling howl. The signature riffs are all there, yet the song is transformed into a Gothic nightmare, both sexy and disturbing. It's easy to imagine a leather-clad Karen O stalking the shadows of the stage, breathing heavily into the microphone before letting out her very best Plant-ian scream to the rafters. It's so dark, it might even freak out Robert Plant.

Trent Reznor on Relating to 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' Darkness; Why Grammys are 'Rigged and Cheap'



Issue 45 Cover Trent Reznor - P 2011
Wesley Mann

In the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-winning composer and Nine Inch Nails mastermind opens up about this new life in Hollywood, taking a break from the band, and how years of horrifying addiction and constant battles with his band’s business minders led to an artistic rebirth.

Gone was the eyeliner, the leather, the booze and drugs... When Trent Reznor took the stage at the 2011 Academy Awards to accept his Oscar for Best Original Score for David Fincher’s The Social Network, the 46-year-old frontman and creative mastermind behind the influential industrial band Nine Inch Nails, handsomely clad in a Prada tux and accompanied by his production partner Atticus Ross, beamed and — shocker — even cracked a smile. It was a moment that no doubt inspired countless Gen Xers to let out a collective, “Trent Reznor just won an Oscar?!”
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Sell out? Hardly. In the mild-mannered world of scoring, where John Williams and Randy Newman are household names, Reznor the rock star stands out, even though he’s one of more than a dozen fringe artists currently working in film, including Jonsi from Sigur Ros (We Bought a Zoo) and Chemical Brothers (Hanna).

Paired for the second time with perhaps his directorial equivalent, the equally dark and subversive Fincher, Reznor’s music for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo evoke the sort of nihilistic, dissonant sounds and anti-establishment themes on that could have been heard on Nine Inch Nails’ 1999’s double-CD The Fragile, not its biggest commercial success but an artistic highpoint for Reznor -- until Oscar came along.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter's music editor Shirley Halperin from his Beverly Hills home, Reznor gets candid about life’s highs and lows -- from his career to his addiction to his battle with record companies -- in this week’s THR cover story.

ON WHY DRAGON TATTOO HIT CLOSER TO HOME THAN SOCIAL NETWORK…

Although Reznor had a Facebook account when he began scoring for The Social Network (“I’m still suspicious,” he says), Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, with its frenetic pacing and sexually charged storyline centered on a Swedish murder mystery (adapted from Stieg Larsson’s best-selling book), felt like more familiar territory for the musical anti-hero who sang of needles, pushers and whores on the 3.7 million-selling The Downward Spiral. “The Social Network was very much an education from start to finish,” says Reznor. “It was tricky because it involved mainly people in rooms bitching at each other; it didn’t seem obvious what role music would play. This film felt a bit more like: ‘Ah, serial killers and anal raping, I know what that sounds like. It’s not as much of a stretch …’ Let me rephrase that -- a dark tone felt more familiar.”

ON WHERE HE KEEPS HIS OSCAR AND WHY A GRAMMY IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND

Nine Inch Nails sold 13 million albums in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan, were nominated for 12 Grammys and won two. But you won’t find either Grammy displayed in the house that Pretty Hate Machine built. Reznor, a native of Mercer, Penn., admits that having moved several times in the past two decades (Cleveland , New Orleans, Los Angeles), he’s not sure where the trophies are, nor does he care. The Oscar, however, sits prominently next to his Golden Globe (puny in comparison) in his living room. “Winning that Academy Award, I’m not ashamed to admit it,” says Reznor. “The others don’t mean anything. Why don’t the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap — like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided. The movie side is interesting, challenging, different and rewarding in way that I hadn’t experienced through my music career.” By the end of awards season, the music had claimed 15 of the film’s 126 honors (curiously, Social Network didn’t garner a single Grammy nomination).

ON HOW REZNOR CAME UP WITH THE THREE-NOTE MELODY THAT INSTANTLY DEFINED THE TONE OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Atticus Ross says he’s still amazed by the three-note theme to Social Network, which came as a last-minute add-on by Reznor to a nearly finished track, “almost as an afterthought.” Ross, 43, recounts the Oscar-making moment: “Trent said, ‘I’ve got an idea for this piano line; let me just try this.’ And he puts down that line and plays what I think is one of the greatest cinematic pieces of last year. Fincher really zeroed in on it, and it was that piece that changed the whole landscape of that film.” The British-born Ross has no hesitation in calling the melody “genius,” telling THR, “I can say that objectively because it wasn’t me who came up with it.”

REZNOR’S FIRST ATTEMPT AT FILM SCORING WAS A COLOSSAL FAIL. HE BLAMES ADDICTION

In 2001, Reznor was recruited by director Mark Romanek, who had worked on NIN videos “Closer” and “The Perfect Drug,” to compose music for the indie thriller One Hour Photo, starring Robin Williams. Reznor submitted several compositions, but none made it into the movie. “I remember there was an issue with the studio trusting someone who had never scored a film before, so that was the end of that,” he says, recalling the sting of rejection by Fox Searchlight. “But the way I choose to see things in my own life, I was getting into a pretty bad space. I was an addict and not functioning very well at that time. So I’m kind of grateful it didn’t come together because I couldn’t have done my best work then.” Whether his first film fail came before or after hitting rock bottom, Reznor can’t recall, but he says, “It was another brick in the wall of, ‘Hey, you need to get your shit together.’ ” He got sober that summer and has been clean for 10 years.

FRIENDS RECALL A “FUNCTIONING ADDICT” WHO WORKED TIRELESSLY AT SEEING HIS VISION THROUGH.

Reznor’s affiliation with Fincher goes back to 1995, when the director used a remix of NIN’s rock radio staple “Closer” as the opening sequence to his movie Seven. It wasn’t long after that Reznor launched himself headlong into a four-year stint in New Orleans, grappling with a heroin and alcohol addition that threatened to derail his music career or kill him, whichever came first. One former party pal who wished to remain anonymous recalls a fair share of drunken, cocaine-fueled nights in the Big Easy with Reznor and Marilyn Manson (who was signed to Reznor’s Nothing Records in 1993). “Trent would just go nuts -- he was addicted to the lifestyle, as so many of us were,” the friend says. "He's so much more positive now, it's an extreme difference." Another former member of NIN’s extended family described Reznor as an exceptionally functional addict. “He always delivered,” says the source, who notes that dealing with him directly often felt “like walking on thin ice. … He was very controlling of the work environment -- everything was about perfection and being very professional. But he had his vision and was always working towards it, whether he was writing an album or shooting a video or going on tour or signing other artists.” Today, says Reznor, “I feel fortunate that I came through it physically intact and with my brain pretty much working.”

ON TAKING A BREAK FROM NIN

Music’s most intense industrial act is not dead, but Reznor is taking a breather. What prompted the break? Touring. “It was starting to grate on me a bit that it doesn’t feel as truthful as it once did,” Reznor explains, the days when he and his bandmates would cover themselves in corn starch (to contrast the glut of black leather) long behind him. “I’m kind of moving into a different phase, and I think that’s a good thing in terms of a human being evolving, maturing and progressing — to not feel obligated to behave or write music for a certain thing.” Indeed, his new passion project, the band How to Destroy Angels, is a full-on family affair featuring his wife of two years Mariqueen Maandig and Ross. Their cover of Bryan Ferry’s “Is Your Love Strong Enough?” (from the 1985 Tom Cruise film Legend) appears at the end of Dragon Tattoo, and they are currently racing to meet a self-imposed mixing deadline. The band will release the album independently on Reznor’s own Null Corporation. Says Reznor: “No committees, no bureaucracies, no e-mails a week later of why you can’t do this. There’s no talking to people on the other side of the world that have their own set of agendas and ‘no’ written a hundred different ways on a piece of paper.”

ON RECONCILING WITH HIS RECORD COMPANY…

It wasn’t all that long ago that Reznor was encouraging NIN fans to steal his music (as an act of protest, claiming his label was price gauging for reissues and repackaged albums) and calling Universal Music execs “greedy f—king assholes.” But independence has its drawbacks, too. “I miss how a record label can help spread the word that you have something out,” Reznor confesses. “Sometimes I feel like stuff disappears into the ether. You tend to rely on the power of your Twitter feed and how loud you can shout from the rooftops, but I’ve noticed that voice isn’t so loud in, say, France.” Perhaps that’s what precipitated a recent lunch meeting between Reznor and Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine where the two “swapped war stories.” Says Reznor: “Jimmy is a friend. We get along better when we’re not working one under the other, not that I can remember it ever being a personal animosity. There was frustration when I was on the label because I believed it didn’t serve the customer right and couldn’t move as fast as I liked and I felt like, I’m not at the right place anymore.” Today, his views on the music industry’s shortcomings remain harsh and at the same time, realistic. “Today, if you’re not one of the four acts that gets carpet-bomb marketing and has a Coldplay-esque genericness that makes you a commodity to enough people that it warrants spending a lot of money to use outdated means of marketing to tell the masses what to like, you put a record out and it’s consumed, stolen, judged and forgotten in a day. It used to be a couple days.”





Wesley Mann
Oscar winner Trent Reznor's evolution from a rock nihilist and addict who once wrote his own (quite vulgar) epitaph into the musical, brilliant -- sometimes even smiling -- soulmate of director David Fincher.


While working on the score for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Trent Reznor had to block out the sway of palm trees outside his Beverly Hills home, draw the shades, turn up the air conditioning to meat locker temp and think: Winter. Conveying the sounds of a seaside town in northern Sweden -- the clank of icicles and bells, the drones of motorcycles and European floor buffers -- without having traveled to the location set where director David Fincher was filming presented both a challenge and an opportunity for the composer and his production partner Atticus Ross, and they were ready for either scenario.

"The Social Network was very much an education from start to finish," says the 46-year-old Reznor, who won a best original score Oscar for the 2010 Fincher film about the birth of Facebook. "It was tricky because it involved mainly people in rooms bitching at each other; it didn't seem obvious what role music would play. This film felt a bit more like: 'Ah, serial killers and anal raping, I know what that sounds like. It's not as much of a stretch …'" Reznor stops himself. "Let me rephrase that -- a dark tone felt more familiar."

He's not kidding. The singer and creative mastermind behind the influential industrial band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor has resided in creative areas of extreme discomfort for more than 23 years. Paired with perhaps his directorial equivalent, the equally dark and subversive Fincher, this musical anti-hero has sung of "needles, pushers and whores" on the 4 million-selling The Downward Spiral, is famous for denouncing his record company's marketing tactics as "label bullshit," encouraged his fans to steal his music and once joked that his epitaph should read: "REZNOR: Died. Said 'fist f--,' won a Grammy."

Yet, on this day, the soft-spoken Reznor, relaxed and charming in his loaf-or-work uniform of blue jeans and a black tee, has found himself in the most improbable of positions. He is an industry darling who has an Oscar on his mantel and is working for one of the biggest corporations in the world: Sony, the studio releasing Dragon Tattoo on Dec. 21. With its frenetic pacing and sexually charged storyline centered on a Swedish murder mystery (adapted from Stieg Larsson's best-selling book), Dragon Tattoo hardly makes Reznor seem a goth out of water. The nihilistic, dissonant sounds and anti-establishment themes on the soundtrack evoke those heard on the band's 1999's double-CD The Fragile, not its biggest commercial success but an artistic highpoint for Reznor.
Still, gone is the booze and heroin (he's been clean 10 years), the eyeliner and the leather. There was perhaps no better example of Reznor's evolution, and pride, than on Oscar night in February, when the beaming musician, handsomely clad in a Prada tux and accompanied by his wife of two years, singer Mariqueen Maandig (the two have a 14-month old son), took the stage with Ross for their acceptance speech and -- shocker -- cracked a smile. Countless surprised Gen Xers certainly let out a collective, "Trent Reznor just won an Oscar?!"

Sell out? Hardly. In the mild-mannered world of scoring, where John Williams and Randy Newman are household names, Reznor the rock star stands out, even though he's one of more than a dozen fringe artists currently working in film, including Jonsi from Sigur Ros (We Bought a Zoo) and Chemical Brothers (Hanna). "The man is truly one of the great original thinkers in music," says fellow Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, who lost the Oscar for Inception to Social Network. "Film music has become more personalized. It's not just about having the orchestra or choir, it's about composers and performers with a strong musical voice playing a prominent part in the piece. Trent does it tremendously well."

Dave Grohl, frontman for Foo Fighters and a contemporary since his days as the drummer in Nirvana, still considers Reznor the king. "I think it's safe to say that Trent Reznor is my generation's most talented musician/producer/songwriter," Grohl tells The Hollywood Reporter. "When he won the Academy Award, I was not only happy for him, but I was also happy that someone from my musical generation was being recognized not just as a rock musician but as a brilliant composer. As an artist. It was well-deserved."
Reznor, who proudly declares he's spent the past 14 months holed up in his home studio ("We're not anti-social, but we tend not to go out that much," says Ross), nonetheless maintains those familiar echoes of a troubled soul. "Winning that Academy Award, I'm not ashamed to admit it," says Reznor, whose NIN sold 13 million albums in the U.S. according to Nielsen SoundScan, was nominated for 12 Grammys and won two. But you won't find either Grammy displayed in the house that his band's 1989 debut album Pretty Hate Machine built. The Mercer, Penn., native admits that having moved several times in the past two decades, he's not sure where the trophies are, nor does he care. The Oscar, however, sits prominently next to his Golden Globe (puny in comparison) in his living room.


"The others don't mean anything," says Reznor. "Why don't the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap -- like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided. The movie side is interesting, challenging, different and rewarding in way that I hadn't experienced through my music career."

Reznor's work space is a typical L.A. home studio, a soundproof bunker designed not for style or comfort but for getting the most use of its tightly packed gear. Compared to the Sony lot's famed 2,300-square-foot scoring stage, where Zimmer once let Reznor sit in on a Pirates of the Caribbean session involving an orchestra of 60 (music for Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind was also recorded there), it's little more than a closet. But in this room, says Ross, 43, genius goes to work.

In fact, Ross is still amazed by the three-note theme to Social Network, which came as a last-minute add-on by Reznor to a nearly finished track, "almost as an afterthought." He recounts the Oscar-making moment: "Trent said, 'I've got an idea for this piano line; let me just try this.' And he puts down that line and plays what I think is one of the greatest cinematic pieces of last year. Fincher really zeroed in on it, and it was that piece that changed the whole landscape of that film."

It was Reznor's sense of anxious tension, often executed with the simplest melodies and chord progressions, that allowed Social Network to feel suspenseful without orchestral trickery. He went for quiet when you expected loud, and brought an audible elegance to character-less conference rooms. By the end of awards season, the music had claimed 15 of the film's 126 honors (curiously, Social Network didn't garner a single Grammy nomination).

Still, sometimes Reznor is asked to do what he does best: aggressive hard rock with dramatic builds, sharp hooks and biting words. Fincher went there by suggesting Reznor remake Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" with a female vocalist for the film's opening sequence. Reznor wasn't thrilled ("It's asking for trouble, much like covering The Beatles or a classic Stones song," he says), but understanding that there was a "clear captain of the ship," he capitulated, enlisting Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O. The result? The song has been called "amazing" by AOL's Spinner and "eerie and alive" by Spin.
Reznor's musical roots were laid down early -- at age 5, to be exact, when he took up the piano and was quickly noticed for having genuine talent. Around that time, his parents -- his father was an artist, his mother a homemaker who had Trent while in their teens -- split and he went to live with his grandmother.

Although he's long insisted that his childhood wasn't unhappy, Reznor, who attended Sunday school and was brought up Protestant, found himself drawn to the darker side of entertainment, horror movies like The Omen and The Exorcist and bands like the fire-breathing Kiss. After graduating from high school in 1983, where he was a regular in drama class productions such as Jesus Christ Superstar (he was, naturally, Judas), Reznor began to play with local bands around Allegheny College. He dropped out of school after a year but graduated to the Cleveland music scene, where Nine Inch Nails would form in 1988. Three years later, he was headlining the first Lollapalooza, and by 1994, when NIN topped the bill at Woodstock '94, the band had cemented its reputation as music's most intense industrial act.


Reznor's affiliation with Fincher goes back to 1995, when the director used a remix of NIN's rock radio staple "Closer" as the opening sequence to his movie Seven. It wasn't long after that Reznor launched himself headlong into a four-year stint in New Orleans, grappling with a heroin and alcohol addition that threatened to derail his music career or kill him, whichever came first. One former party pal who wished to remain anonymous recalls a fair share of drunken, cocaine-fueled nights in the Big Easy with Reznor and Marilyn Manson (who was signed to Reznor's Nothing Records in 1993). "Trent would just go nuts -- he was addicted to the lifestyle, as so many of us were," the friend says. Another former member of NIN's extended family described Reznor as an exceptionally functional addict. "He always delivered," says the source, who notes that dealing with him directly often felt "like walking on thin ice. … He was very controlling of the work environment -- everything was about perfection and being very professional. But he had his vision and was always working towards it, whether he was writing an album or shooting a video or going on tour or signing other artists."

At the time, Reznor's only film credits were as a soundtrack producer curating songs for films such as Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway, or contributing artist, like in Seven. But in 2001, he was recruited by director Mark Romanek, who had worked on highly stylized NIN videos "Closer" and "The Perfect Drug," to compose music for the indie thriller One Hour Photo, starring Robin Williams.

Reznor submitted several compositions, but none made it into the movie. "I remember there was an issue with the studio trusting someone who had never scored a film before, so that was the end of that," he says, recalling the sting of rejection by Fox Searchlight. "But the way I choose to see things in my own life, I was getting into a pretty bad space. I was an addict and not functioning very well at that time. So I'm kind of grateful it didn't come together because I couldn't have done my best work then."

Whether his first film fail came before or after hitting rock bottom, Reznor can't recall, but he says, "It was another brick in the wall of, 'Hey, you need to get your shit together.' " Reznor finally did in summer 2001, checking into rehab and, once clean, moving to L.A. Soon after, he met British engineer and multi-instrumentalist Ross, also a recovering heroin addict, and the two "hit it off," beginning a professional relationship that would span many bands but little released material. Says Ross: "We had quite a good run of things that never materialized."



For Reznor, what came next was the sort of existential crisis that can drive a creative person straight to relapse -- the notion that, if your best art came during your darkest days, what does that mean for the sober version of your former self? It's a tricky reconciliation that Reznor has spent untold hours thinking about. He explains: "It was a huge fear, realizing you've got a problem and asking, is that where all the art came from? Because if it is, maybe I should keep going down that path and die young."
He was finally able to look at his situation with clarity. "I realized that my disease was killing my art," says Reznor. "I certainly didn't feel creative when I was high anymore, so I made a decision: that trying to stay alive and feel OK about myself was better than the risk that maybe all of that good music was coming from this substance. And my output has gone up 20,000 percent since I've been sober. The difference is, I'm no longer afraid to look in the mirror, or to think, 'Can I ever pick up a pen and write a good song again?' That's a great recipe to end up with a blank piece of paper. I did that for years."

By the time Social Network, and now Dragon Tattoo, came along, Reznor was ready and understood the arduous process of matching music to picture and that is as collaborative a process as it gets. "We spoke with David in terms of broad stokes," Reznor explains. "First, we wrote from an impressionistic gut level with no script, although Atticus and I had both read the Dragon Tattoo book. Then, the way David works is he films digitally at night and the team back in L.A. assembles very rough comps of scenes so he can see the next morning if he got the shot. So we got to see a lot more of the sausage being made, and that's been enlightening. It's more work in terms of redoing, rethinking and restructuring things, but it's also taught us not to be precious about our compositions." In the end, three hours of spine-tingling motifs, from the ethereal to the fist-clenching, came to life (the movie clocks in at 2 hours, 37 minutes).


An often-asked question of rock stars: What's the band that made you want to be in a band? The Beatles may come to mind, perhaps The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground or Reznor's hero, David Bowie. And then there's Nine Inch Nails, a rite of passage for any goth kid, much like the Grateful Dead was to the high school stoner, only trade tie-dye for black and Birkenstocks for rumble-ready boots.

Fincher even alludes to the stereotype in a scene from Dragon Tattoo, when a disheveled, long-haired overweight hacker, who's helping Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) with her spyware, makes his entrance wearing a NIN T-shirt. Reznor had to sign off on the cameo. "I told Fincher, 'Look, man, do what you gotta do -- let's keep this as accurate as possible,' " he says with a laugh.

To that end, Fincher clearly appreciated what the tee symbolized: a global fanbase and maybe even a movement uniting disenfrachised outcasts launched almost singlehandedly by Reznor. “There’s a darkness and honesty to Trent’s music,” says Matt Pinfield, host of MTV’s120 Minuteswho’s become a friend of Reznor’s. “He’s an amazing songwriter and Nine Inch Nails are in a league of their own.

”As with Grohl and Foo Fighters, Reznor's radio presence with Nine Inch Nails has only multiplied exponentially over the years. In fact, the band had its highest-charting single (No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100) not in the mid-'90s when The Downward Spiral exploded, but in 2005 when a 40-year-old sober Reznor delivered another NIN insta-classic, "The Hand That Feeds."

But even with a hit in his grasp, negative experiences in the music industry tainted his successes past, present and future. No stranger to litigation (in 2004, he famously sued his former manager John Malm for fraud, citing unfair commissions and misapporpriation of his trademarks and won, the judgment awarding him nearly $5 million) or denouncements online, Reznor had publicly criticized his label Interscope Records for myriad
antiquated practices but perhaps most loudly about pricing, going so far as to encourage Australian fans to steal NIN's 2007 album Year Zero as an act of protest. "Steal it. Steal away. Steal, steal and steal some more, and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing," he wrote in a blog post, calling Universal Music execs "greedy f--ing assholes."

Says one Interscope insider who lived through the drama: "When Trent was upset, he let people know about it. He was opinionated and complicated but also funny, sarcastic and insanely smart."

Weeks after the album's release, Reznor and Nine Inch Nails were released from Interscope and swore off major labels for good. Says Reznor: "It was liberating and terrifying, those both occurred within about 60 seconds of each other. Now you can do anything you want. Oh shit, now what are we going to do?"

Reznor did what musicians do: he toured, but something felt different on the last NIN outing. "It was starting to grate on me a bit that it doesn't feel as truthful as it once did," he explains, the days when he and his bandmates would cover themselves in corn starch (to contrast the glut of black leather) long behind him. "I'm kind of moving into a different phase, and I think that's a good thing in terms of a human being evolving, maturing and progressing -- to not feel obligated to behave or write music for a certain thing." In a case of curious timing, that was when Fincher came calling.
“I was always a fan,” says Fincher. He directed the video to NIN's "Only" in 2005 and reveals that he used parts of Ghosts, the band's 36-track 2008 instrumental album, as temp music for The Social Network before booking Reznor for the job. “It was fitting to me that there were parallels in both Trent and Mark Zuckerberg — they were both iconoclasts, embraced technology, and were engaged in broad aspects of communication.”


The break from nin turned out to provide an opportune window for his latest passion project, the band How to Destroy Angels, featuring his wife Mariqueen and Ross. Their cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" (from the 1985 Tom Cruise film Legend) appears at the end of Dragon Tattoo, and they are currently acing to meet a self-imposed mixing deadline.

The band will release the album independently on Reznor's own Null Corporation. "No committees, no bureaucracies, no e-mails a week later of why you can't do this," Reznor says. "There's no talking to people on the other side of the world that have their own set of agendas and 'no' written a hundred different ways on a piece of paper."
But the DIY route has its disadvantages. "I miss how a record label can help spread the word that you have something out," Reznor confesses. "Sometimes I feel like stuff disappears into the ether. You tend to rely on the power of your Twitter feed and how loud you can shout from the rooftops, but I've noticed that voice isn't so loud in, say, France. … Putting a record out today, if you're not one of the four acts that gets carpet-bomb marketing and has a Coldplay-esque genericness that makes you a commodity to enough people that it warrants spending a lot of money to use outdated means of marketing to tell the masses what to like -- which we aren't -- you put a record out and it's consumed, stolen, judged and forgotten in a day. It used to be a couple days."
Perhaps that's what precipitated a recent lunch meeting between Reznor and Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine where the two "swapped war stories." Says Reznor: "Jimmy is a friend. We get along better when we're not working one under the other, not that I can remember it ever being a personal animosity. There was frustration when I was on the label because I believed it didn't serve the customer right and couldn't move as fast as I liked and I felt like, I'm not at the right place anymore. But I think he’s pioneering and what he’s done with [headphones] Beats [by Dre] is incredible."

For the first time in awhile, Reznor is relishing his accomplishments as well, which includes recently celebrating that decade of sobriety (he marked the occasion by spending the day with his family) and occasionally admiring the little man of gold staring at him from across the room. "[As artists], we have no problem beating ourselves up about things," says Reznor. "It's how we are -- there's always a reason to feel shitty about yourself. But after the Oscars, Atticus and I did take some time, went against our nature, and said, 'This feels pretty f--in' good. Let's take an evening, we deserve it. Let's not rush to the next thing we're going to fail at.' "


THE DRAGON TATTOO FRANCHISE: Swedish writer Stieg Larsson didn't live to see his Millennium series of novels published; he died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 50. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released the following year, and the trilogy of crime thrillers -- including The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- went on to sell more than 18 million copies and counting worldwide. The novels were adapted into a trio of Swedish films, all released in 2007, starring Noomi Rapace as goth hacker Lisbeth Salander and Michael Nyqvist as magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist. Dragon Tattoo became the most successful Scandinavian title of all time, and a Pan-European franchise was launched. And by mid-2010, Scott Rudin and Sony Pictures were fast-tracking the English-language version.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2011 05:59PM by OMS.

What Comes Forth In The Thaw. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo OST.

[www.dotsanddashes.co.uk]

posted:

14 months’ work sprawls out in front of me, almost 3 hours’ worth of material from the collaborative minds of Hollywood’s newfound audio darlings: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s a far cry from The Social Network’s more humble beginnings (as humble as creating the soundtrack of the year and bagging a few gold statues in the process can be) and Ghosts re-works. For The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is, indubitably, a film soundtrack, eschewing the pulsating, mind-driving digital beats that gave Jesse Eisenberg the gravitas his performance needed in favour of sweeping atmospheric brushstrokes that succeed in not only capturing the essence of the bleakest and most beautiful of Swedish winters, but also in creating a story in itself. What we are left with is possibly the most coherent, flowing film soundtrack since Thomas Newman scored American Beauty, and this is just that...

Stieg Larsson’s tale is now part of the fabric of modern literature, but what is less well known is that the original Swedish title of his first book in the Millennium trilogy is Män som hatar kvinnor, or 'Men Who Hate Women'. Fincher and Reznor seem to be more aware of this entitling to the multi-layered detective story and together with Ross, Trent has created a soundtrack that balances this precarious battle of the sexes wonderfully, pitching thudding, arpeggiated and menacing synths against delicate, organic instrumentation, dressing the amalgam with cold impartiality. Reznor has joked that the content of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is far more “up his street” than the story of The Social Network, and by God he was right: Reznor & Ross have captured the atmosphere of Lisbeth Salander’s struggle to exist in her brutal reality and blended it with the Vanger Family Mystery with seemingly effortless ability. That this soundtrack can wash over you and provide the noise to your thoughts is testament to its overwhelming power. Blomkvist’s measured, well-researched and deep-thinking approach to his task is reflected in the soundtrack’s gradual, overpowering swell towards a conclusion, layers building upon layers as the male protagonist uncovers the truth, overloading the senses with a wall of atmospheric noise pierced only momentarily by the lightest hint of a piano chord. The wealth of information Blomkvist is dealing with is reflected in the sound.

To comment upon any individual track within this sprawling opus would be folly; this work should be listened to as a whole. There are, therefore, no standout tracks, for this is a soundtrack. Whilst it is undeniable that particular moments of this 3-hour movement are phenomenal, if you are diving into the soundtrack looking to pick out one particular track, you’re listening in all the wrong ways. That said, much has been made of the two tracks included in this soundtrack that are not pure instrumentation: Reznor and Karen O’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song and How to Destroy Angels’ cover of Bryan Ferry’s Is Your Love Strong Enough? Initial intrigue aside however, these are the weakest tracks on the album. Exciting though it may be to hear How to Destroy Angels for the first time since their debut EP, the track itself fails to strike a chord within the context of this soundtrack. The overall “sound” of the track fits, yet after so much ambience and gentle percussion Maandig Reznor’s vocals are almost too harsh a contrast for the final track of the album (which is ironic, given how softly and beautifully she sings). That's of course not so much a problem with the song as much as it is with its positioning within the album. The major gripe with the song itself however is that it sounds vaguely akin to Fragile-era NIN while lacking the dread, anxiety, and general oomph of the period. Moments of it are great, and Reznor’s teasing background vocals make me crave hearing his voice again although I hope to hear much more from How to Destroy Angels' debut LP in the first quarter of 2012. The cover of Immigrant Song on the other hand excites in a way evocative of that now-cherished U2 rework: it's pounding, hard, heavy and loud. However it's too short: it feels rushed, desperate to excite, and somewhat token. Reznor and Karen O have done a superlative job of covering a song that should be uncoverable (again, see Zoo Station), and it's a mind-blowingly better effort than Leona Lewis’ attempt to cover Hurt (Jesus Christ, don't get me started on her act of po-faced sacrilege), but once again I’m not sure it fits the soundtrack. It was impressive in combination with the teaser trailer for the film released a while ago, but as the opening salvo to a soundtrack that then goes on to become increasingly delicate, introspective and beautiful, it once again feels extraneous.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo represents the best film soundtrack released this year, and possibly its best instrumental album (soundtrack or otherwise) as well, and it's both striking and staggering to experience. If Reznor and Ross received an Academy Award for their work on The Social Network I'll be stunned if they are not remunerated with praise and gold three times over for this soundtrack. Not only is it more coherent and more of a “soundtrack” in the conventional sense, but it is a sumptuous feast of atmosphere and sterility; warmth and cold; love and hate. This recording is so complete that it cannot be dislocated from the story to which it provides music: the soundtrack reflects the story and vice versa and, in doing so, achieves its reason for being perfectly.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2011 06:07PM by OMS.

LobotomyBaby posted:

I noticed the Hollywood Reporter spoke of his heroin use. How many publications are gonna continue this?

Didn't Trent himself say he was never on heroin but coke?

He did heroin once, by accident. Anyway, the article actually knew that Atticus existed, which alone means they've done better journalism than some *cough*Pitchfork*cough* websites.

Sheepdean posted:

LobotomyBaby posted:

I noticed the Hollywood Reporter spoke of his heroin use. How many publications are gonna continue this?

Didn't Trent himself say he was never on heroin but coke?

He did heroin once, by accident. Anyway, the article actually knew that Atticus existed, which alone means they've done better journalism than some *cough*Pitchfork*cough* websites.

I guess you mean the London accident, but I would swear I read somewhere how he said that he tried heroine for the first time being much younger while listening to Lou Reed's famous song about said substance, but that he just didn't like the experience very much, although I could be confusing Trent for some other rock star with this story, but I think that I read something like that, that he had used it in some occasion/s but he just liked to drink and some cocaine much better.

But all the references to needles in TDS makes a lot of people think that he has been an heroin addict, but maybe those references were not about himself but just about somebody else who had ruined his life with heroine (maybe Jeff Ward, who is mentioned in the credit notes of the booklet, idk. I don't mean the album was about Ward, but that maybe what happened to him or to other people that Trent might have known maybe inspired him to write an album about somebody that ruins his life, that has not why to be an specific real person but maybe a fictional one based on his own experiences or on the experiences of people he knew, but I really don't know, maybe some day he will make it clearer).

And about Atticus, yesterday I saw something in ets that I found really hilarious, specially because it could be true:

dominik from ets posted:

Trent, defend yourself!!! X-D

Trent Reznor on His Golden Globe Nod for ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’

[blogs.wsj.com]

Speakeasy caught up with Nine Inch Nails rocker Trent Reznor this morning to talk about his Golden Globe nomination for Best Score with partner Atticus Ross for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Reznor and Ross previously collaborated with director David Fincher on the music for “The Social Network,” which won the Oscar for Best Original Score in February. Based on the book by Stieg Larsson, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” tells the story of a black-clad computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander who seeks justice for the wrongdoings done to her. Lisbeth is played by Rooney Mara who also received a nomination.

With your previous acclaim for both Nine Inch Nails and “The Social Network,” does this award have a special importance to you?

In all honesty, it really does. I know it’s because scoring film is really a new discipline for me and something I have always been very interested in but never really did before “The Social Network.” There I had the opportunity to be ushered into this world with the guidance of David Fincher and working on his projects, which is an excellent and terrifying place to start.

Both of your forays into scoring have been very edgy projects. Are you interested in composing for something like an animated film or romantic comedy?

After “The Social Network,” I thought maybe I do know what I’m doing here, so my natural inclination is to think, “what can I do to challenge that?” Like what you said, an animated film in particular would be very interesting for me to see as a composer what that challenge would present and see what I could come up with. I’m interested in the idea of that, I would just want to make sure that I would be with a team of people who have the same integrity, which is what it comes down to.

How does your process differ from scoring a film versus writing an album?

When writing music for a record or project of my own, one of the tools I use is to start with a visual, a scene in my head or a place, sometimes a very literal place that I’ve been, sometimes an imagined place, and try to dress that set with sound and try to create an environment for a song to live in. If it is an instrumental place, it really becomes about that mood and setting, if it is a vocal piece or pop song that becomes the setting for the narrative vocal to sit in. So when thinking of it in those terms, it is not a huge stretch. We are just dealing with an image coming from someplace else and it is my interpretation of that image. And it is working to support that scene in the best way that I can. Initially when David first approached me about “The Social Network” it was “Oh my god, how do I do this?” Should I try to take a crash course in film scoring or an internship with a real composer to learn the process? Atticus [Ross] and myself, our first inclination was to say let’s see what happens first, to trust our instinct and see if that resonates with David. And it did.

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is very different than “The Social Network.” How was the development different?

With “Dragon Tattoo” we set aside this whole last year. We have been working with this for 14 solid months and we set aside that amount of time to allow ourselves the opportunity to pursue every avenue we could think of and back out of blind alleys when we were leading ourselves down them. The process was the same in terms of we composed a lot of music without seeing anything. About a year ago we turned in an hour and 20 minutes to David with no script. Based on conversations with him and certain key reference points that he mentioned to us, I knew the story, I had read the book and we worked from a place of what felt emotionally like it could fit that landscape and setting. We wanted to give the filmmakers a lot of music where they could start cutting to it right away rather than ever having to use temp music. We would start weaving our music into the fabric of the film at a very rudimentary place so it would become part of the film and the way the film was put together, which is kind of the opposite of how most composers work.

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” franchise has been a huge success in Sweden. Did you watch the Swedish version and take anything from it?

I had seen the Swedish version of the first film when it first came out, long before I ever knew I would be involved in working on this film. Once David asked me to work on this I made a point of not paying any attention to what they had done. And I didn’t particularly remember anything about the score in that film. As we finished this project I then went back and watched them just as a reference point. But there wasn’t much of an influence.

Because you’ve had so much control over your music, what was the transition into the collaborative process like?

It was a refreshing change and a welcome change in the sense that in my world I’ve become the top of the pyramid in calling all the shots and the weight of the decision-making rests on my shoulders and I frankly wouldn’t have it any other way. It wasn’t by accident that that came about. But with that said, there has been a longing in me to work in a truly collaborative environment. And working with David means working under his vision and guidance and he is not the kind of person that doesn’t have an idea of what he wants. When you speak with him you very quickly realize he has thought this through very thoroughly. To have a collaboration work at any level the key ingredient is respect and I very much respect his vision as an artist and a person. I am working in service of David and to the picture and this is a different role. It makes me appreciate working on my own but it makes you step up to the plate and make sure you are keeping up.

Have you second-guessed your work?

I’ve turned in a piece and sometimes it comes back and David has said, “No, I liked it better another way.” My first impulse that wells up in my throat is to say “You are wrong,” but I’ve learned not to open my mouth at that moment because although we don’t always agree on things, when we differ he is looking at the film as a complete work and he is thinking about something in a macro way. I didn’t realize “Oh it follows these other four things.” He’s looking at this thing, he has an incredible ability to micro-manage, in a good way, and pay an intense amount of detailed attention to the minutia but at the same time keep the big picture in mind. And I’ve learned to just trust him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2011 09:01AM by OMS.

LEONCIORULES, please stay on topic.

This thread is for interviews and reviews of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo OST only. Posting material other than that is beyond the scope of the intentions of this thread and should probably be posted elsewhere (such as Random Comments or NIN Spotting) therefor posting off topic links and discussion only clutters the thread.

TIA.

You posted a link about a Fincher project that TR is not connected to. Also, comments about the heroin question by another member went severely off topic.

TIA.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2011 12:15PM by OMS.

Amazing film score!!!! Can't wait to get myself a solid copy in a couple of days just for the UK!!!

OMS posted:

Trent Reznor: The Fresh Air Interview

[www.npr.org]

Almost 40 minutes...click to listen.

That was kind of hard to listen to in spots, obviously the interview kinda struck some nerves.

You could hear it in Trent's breathing and everything that things were getting uncomfortable.

OMS posted:

Trent Reznor: The Fresh Air Interview

[www.npr.org]

Almost 40 minutes...click to listen.

This was great. I love that the NPR world gets a taste of the Trent we all know and love. This interview will make all of your doubting friends and family understand.

And after hearing this interview I really doubt Trent will be performing older songs...as he says it takes him to a dark place in his life and throws him off....as a recovering addict you must move forward not wallow in the past....I believe we will hear more music from him...and he may perform it...but we won't be hearing "Closer" "Head Like a Hole" etc live again.

I'm surprised they don't ask him more about his kid.