Ghosts I-IV, Snow!

Mr. Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails fame) wrote a little tease on his website on February 16th 2008: ‘Two Weeks’. That’s it: that’s all he had written. Of course, among Nine Inch Nails fans, these two words ignited 14 days of speculation as to what that two weeks notice was pointing towards. Some guesses ranged from a complete website redesign, to a new tour announcement, and some even went so far as guessing that Reznor would be getting married on that day. Anyway, last night, all was made clear: Reznor released a brand new album available for immediate purchase and download on his site (www.nin.com). The entirely instrumental album was apparently recorded and mixed last fall during a ten week period and marks a departure from typical Nine Inch Nails fare. I remember reading an interview with Reznor a few years back expressing how he was interested in making a ‘rainy day’ type of record, which I think this might just be. I managed to listen to the first three tracks or so on my way to work this morning, and it’s really quite good. There are 36 tracks in all spanning from Ghost I to Ghost IV, so in reality you could look at the album as having four separate movements. Anyway, I’m glad to see Trent do something so different, and I’m quite positive this has something to do with his newfound freedom from the big record labels, considering he’s now an indy artist. The album will apparently also see a physical release in stores sometime in early April, but come on: $5 for two hours of music from Trent Reznor is a no-brainer, and I was happy to support the artist directly in his endeavors.

Anyway, had a good weekend with lots of snow shoveling involved. David 4.10, my gorgeous wife and I ventured out into the thigh high snow yesterday during the late morning to take on the white beast that fell to Earth. It’s still stuns me from time to time how WHITE everything is after a snow storm: opening that door to be greeted by vistas of pure white manages to make my eyes water. Or maybe I was just crying because of all the snow I had to shovel... the jury is still out on that one. David was a fantastic help, helping to transfer snow from one snow bank to another with his little green shovel. After a while though, he grew bored of that (don’t we all) and decided to just ‘accidentally’ fall in the snow... Repeatedly. It seemed like a good idea so I did the same. After taming the white beast, we retired inside to make a lunch fit for kings and queens only to see the snowplow leave a brand new snow-bank in our front entrance, which further confirms my theory that those plow drivers have a GPS like homing system that points them in the direction of freshly shoveled driveways.