Preparations

Woah.

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, I've been getting settled in my apartment (which is really, really, really nice). It's so neat and cozy. In fact, it's like the size of my parents house only without the garage. I like it. I've already starting putting up my posters and nick-nacks in my room to better suit mah needs.

Today we went to Forth Worth to check out an IMAX presentation called, “Deep Sea” which was really awesome. After that we had dinner at Peter Piper Pizza with Mariel.

Yesterday I had the student orientation at UNT. It was okay, but very boring. Sucks I won’t be taking any classes this semester. Alas, I’m registered and ready.

So, about that Nine Inch Nails concert..



The Nine Inch Nails show this past Monday in Dallas was really, really, amazing. The production back in 2005 when I first saw TR and his crew was excellent. The production in the Summer of 2006 picked it up a notch with an intense set-list and spectacular visuals.

Now, in 2008 he's raised the bar even further. I honestly do not know how Trent can top this new production. It is just jaw dropping. I mean it when I say that. There is a point in his two hour set where the band gets extremely minimal instrumentally and they begin to play songs off Ghosts.

As Trent played the piano to Ghosts I, I was floored. The stage turned into a dark world. There was a moving dark sky. The sand dunes were blowing. It was an amazing, and very artistic performance. At one point everything turned into a forest. The trees and raining water covered Trent and the boys. I was fucking speechless. Everyone around me couldn't believe what they were watching. Even the n00bs who only come for the hit singles were floored. FLOORED. I ain't exaggerating. It was unlike anything NIN has ever done.

It was also very cool to finally hear material off of Year Zero. Last time he toured the US, he only had With Teeth released. Since then he’s made 3 albums, so there was a lot of new things to expect. I danced the night away and while I wasn’t I just amazed at the spectacle that is NIN. “The Greater Good” off of Year Zero was “WOAH.” The entire stage turned into static and moved with the beats of the music only to have Trent’s face coming in and out of the static zoomed into his mouth and eyes. Radiohead had done something similar back when I saw them in May only Trent leaped miles over it. Everyone was astonished.

Truly a show to remember. Here is what the Dallas Morning News wrote about it:

Nine Inch Nails show is a multimedia vision, come to rocking life
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 19, 2008
By MIKE DANIEL / The Dallas Morning News
mdaniel@dallasnews.com

Put this in lights: Thinking outside the big, bad music-biz box can pay off.

It's not a coincidence that Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails – the two acts that have usurped the traditional music-sales model to the grandest effect in the past year – have also staged the two most visually dazzling concerts of 2008.

But Radiohead's static forest of dangling neon icicles feels like a half-baked, budget-conscious collegiate gallery installation compared to the multipanel, megastrobed mastery of Trent Reznor's multimedia vision, as executed on Monday in front of roughly 7,000 people at American Airlines Center.

You might've wondered when someone would put one of those grate-like see-through LED-monitor curtains to full use. Well, Mr. Reznor did, but not until after starting the two-hour concert at a breakneck, instrument-breaking tempo with four snorting techno-punk tracks from his recent release, The Slip, in addition to "March of the Pigs," "Closer" and three more selections for the crowd's classic NIN nuts.

Then, three of those light grates began moving up and down, as if backdrops to a postmodern opera about industrial catharsis soundtracked by a mad (or, at least, mad as hell) John Philip Sousa type with an acute case of Orwellian futurethink.

First, the band manned all manner of electronica gear to perform "The Warning" and "Vessel" in front of the stage-front grate as it flickered with faux spotlight auras. Then a midstage panel lowered to depict high-contrast desert-scapes and swampland during exotic instrumental passages from the quartet of recent Ghosts releases. (You've gotta admit that seeing the beefy Mr. Reznor play an orchestra-quality xylophone is a treat).

Then the show became art.

TV snow hid the band behind the front panel during another instrumental; then a hole burned through the digital static to reveal them. A blue, jazzy turn through "Piggy" morphed into throbbing mountain topography during "The Greater Good" as Mr. Reznor's fist-accompanied, singing face flitted in and out. A little later, Mr. Reznor, guitarist Robin Finck and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen frolicked beneath a rack of swinging LED tubes during "The Big Come Down."

We were told that Mr. Reznor decided not to allow photography at the show because he wasn't feeling well, though he and the band sounded fine. That's OK. Photography wouldn't have done this technical spectacle any justice.

Yes, photography wouldn’t have done any kind of justice which is why I held off taking photos.

Here was the list of songs played in order:

999,999
1,000,000
Letting You
Discipline
March Of The Pigs
Head Down
The Frail
Closer
The Line Begins To Blur
Gave Up
The Warning
Vessel
Ghosts 1
Ghosts 25
Ghosts 19
Piggy
The Greater Good
Wish
Terrible Lie
Survivalism
The Big Come Down
Ghosts 31
Only
Down In It
Head Like A Hole

Echoplex
Getting Smaller
God Given
Hurt
In This Twilight

In This Twilight was beautiful and I truly felt as if the world was coming to an end. As he sang, the explosions and destruction The background visuals showed a world being destroyed by it’s own resources. A hint of what is going to come.

Year Zero 2, is right around the corner..

Anywho, I’m going to have a lot of time to myself this coming weeks so I am going to be using my time wisely and will be in the laboratory preparing, finishing, and creating new artwork for my reckless heart and bleeding soul to achieve some kind of solace.

Dark times are ahead, so I’ve got to use this chance to be heard. ; )