CROWDCTRL

Every so often a piece of art comes along that manages to change the landscape of that genre, or even blast across artistic lines and change other totally unrelated facets of life and art.

Nine Inch Nails has done such a thing with their newest record Year Zero.

Engulfed in an alternate reality game (or ARG) much like the underground guerrilla marketing campaigns that launched with Blair Witch and Halo 2, Year Zero is the soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been filmed, said NIN mastermind Trent Reznor.

And tho Trent himself hasn’t given much detail to this “year zero” concept, he’s left many clues, including discolored letters on tour tshirts, hi-fi mp3 rips on USB drives in bathrooms (he released 5 songs this way), outdoor hand-painted murals, cryptic phone messages and even Morse code.

Each clue led to website after website, totaling 25 domains to date, all detailing this alternate reality where the current climate of anti-terrorism and Patriot Act -type government control has led to an era of no rights and the creation of such government entities as the Bureau of Morality.

Times get so bad that, presumably, a group of quantum computing “pilgrims” working for a quantum encryption company figure out how to send information back to our current time, in hopes of changing the future. This helps to explain the choppy, fuzzy style of every website found so far.

Eventually, a catastrophic event occurs (of which no detail has been revealed) which forces the reconciliation of time to start over. Hence, “year 0.”

Full details at the NIN Wiki, where I found this morsel, an excerpt from a message from Trent Reznor about the album:

This record began as an experiment with noise on a laptop in a bus on tour somewhere. That sound led to a daydream about the end of the world. That daydream stuck with me and over time revealed itself to be much more. I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don’t. This record is the latter.

The concept has its own characters, a twisting and often terrifying plot (complete with nuclear attacks and visions or hallucinations of “the hand of God” coming down from the sky), and now it has its own soundtrack, released today, April 17.

This changes everything about music to me. Digital files left in bathrooms, an elaborate series of css-driven websites, encoded messages and images within all these artifacts, and finally the streaming of the entire album online at yearzero.nin.com.

After years of artists fighting the internet only to see record sales continue to decrease, Trent and NIN have embraced the medium, unleashing this massive concept clue by clue, using the internet and technology in ways no other artist is even capable of conceiving.

As a result, Year Zero has become the most popular music on Technorati, and has driven the rabid NIN fans to insanity with baited breath for this release.

To say it worked is an understatement. He’s changed the game. It’s all different now.

And that’s not even talking about the soundtrack.

The record is revolutionary for NIN themselves. The album takes everything that was good about each of their previous recordings, from “Hurt” to “Down in It” to “Closer” to “The Perfect Drug” to the entire Fragile double disc, and takes them higher than they ever were alone.

To his tell-tale blend of industrial noise Trent adds elements of drum & bass, big beat electronica, and messy downtempo that would sound perfectly at home on Warp Records. The result is something both dirty and beautiful, a perfect mix of acid-dance ambassadors Squarepusher or Aphex Twin and the gritty, layered complexities of Tool or Ministry.

In a way these songs are much more accessible than anything Trent has done. And in a way, the backdrop of the mysterious concept is so elaborate that I think few will take the time to truly understand it.

While each song adds another chapter to the mystery, it all comes together in a very real sense as some of the best writing and composing Trent has ever accomplished. It’s as if writing and scripting this alternate reality flung open the doors of inspiration and welcomed all that was in those dark unseen closets of his imagination.

This effort of his has consumed me. I have yet to listen to anything else. My iTunes count reads 30+ for each of these tracks, and I’ve had them about a week.

The best, most inspired tracks will get their own treatment here. Stay tuned. As a recommendation, buy this album. It very well may change the way you think, and not just about music.