welcome to oblivion, alright

i wrote a lengthy sort of psycho-analysis of trent reznor when this came out that has largely been rendered inaccurate by the new nin disc.

i think i'm developing a theme out of 2013: creative artists going back over some of the ground they developed around the same time as trends have developed around the sound they created once upon a time, but in a way that is more like connecting with roots than following trends. this is either reznor's attempt to sound like fever ray [although it never falls into a space that is nearly as poppy as fever ray] or it's pretty hate machine v 2.0, !now with ableton!.

i don't care about any of that.

it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between trent reznor and atticus ross mimicking trent reznor. that's also secondary, except to point out that the disc crosses the line to self parody. it's like...you've used that fucking sample in about 20 songs now, trent....maybe you should stop doing that now....

this could have been something, but it's too consciously structured as a marketable product. listening to it with a little space from it, and with better headphones, is still leaving me with the same basic reaction: this record is painfully constrained by a set of artificial boundaries that are far too limiting to capture the potential that the songs hint at, and it's enraging because what they hint at is an extrapolation of trip-hop into a level of abstraction that the genre never actually accomplished.

so, it'd be great to hear this remixed by some off the wall younger electronic musicians (doldrums, born gold, lingouf) but, nowadays, reznor is more likely to go after pitchfork picks than hang around the fringes looking for new shit. i'd expect remixes from mgmt and lopatin, if he were to bother. it's easy to forget that this is the guy that distributed warp records in north america, or that this band is named after a coil record. fwiw, it sounds more like cabaret voltaire remixing a collaboration between peter gabriel and kate bush.

i could go on; i'll stop. it's just frustrating....as has been the expectation for far too long...

art cannot produce change; rather, it is a product of change that is occurring. marxists have never understood this properly. plato, on the other hand, understood it perfectly.

it follows that art is an end, and not a means. when we see movements of creative art, we know something has already changed and it is too late for reactionary forces to reverse it. it's celebratory; gloating, even.

but, it also represents the phase where the movement becomes decadent. every art-based counterculture movement has been co-opted. artists inherently seek to go beyond struggle and merely exist. so, it's not just a failed tactic but we can understand why it's a failed tactic. let's learn from this, not repeat the same mistakes again.

http://jacobinmag.com/2013/12/art-in-the-age-of-fatalism/