More Final Fantasy + Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails goodness, a continued look at some of the “happy accidents” of timing between unrelated music and film clips.

See Also: Final Fantasy Meets Nine Inch Nails

And also released today: the overcast #033

Enjoy!

I did not direct this animation (obviously). These are CGI cut scenes from Final Fantasy VIII, set to a soundtrack of Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails. It was part of an experiment I did back in 2001 while studying film scoring techniques.

The whole thing runs about 45 minutes; weighing in at 2GB (DivX), it’s not download or video-share friendly. But this is a six minutes or so clip of my favorite section of the experiment.

Throughout the larger piece, there were some really amazing (and accidental) moments of musical serendipity as far as timing goes, a la Dark Side of the Rainbow. Those “lucky” alignments are strikingly common, even when throwing together random pieces of music and video. What I ended up taking away from the experiment was a reminder to sometimes not be so structured and deliberate in my approach to score, to leave room for these wonderful moments of accidental timing.

With the buzz about Ghosts I-IV still going strong, Trent Reznor has dropped another bomb. Nine Inch Nails have just released another album - this one a full length with vocals titled The Slip - under Creative Commons license.

What’s different this time is that the entire album is available for free, even the ultra quality versions. There will be a physical release around July, we’re told, but unlike Ghosts you don’t have to buy something to get the CD-quality audio. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t something special in store for those who buy the physical media, much as they did for Ghosts.

The CC license - and its implications - are spelled out much more directly this time:

the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

©2008 NIN

One thing he didn’t list, which is allowable under the license, is: use it as your soundtrack for your (noncommercial) film. How often has an established major artist made that offer to the public? And not just for a song or two, but for close to three hours of music in the past two months!!!

About a week or two ago, they’d released the first single, Discipline, directly to radio stations just hours after it had been mastered. That’s a turnaround time which has proven to be totally impossible under the old music model.

I should also mention that just prior to the release of Ghosts, they launched their own remix site dedicated explicitly to user remixes of their songs. (Since With Teeth in 2005, Nine Inch Nails have been releasing the multi-track files for their songs and encouraging listeners to remix them, a phenomenon which precipitated the creation of my Only remix and music video.) And shortly after Ghosts, they launched a YouTube festival of sorts, encouraging people to create videos for their music from that double album.

Oh, and don’t forget the whole ARG phenomenon surrounding the album Year Zero.

The whole thing is almost unbelievable. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a massive surge of productivity by a single musical artist in my lifetime, certainly not one where that artist is so hands-on with the details, nor one which is so cross-media in nature. And, for a fan like me, it’s all good good good.

Get The Slip for free at: http://theslip.nin.com/

It all started with some minimalist blogs from the front man. The first, titled “?”, said only: “We have been very busy doing secret things. We’ll start to tell you about them soon.” Then “2 weeks“… “soon“… “tick tock, tick tock“… “2 hours.” Fans agonized and theorized… what was coming? Another ARG experience? Another collaboration? Another announcement?

What came was Ghosts volumes I through IV… a double-disc collection of Nine Inch Nails instrumental tracks of a variety of textures and tones. No advertising. No MTV hype. No record label. Direct to the public. And released under a Creative Commons license.

Whoa.

You can get 9 of the tracks for free, and then there are various tiers of commercial product you can purchase, each upping the merchandising factor from its predecessor. All the purchases include an immediate download of a high quality digital version of all of the songs.

It took me two hours to complete my purchase last night; their servers were getting annihilated by the traffic, which far exceeded even Trent’s high expectations.

When Radiohead did their In Rainbows release, T.R. had commented that it was a great concept, but could be executed so much better. Now we know what he had in mind.

It’s utterly brilliant. And the music is a delight, the more ethereal bits reminiscent of the Quake soundtrack from so many years ago, but with more sonic depth. Definite headphones / eyes closed material.

Congratulations, Nine Inch Nails. I hope this venture is as big a success as it is appearing to be.