Reznor on the 'found' sounds of 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'

It doesn't take a deep exploration of the soundtrack for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" before the music takes a turn toward the unsettling. Just a few taps on a piano becomes a reason for exploration, as each strike takes on a different tone until it's unclear what, if any, actual instrument is being played. Perhaps it's a piano, or maybe it's the sound of ice hitting concrete. 

"We had a chance on this film to explore something we’ve done in Nine Inch Nails," Trent Reznor, NIN frontman and film score composer, said in early November. "We could explore the idea of noise and found sound as music."

Reznor and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross, who earlier this year won an Oscar for their work on "The Social Network," have again teamed with David Fincher for their follow-up into the world of cinematic scoring. Unlike "The Social Network," however, in which Reznor and Ross were late additions to the project, the two were able to dedicate a full 14 months to the score for "Dragon Tattoo," with Reznor even visiting Fincher on set in Sweden when shooting began. 

"We didn’t have pictures, and we were given no script until the beginning of this year," Reznor said. "Yet you pretty much know what the story is going to be. I was talking to David on set in Sweden and he was explaining how cold it is and the vibe and read he’s getting there. He dictates things he hears, like there were a lot of bells and motifs he wanted to have access to. But a lot of that early phase is just working from an impressionistic, gut viewpoint."

It ultimately led to a score, six tracks of which were released for free online today, that feels more alive than the claustrophobic electronics of "The Social Network," with works worming their way through the dank and demented world of "Dragon Tattoo" and picking up and discarding pieces of the scenery at will. They were tools, Reznor said, sharpened while he working with David Lynch on his 1997 thriller "Lost Highway."

Josh Freese celebrates 'My New Friends' with songs generated by zany marketing campaign


Josh Freese is back with a new record, but this time he’s not planning to let fans come rummage through his wardrobe to promote it.

The versatile musician, who is practically a one-man band on his new EP, “My New Friends,” became a virtual one-man, new-model army to combat the music business’s ills with a wildly inventive, and remarkably successful, self-generated marketing and promotion campaign for his 2009 album, “Since 1972.”

You may recall that one because the Long Beach drummer par excellence for Nine Inch Nails, Devo, Weezer, the Vandals and A Perfect Circle and the in-studio go-to guy for countless other bands and solo artists (has any other musician on the planet recorded with Trent Reznor, Mark Mothersbaugh and Michael Buble?) cooked up a wacky multitiered marketing scheme to sell his self-produced album.

The offers ran from the ordinary ($15 for a CD and a download) to the nutty ($2,500 for a drum lesson or a foot massage, a visit to the Wax Museum with a member of the Vandals or Devo and your choice of three clothing items from his closet) to the truly ridiculous (a $75,000 package for which Freese promised to write and record a five-song EP about the buyer, join the buyer’s band — if he or she had one — and tour with it, then take him or her to a flying trapeze lesson with his former NIN bandmate Robin Finck).

Trent Reznor on finding the right notes for the 'Social Network' score: 'I saw a story about a guy who needs to prove himself'

There was no shortage of critical accolades heaped upon the score to "The Social Network," yet the work was far from conventional. In other words, the composition from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which is heavy on electronic atmospheres and forgoes the use of an orchestra, was not typical Academy Awards fare. 

Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails fame, and his frequent collaborator Ross stood out in an Oscar field that contained film composer veterans. Among the pair's competitors Sunday night at the Academy Awards were Hans Zimmer, whose booming work in "Inception" was hard to ignore; A.R. Rahman, who brought a Western-leaning rock 'n' roll slickness to "127 Hours"; and Alexandre Desplat, who used an orchestra with minimalist grace in "The King's Speech." 

Once an early favorite for best picture, David Fincher's legal drama "The Social Network," which takes its inspiration from the battle over Facebook and focuses on the company's enigmatic young leader Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), is action-less and heavy on the dialogue.

Reznor and Ross spoke with Pop & Hiss about composing the music for the film in late 2010. Now that the pair are Oscar winners ("To be standing up here in this company is humbling and flattering beyond words," Reznor said from the stage), Pop & Hiss presents the full, unedited transcript of the interview.

The score for 'The Social Network' came with rules, says Trent Reznor. Now how about tour dates?

For his first-ever film score, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame was eager to have a bevy of new toys at his disposal. Perhaps a string section? Perhaps a full orchestral suite? Yet "The Social Network" director David Fincher put an instant end to such film music tropes.

"We got the idea from David that he wanted something that was not orchestral and not traditional," Reznor said recently. "He referenced 'Blade Runner' and Tangerine Dream. He mentioned sounds that were a synthetic landscape of sorts. Then we just spent a couple weeks with no picture and no input and were thinking of how we could create a world of sound."

Reznor, working with frequent collaborator Atticus Ross, will vie with film composer heavyweights such as Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and A.R. Rahman, among others, for best original score at this Sunday's Golden Globes. It's illustrious company for Reznor's first film (Ross last worked on the film "The Book of Eli"), and the music of "The Social Network" couldn't be more atypical than the kind of orchestrations awards voters typically fawn over.

It's taut, largely digital, and minimalistic in its mournfulness, decorated occasionally with a piano. Whereas electronic maestros Daft Punk brought enough orchestral grandiosity to their "Tron: Legacy" score to stage a Fourth of July fireworks celebration, Reznor and Ross went the opposite route. Instead of adding to their synth-driven repertoire, the pair were taking away.

"We spent time in advance setting up rules," Reznor said. "If we were working orchestrally, we’d have these sounds and this kind of voicing to us. We adapted that to a world of modular synthesizers and an acoustic piano, and a general aesthetic of X,Y and Z."

Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger gets thumbs up from No Doubt/Nine Inch Nails' manager

Jim Guerinot, the manager of No Doubt, Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, the Band’s Robbie Robertson and the Offspring, was initially as skeptical as anyone in the concert business that the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger would clear the Justice Department.  But during the last year, as the two companies began working together more closely in hopes of uniting, he’s seen significant gains, both for his artists and their fans.

"I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of cooperation from them on fan-oriented programs to prevent scalping and lower ticket prices,” he told The Times on Monday.

He noted that anti-scalping measures that Reznor wanted for Nine Inch Nails’ farewell tour last year were implemented without resistance from Live Nation or Ticketmaster, and that both also fell in line with No Doubt’s wish to offer significant numbers of seats on the group’s 2009 reunion tour for $10.

“I can see where there would be concern from independent promoters, but on all my tours, I’ve been able to  lean into indies where I wanted to and where it’s more effective for the fans,” Guerinot said.

He believes the state of the economy nationally had a “tremendous amount” of influence in the approval from the Obama administration, which had been widely expected to exert far tougher scrutiny on corporate mergers than the Bush administration that preceded it.

Post-holiday pop headlines: Soundgarden, Kanye return, and Lenny Kravitz speaks on Michael Jackson leak

Let the Coachella speculation begin. After the universe rejected Chris Cornell's attempts at joining forces with Timbaland, the alt-rock survivor announced over the holiday weekend that Soundgarden would be getting back together. No major details, but there was a Twitter message.

Wrote Cornell, "The 12 year break is over & school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!" Billboard reports that the band has been fielding offers from "major U.S. and international" festivals, and Coachella would seem to be a prime landing spot. One complicating factor: Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron also works behind the kit with Pearl Jam, and the latter band has some touring commitments for 2010, including some summer dates at major European festivals.

Kanye is back. One of the biggest disappointments of 2009 -- at least for those who had designs on witnessing a pop spectacle -- was the collapse of Kanye West's attempted tour with Lady Gaga. Now the controversial hip-hop star says he's  back in the studio.

Writing an ALL-CAPS mission statement on his blog today, West promised to "bring you the best I have to offer with the same dedication that Kobe has on the court." But if you prefer your art with non-Lakers references, the Chicago-bred star also name-checks poets and artists Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-Heron and Nina Simone, noting, even if he can't spell all their names correctly, that "their work improved with time. They documented what was happening in culture. That is our responsibility."

West goes on, writing that "you can always look at our works and find truth and sincerity in a world of processed information." As far as Pop & Hiss is concerned, this is all good news, and evidence that Kanye won't be toning down the ambition, the grandiosity and the outspokenness that made him one of the decade's most defining artists.

Trent Reznor back on Twitter? Five classic tweets from the Nine Inch Nails rocker

The Nine Inch Nails pigs started marching Thursday night when Trent Reznor peeked up from the depths of married life with a message on his Twitter account.

The Twitter page @Trent_Reznor has remained quiet since October when Reznor returned briefly to drop two messages -- one about the anniversary of his first album release and another about a fan project compiling concert videos. Before that, there was a gap since July.

Despite the lengthy silence, Reznor maintains 636,520 followers -- fans still hanging onto the funny, stinging and smart messages transferred from the fingers of the electronic rocker.

He returned on Thursday, saying simply: "Is this thing on?" Minutes later, he addressed the much-publicized eBay auctions of some of his now-defunct band's gear. "Just clearing out some storage spaces for a new beginning," he wrote.

Once upon a time, Reznor was one of the most-buzzed-about stars on Twitter. Pop & Hiss has pulled out five of our favorite tweets from the 44-year-old musician.

Miley Cyrus says goodbye to Twitter with a rap; Courtney Love's account is removed

Twitter continues to lose some of its most-followed music celebs. Days after teen star Miley Cyrus removed her account, perpetual ranter Courtney Love has disappeared from the social-networking service. Love's Twitter disappeared without warning, but its removal came soon after Love's teenage daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, laid into young Ali Lohan.

Cyrus, however, isn't disappearing so quietly.

With rumors that she left Twitter at the behest of her supposed love interest Liam Hemsworth, the tween star and their friends channeled all their non-tweeting free time into a short, cheesy rap. "I stopped living for moments, and started living for people," Cyrus sings, adding, "Everything that I type and everything I do / All those lame gossip sites take it and they make it news."

Cyrus admits to some withdrawals, as well as missing Dane Cook's latest updates, but promises no more "fake feuds" with Demi Lovato. If the result of Cyrus leaving Twitter is more charmingly bad videos like the one above, Pop & Hiss applauds the move.

Cyrus was leaving Twitter while she was on top. According to data from BigChampagne, Cyrus had the third-most Twitter followers among musicians as of Oct. 6, with more than 2.2 million users tracking her pimple updates. Only Britney Spears and John Mayer had more.

But Cyrus and Love aren't the only high-profile musicians to disappear from the site. British singer Lily Allen, who ranks No. 9 among active Twitter musicians, hasn't updated since Sept. 28, going quiet after taking heat for her views on Internt file-sharing. Earlier this year, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor stopped updating his account, declaring on July 17 that "flesh and reality are calling." 

In May, rapper Kanye West ranted against the service, writing in his "Caps Lock" glory, "I'M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I'M NOT AND I'M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN'T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF."

Although she wasn't nearly as blunt, it appears Cyrus would agree.

-- Todd Martens

Related: Demi versus Perez? See Twitter, where celebs rant

Nine Inch Nails fans celebrate 10th anniversary of 'The Fragile'

Today is a holiday of sorts in the Twitter universe. Happy "The Fragile" Day!

Nine Inch Nails fans are reminiscing about the 10-year anniversary of the band's two-disc record  "The Fragile."

Using a Twitter convention called a hashtag -- that is, a search term preceded by a pound sign -- "#TheFragile" became a top-trending topic of chatter on the social network.

Due to a mix of devotion and Web savvy among fans, Nine Inch Nails is one of the few acts that can peak on Twitter's most-talked-about list with any regularity.

Others in their company are Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers -- dubious company, to say the least. (Though, it would make a pretty easy game of "which of these doesn't belong.")

On the band's own Twitter-like iPhone app for posting short, location-tagged updates, fans are buzzing about the anniversary. User TenMileSky writes, "I hope everyone is reppin a NIN shirt today."

Shortly after "The Fragile's" release on Sept. 21, 1999, the album received a bundle of overwhelmingly positive reviews. Many critics loved the grandiose hit  "The Day the World Went Away," which the band revived recently on its farewell tour.

But not every writer was enamored with frontman Trent Reznor's third studio album. Indie pulse-keepers Pitchfork gave the record a biting two-out-of-10 rating and an equally brutal review. That particular wound is apparently still stinging some fans.

Trent Reznor shines some light on what's next for Nine Inch Nails

As Trent Reznor stepped up to the mike during the fourth encore Thursday night at the Wiltern, he reinforced the plans that crushed fans and fueled skeptics -- that Nine Inch Nails is done taking their act on the road.

"To be clear, we're just not going to tour anymore as Nine Inch Nails," Reznor said to an emotionally drained crowd.

"I'm going to miss them," he said, turning to his band members. "It's been great to play with you and know you as friends and hang out with you and be cramped in a bus and smell each other's farts all day."

It certainly felt like the end. But Reznor etched a bit of a silver lining before launching into a powerful performance of "Hurt."