With nearly a quarter century of active music making and recording under his belt in one form or another, Trent Reznor could be forgiven for wanting to take an extended break at some point. But in recent years he seems to have moved into full overdrive, even as his flagship identity Nine Inch Nails has gone on an extended hiatus. One outlet is his new collaborative group How to Destroy Angels, featuring Rob Sheridan, his wife Mariqueen Maandig and another regular musical partner of recent years Atticus Ross, his Oscar co-winner for the soundtrack to David Fincher’s The Social Network. Their second EP, An Omen, features another understated, beautiful and tense group of songs, with vocals from both Reznor and Maandig but predominantly the latter, as on the striking featured single, ‘Ice Age’.
The thing that struck me about this EP, even more so than the first one from 2010, is that space, silence and deliberation felt key throughout, especially on the latter three tracks. Was it always intended to be that way or did that come together as recording progressed?
Trent Reznor: We went into it with this long-range goal of trying to see what develops, to let it present itself and to experiment with a lot of styles and messages and tracks, and how they came together. What we felt was the shortcoming of the first EP was the result of it being just a few weeks in the studio to see what happens. It was kind of demo-ish to me, it felt like you could see the DNA of where it came from, that it hadn’t really become its own thing yet, but it was fun to just to see it come out. In this day and age of music consumption, we felt that rather than letting it sit on the shelf and wait, we felt we should put it out just as a memento of where we were at that time.
Since then we’ve recorded a bulk of music that’s always been living as an album. The decision to sign with Columbia as a means of really reaching out to more people than just the Nine Inch Nails fanbase was really the main reason behind that. So the decision to put a record out meant – should we start with singles, should we put some tracks out? The idea of a strong EP came up, so we extracted some tracks that felt like they could fit together. They were meant to be on the album and some may remain. We spent a couple of months tinkering around with the sequencing and we wrote another track for it, there’s still a lot of glue keeping it all together and I’m pleased with the results. I think it’s an interesting EP that gelled together pretty nicely.
Asking a little more on the collaborative nature of the EP, now that you feel the group has transitioned more into its own thing. Do the four members meet in the middle, does one person present an idea that is then developed, or does it vary, song for song and impulse for impulse?
TR: It comes down to parallel tracks. One is primarily Atticus and myself starting with an idea – we were heavily inspired by old Cabaret Voltaire, starting with the sound of old analog sequencers and things, trying to sync up things in conception, and machines working together in concert but not quite able to do so. I think that concept led to experimentation as it proceeded. The other track would be Mariqueen coming up with melodic ideas – sometimes completely unrelated to what we’re doing – lyrical concepts and fragments of lyrics that were married to this music. It would often go in a direction that Atticus and I didn’t intend it to, and that marriage, that collision, would make it feel a lot different to how a Nine Inch Nails record would feel, or a soundtrack as it evolved.
Your specific work for How to Destroy Angels, as opposed to other activity and projects that you’re doing right now – do you find that working in a group form results in something where you’re challenging yourself, or is it more an extension of a certain part of yourself? Or is it a mix of both?
TR: Hmm, interesting! This is something that may or may not qualify as an answer for that – when Fincher asked me to work on The Social Network score, and I accepted because he was somebody I respected as a person and as an artist, it was a respectful environment but it was an environment where clearly I was working under him to serve what he wanted to make. That’s very different from how Nine Inch Nails operates, where at the end of the day I’m making all the decisions and in that pyramid of power I’m sitting at the top of that, vision-wise, direction-wise, final vote-wise. I found that I really enjoyed being in that respectful environment, not being at the top of the pyramid.
When working with like-minded people on a project that was very interesting, with respect going both ways, it was fun to be in that supporting role. I wasn’t thinking that way out of laziness, I was thinking more that it was interesting to be taking direction. That’s something I’ve learned later in life here, that there is something that I responded to in that. When he asked if I could do The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo right after that I said "Yes, I really enjoyed that!"
Coming out of a few years of doing that, I’ve started to fuck around a bit with Nine Inch Nails stuff, writing music that feels like it could belong in that category, and I found it very invigorating and inspiring because I hadn’t done it for a while, and it feels good to be taking the reins.
With How to Destroy Angels, it was more in that center column of working collectively, about realising that it’s not all my decision, that I think I would have done it this way, but okay, we’ve decided to go that way, and discovering that works, that basic collaboration. It’s the reason people collaborate in the first place. That had little impact on Nine Inch Nails evolved but now I’m enjoying collaborating in various different forms, while at the same time it’s reinvigorating my interest in autonomy as well.
From: https://thequietus.com/interviews/trent-reznor-interview-how-to-destroy-angels/
