On the website for Ghosts I-IV, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor writes that the purely instrumental album was recorded as an experiment: “10 weeks, no clear agenda, no over thinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens in that time gets released…as something.” The album was conceived as the “result of working from a very visual perspective—dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams.” This concept certainly shows in the music, which floats along between disparate sounds and textures, generally doesn’t take the listener from “point a” to “point b,” and often ends mid-phrase, leaving the listener unsettled and unsatisfied. Though at times the music achieves moments of amazing beauty and hellish claustrophobia, when taken as a whole, the album—which stretches through four “volumes” over the course of nearly two hours—often comes across as a series of unfinished experiments. While a fascinating glimpse into Reznor’s creative process, the music can be extremely difficult to digest in an “involved” listen.
Ghosts I-IV opens with a meditative piano melody that could have come from 1999’s The Fragile. As the piano delivers lush sustained chords, ambient sounds gently layer in and carry the listener to the recesses of his subconscious. This sets the tone for the album, which alternates gentle piano interludes with explosions of industrial guitar and synth distortion, mallet percussion, and sonic combinations impossible to describe in words. As background music, the album works quite well—most of the time it shifts through mellow minimalist layers in the same way one’s mind drifts during daydreams. Throughout, Reznor’s genius as a producer and sonic sculptor is as evident as ever.
On his website, Reznor writes that he invited other musicians to his studio to participate in collective improvisations which became the basis for much of the music. This works to great effect in songs like “23 Ghosts III,” where fuzzy synths battle blues riffs with distortion-drenched guitars. “14 Ghosts II” layers a vigorously strummed dobro with psychedelic guitar work, and “27 Ghosts III” is a fantastic mess of atonal guitars churning and bending spastically over heavy bass and drums.
The lack of cohesive composition, however, makes it difficult to actively listen to the music without losing interest. So often, Reznor comes up with beautiful melodic ideas but doesn’t take them anywhere. “22 Ghosts III” alternates piano with unrelated guitar and drum parts in an avant-garde improvisation that starts and stops sporadically before ending mid-phrase. In “34 Ghosts IV,” when a gently plucked banjo is joined by acoustic guitar and piano, the music gradually builds toward a moment of ecstasy—but stops before it gets there. Even the last track, which begins (like so many of the pieces) with a lovely solo piano, never progresses to become anything more than an unfinished idea that leaves the album without a sense of closure.
With Ghosts I-IV, Reznor has succeeded in creating another excellently produced and innovative work. The music paints pictures of disassociated daydreams with fascinating and ever-changing sound combinations. In a shorter album like the free download of Ghosts I (available at the NIN website), the work is more intriguing, but over the course of the many tracks of the full release, the concept loses its impact, leaving the listener with a tedious listen of fragmented ideas and self-indulgent experimentation.
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