With just over two weeks to go until the release of With Teeth, Trent Reznor’s first collection of fresh studio material since 1999’s The Fragile, the singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist behind industrial act Nine Inch Nails is inviting the band’s fans to do with the album’s first single what they will.
Reznor has released a downloadable version of “The Hand That Feeds” through the official Nine Inch Nails Web site, in a format that allows Mac-using aspiring producers the freedom to manipulate the song’s various parts, using the Apple-specific GarageBand 2 application.
“For quite some time, I’ve been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks – to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what’s there,” Reznor explained in the download’s accompanying text file. “I tried a few years ago to do this in Shockwave, with very limited results. After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you’ll enjoy.”
The 70MB download features the entire track, broken off into 64 sections, with all the core sound libraries and six different, increasingly more intense, versions of the song’s chorus. Fans can toy with the files at will, and can even take song sections and utilize them as the foundation from which they can create their own songs. Or they can just mess with Reznor’s vocals, as he suggests.
“Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything you’d like,” Reznor’s text file reads. “It’s fun to mess around with. I’ve now heard a country version of the track as well as an abstract Latin interpretation. I’m interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are.”
With Teeth will hit record stores on May 3.