I haven’t done one of these for a while, and they’ll be less frequent than I once planned as I’m working from home less and less. I'm also trying to get back into exploring my digital music collection, and more generally engaging with digital music again.

picture of a vinyl record

It’s the ten year anniversary of the first (and last) LP by How To Destroy Angels (HTDA), the side-project of Trent Reznor with his wife, his Nine Inch Nails (NIN) partner in crime Atticus Ross and visual artist (and NIN artistic director) Rob Sheridan.

This album was a real pleasure. For NIN fans, it wasn't clear what the future held after the start of HTDA. But this work really stood alone, similar in some ways to NIN but sufficiently different to be fresh and exciting. In stark contrast to NIN (at the time), it was interesting to see the members of HTDA presented on an equal footing, especially Rob Sheridan, who wasn't a musician. The intent was to try and put the visual work on the same level of esteem as the musical.

HTDA performed a few live shows, but none outside the US. They were apparently quite a spectacle.

As an artefact, this is a gorgeous LP. The gatefold cover and all four sides of the two record sleeves are covered in unique pieces of Sheridan's glitch art. When I originally bought this I had a rather generously-sized individual office at the University, so I framed and displayed many of these pieces on my office walls.

Sheridan has since written extensively on the processes and techniques he used for this style of art, and has produced many more works using the same techniques. You can see some on his website, patreon, fine art print shop or Threadless store.

Late last year I treated myself to a large print of some related work, analog(Oblivion)000b, which (once the framing is done) I'm going to hang in my home office.

The LP had two tracks that were not present in the CD or digital release versions of the album, although a CD was bundled in the LP which included the tracks. (The Knife did something similar with Shaking the Habitual, at around the same time).

I've had some multitrack stems from this album sitting in my "for archive.org" folder for a while, so I took the opportunity of the 10th anniversary to upload them, here: https://archive.org/details/htda_multitracks

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