Certain things inspire me more when it comes to creating art than others. One such thing is music. I am very influenced by various types of music in my art, as evident by my black metal project Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, but the one band that really stands out in my mind as a huge source of inspiration is Nine Inch Nails and the creative genius behind it, Trent Reznor.
I discovered Nine Inch Nails more or less by accident when I was 9 or 10 years old, by way of the music video for Closer (from ‘The Downward Spiral’ album) being aired on TV one afternoon. At that age I didn’t much care for the music video but I loved the music in it. This was back in the mid-90s, and I didn’t catch the band name at the time, so I had no idea what this new (to me) amazing band was called. I discovered that a few years later, when ‘The Fragile’ was released and my household fortunately had MTV 2 which provided me with more music videos and information.
I loved it.
It was weird, dark, slightly menacing, gritty and perfectly articulated my teenage angst.
So I became ever so slightly obsessed with this band – Nine Inch Nails – and over the years I would use their music as inspiration. I would also look to the album cover art, and various promotional works of art, for inspiration in my own work.
I’ve always felt that if I were to make music at any point in time, it would probably sound a lot like Nine Inch Nails in that layer-upon-layer-style that still to this day provides me with new nuances in the songs I’ve listened to a thousand times before. And these nuances are what inspires a lot of my work, along with the gritty industrial feel. I spent numerous hours wandering about my hometown taking photos of rusty old pipes and barbed wire in my youth while listening to – you guessed it: Nine Inch Nails.
For your listening pleasure, I’ve compiled a playlist of Nine Inch Nails music videos (in chronological order, no less):
What are your main inspirations?
v i n t e r h e i m : SKS 