Nine Inch Nails. Photo:
John Crawford
Who needs A.I. when you have Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross constantly picking up film composition jobs? Nine Inch Nails are feeling cinematic on “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” their first release under the band name in five years.
The song appears on the 24-track soundtrack they created for Tron: Ares, out Sept. 19 ahead of the October release of the sci-fi film about humans crossing paths with A.I. beings for the first time.
While Nine Inch Nails itself has been largely dormant since 2020’s Ghosts album series, Reznor and Ross have still been busy working behind the scenes. Last year, the pair scored Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and crafted an alluring, techno-driven soundtrack for his tennis throuple film Challengers. They will join him again on his upcoming film After the Hunt, out in October. Reznor and Ross also created music for the Apple TV+ film The Gorge, released earlier this year. Each of these projects was credited to the musicians by their own names, rather than Nine Inch Nails.
Reznor and Ross have composed dozens of scores across film and television and have previously won Oscars for their work on The Social Network and Soul. With the Tron: Ares soundtrack, they have a shot at scoring some more accolades with the band name at the forefront.
The most recent installment in the Tron series, Tron: Legacy, arrived in 2010 with a score from Daft Punk. In 2020, Disney’s President of Music & Soundtracks, Mitchell Leib, expressed interest in having the duo return for the upcoming sequel. Leib retired later that year, just two months before Daft Punk announced they would be breaking up after 28 years.
Last month, Nine Inch Nails kicked off their Peel It Back Tour, their first tour in three years, with a setlist full of songs they haven’t played live in a decade or more. Reznor performed “Right Where It Belongs” solo on the piano, marking the first performance of the record since 2009. With the rest of the band assembled, Nine Inch Nails revived “Ruiner” and “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)” for the first time in 16 years.
From Rolling Stone US.
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