Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

I'm still listening to Peter Hope (and Nine Inch Nails)

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:24:08 -0700

Since I've put up two songs from Peter Hope's post-Box career, I should really put up something from the band that put him on the map. (You know, my map.) The Box was formed by the original ClockDVA instrumental lineup after being fired by bandleader Adi Newton; Peter Hope won the spot as their singer, and Terry Todd was recruited on bass. They made quite the postpunk no-wave racket, summed up best by the first song on their first record, 1983's self-titled 5-song EP:

A1 No Time for Talk

The Box

And I am continuing to work my way through the Nine Inch Nails back catalog; today it's been The Fragile. Trent's never done much in the way of breakbeats, but The Fragile contains a killer breakbeat instrumental, the all-too-brief "Complication"-

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I'm still listening to Nine Inch Nails (and Peter Hope)

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:03:47 -0700

Here I am saying The Slip is the best Nine Inch Nails album since the first one when I haven't really listened to any of them since Broken. So I've been trying to catch up, going from recent to older; Year Zero and With Teeth are actually better than I thought, but neither are reach-out-and-grabby like The Slip, and both suffer from album bloat. I am especially impressed with the opener from With Teeth, "All the Love in the World," which starts with a dub beat before morphing into a piano ballad (with falsetto, even!) and then finally an arena rocker:

Trent is relentless with his morbidly dour lyrics, though; it becomes overbearing after a while. I think I can place them all into three categories:

I have low self-esteem.
We live in a dystopia.
Living in a dystopia has given me low self-esteem.

Did I miss anything? What would Nine Inch Nails sound like if fronted by, say, Tom Waits and his morbidly gleeful lyrics? Like this, I bet:

A1 Too Hot

Peter Hope and David Harrow

This song contains one of my all-time favorite weird couplets:

Turn the dust out, oh clear a way
When the injury swells up, it will not be contained

Yeah! What the hell does that mean? I don't know, but it sure is catchy! Peter Hope first emerged in 1983 as the lead singer for The Box, a Sheffield band made up of former ClockDVA members. Mick Fish give some details in his book about Cabaret Voltaire, Industrial Evolution:

The Box tried a number of singers, one who sort of whooped like a Red Indian chief but couldn't sing in tune. They even played two gigs with Mal [Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire] on vocals -- a marriage of styles that was quite successful in its own way.... The Box eventually advertised for a singer. By far the best response came from Pete Hope from Hertford. Vocally somewhere between Tom Waits and Howlin' Wolf, he moved up to Sheffield with his young family.

Hope's inventive lyrics and unbridled singing style perfectly complemented The Box's no-wave skronk. Although they released several records, The Box never broke out, and they disbanded in 1985. Peter Hope then embarked on a series of one-off collaborations: this EP with synth whiz David Harrow (now known as James Hardway), an album with Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk, an album with Jonathan S. Podmore (now known as Jono Podmore a.k.a. Kumo), and a 12" single with studio engineer Mark Estdale as Chain:

Chain - Chains(1)

Chain

I just adore that gothic-industrial-funk sound; if only that had caught on in the way Nine Inch Nails did. Maybe it'll come back... Peter Hope, where are you?

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Hold all calls, I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:48:38 -0700

I'm a Nine Inch Nails fan from way back. I was hanging out with my pal $ean at the original Kemp Mill Records where he was assistant manager the day Pretty Hate Machine came out; I bought one right out of the shipping box. I listened to it and knew immediately that "Head Like a Hole" was a future classic. It wasn't as hard as the stuff on Wax Trax! or KK, so there were plenty of haters who derided it as watered-down industrial; too bad for them. I saw NIN on the Pretty Hate Machine tour, at the Grog and Tankard in Baltimore, with Meat Beat Manifesto opening. I still have the t-shirt from the show. Come to think of it, I still have the SPK t-shirt I wore to the show; talk about threadbare! But since then I haven't really connected with NIN; Trent took a long hiatus, I started listening to different music, and I just skipped over everything else he put out. I really dug "The Perfect Drug," but not enough to buy it. So now he's free of record label ties and is giving away his new music; I downloaded Ghosts I-IV, but it didn't hook me. Yesterday I downloaded The Slip, and it did hook me! I've listened to "1,000,000" three times so far today! My initial reaction is that this is Trent's best album since Pretty Hate Machine. This is the new music buzz I remember from my youth!

Love that false ending! "1,000,000" is my early favorite, with "Demon Seed" in second place:

The Slip has the feel of Trent's live-on-the-radio performances with Peter Murphy: no more futzing around in the studio with umpteen overdubs trying to get everything just perfect, he's just laying down a few tracks and rocking out! And it works beautifully!

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The Iggy Pop-Peter Murphy connection redux

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:35:39 -0700

Several weeks ago I wrote about Iggy Pop and Peter Murphy sounding nearly the same; just yesterday I discovered the live radio performances that Peter Murphy and Trent Reznor gave during the joint Nine Inch Nails/Bauhaus tour of 2006. Lo and behold, they did an Iggy Pop cover:

Night Clubbing - Trent Reznor, Jeordie White, Peter Murphy

And to pile on the coincidences, Trent released a new Nine Inch Nails album today (The Slip), for free!

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