Showcase: notincnstopmenow
As we have mentioned before, the Nine Inch Nails fan community has a long tradition of creating recorded audio and video content for its peers. Recently, one of the most prominent creators of live audio compilations has been Mike Ris, or "notincnstopmenow". He recently took the time to explain his backcatalogue, and why he creates these mixes.
I’ve been making nin live compilations for about 10 years now. I actually became a fan of nin back in 2000 when I saw them for the first time live at MSG and have been hooked ever since. After that tour was over I went out and tried to get my hands on audio recording from every past show possible. Sitting on a collection of a few hundred shows a few months later I wanted to try to find the best way to appreciate it all. I eventually came up with a, very time consuming, idea to pick one source of each nin song that they had ever played live and then try to mix the tracks together to make one continues track. To make it sound like one concert.
My first attempt at making a nin live audio compilation all started with a name. It all spawned from nin’s official release “And All That Could Have Been” and a fan made boot “And All That Should Have Been”. My creation was a play on those titles and what I was trying to create, the ultimate nin live album that would sum up their first 10 years of touring. “A Mix Of All That Was” is what I created. The process of finding each track source took ages. This was back when I was just using cds, a pad of paper and a pen. I would listen to just one song, over 100 times sometimes from all the concert sources I had, and weed through the sources till I found about a dozen that I loved. Then I would re-listen to all of them and compare tracks till one really jumped out to me. Sometimes it was because of unique lyrics or instrumental sections while other times it might have been the feel of the track. It’s hard to deny a track with a lot of energy or one that generally makes you cry. This whole process took months, just something I did when I had free time after school when nothing else was going on. When all the songs were picked, I used cool edit to mix them together. AMOATW was about 7 hours total and it got regular play in my cd player. And that’s all it was originally to me, a mix I made to experience the best of nin live whenever I wanted to.
Then years later, on a college campus I discovered bittorrents. I believe in the fall of 2004 I posted AMOATW on the net somewhere, I really don’t remember. I got a bunch of comment from people saying they enjoyed my creation which was pretty cool. I’m not really sure where you can find a copy of this anymore, well besides my hard drive, but I’m sure you could if you looked. In my opinion it’s a pretty cool mix if you’re looking for unique performances. But like older audio bootlegs, the sound quality is so so at best.
Well when nin came back in 2005 I grabbed all the audio sources of their shows once again, but this time with the help of dime it was much much easier. Again I decided to make another live audio compilation but this one was much different. All the concert sources that I had were much better quality and, with the help of iTunes and playlists, the process of picking tracks was easier. This project was being created right after the almost continues 3 year tour so it was being created in the twilight of the tour. Which was the reasoning behind the name I picked “In This Twilight” and it was to cover nin live from 2005-2007. Again I picked the best sounding performances of each nin song played live during that time frame and mixed them together to make one long continues concert. This one is alittle bit easier to find. [EchoingtheSound link]
With a new band and a new year nin went out and toured again in 2008. Again I collected concert sources as they came. But this time the selection process was very different. Instead of waiting till the end and listen to all of the tracks I was doing it as the tour went on. I always had what I thought was the best source of each song and I would just compare the new concert sources to. The better of the two sources would then stay in the mix. When the tour was over I mixed what I had into my third creation, “A Million Miles Away”. I felt that title explained the year of touring nin did in 2008 perfectly. [EchoingtheSound link]
My fourth creation was just a compilation of my compilations. I picked the the best tracks from my previous three compilations. Then I used the original sources and mixed them together in a completely different way. “All That There Ever Was” is an 8 and a half hour mix which I feel is a must listen to, tracks covering from 1988-2007.
2009 came another year of touring and so did another live audio compilation by me. Here’s the short description of my most recent project:
Nine inch nails banged and blown through is a live audio compilation from the 2009 tour. One source of every song played live from this time frame were complied together to make one continuous concert. The sources for each song were chosen for a reason that made them stand out over all the others. Sometimes the sources had unique and/or emphases on lyrics and instrumentals while other had fuckups that somehow made them better.
There were 66 concert sources that the songs were picked, from that 33 of them were used. The order of the track list was chosen before the sources so there are some problems with track transitions. Mainly volume level is an issue with some adjacent tracks because actual alteration to the tracks themselves is kept to a minimum. You can only amplify a track so much before it starts to sound bad.
I was at the Webster Hall concert in NYC so the first part of the compilation is inspired by that night's performance. The rest of the track list was created based on track flow and what sounded good to me. All of the encores from the final nights of the wave goodbye club tour were used throughout the compilation. The source of the song "In This Twilight" is from the final night and it is the last nine inch nails song played live, so enjoy it (crying is totally acceptable here).
In all likelihood I will probably make another mix for 1988-2009 when I have the time and inspiration.
As always, I hope you all enjoy what I’ve mixed together.
~mike
