There Is No Future Point In Time

Nine Inch Nails “The Background World”

“The Background World” starts off as a fairly typical late period Nine Inch Nails song, with Trent Reznor singing a very Reznor sort of melody over contrasting keyboard parts – some burbling, some bleeping, some like the electronic equivalent of the ambient hum inside a seashell. Reznor sounds exhausted and frustrated, he sounds ambivalent about connecting with a world that seems increasingly miserable and hostile. This would be a very good song if that’s all there was to it, but after four minutes the music takes an interesting turn as one chunk of music starts looping over and over. It’s a Disintegration Loops sort of thing, with each repetition degrading the audio so it becomes more dull and abrasive. I like that the loop doesn’t connect just right – there’s a slight stutter to the beginning of each cycle, but that gradually disappears along with all other detail. By the end it’s just hideous, oppressive white noise. A little over a decade ago Reznor put out a song called “Every Day Is Exactly the Same,” and I think of this as a Trump-era correction: Every Day Is Just A Bit Worse.

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