Mega fan/nerd post incoming... I’m gutted I missed the NIN + Quake merch launch. Does anyone know whether they’re likely to do another limited restock?
🩸 I had no idea how deeply Nine Inch Nails were involved with Quake.🩸
I always assumed Trent basically supplied the music, but the more I’ve looked into it, the more ridiculous the scope of their involvement.
NIN weren’t didn't just provide a soundtrack. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails were credited for the game’s sound effects as well as the music, effectively bringing their entire approach to texture, sampling, distortion, ambience and production into the game.
They were creating the music, sound effects and atmospheric material as one cohesive sonic world rather than treating the soundtrack as something separate from the game.
I feel like this is one of the many reasons Quake was so revolutionary and set a precedent for what game audio could be. It doesn’t sound like a 1996 game soundtrack in the conventional sense. It feels more like an environmental soundscape.
Chris Vrenna (Quake co-creator and former Nine Inch Nails member) has talked about how they deliberately experimented with drones, distorted sounds, bizarre samples and sound-design techniques to create a continuous atmosphere that could sit underneath gameplay without getting in the way of the actual gameplay sounds. The music had to ebb and flow, remain subtle, and create tension without becoming intrusive.
What I find mental is that they were already starting to get ideas about this as far back as 1993, while NIN were living in Los Angeles and working on The Downward Spiral.
Apparently a lot of the same techniques they were using on NIN records sampling strange sounds, mangling them, processing guitars through synths and effects, etc. ended up feeding directly into the Quake sound world.
The amount of work NIN were doing between 1993 and the end of the '90s is just 🤯
- 1994 — The Downward Spiral
- 1994 — The Crow — NIN contribute “Dead Souls”
- 1994 — Natural Born Killers — Trent Reznor produces/curates the soundtrack, including NIN’s “Burn”
- 1994 — Portrait of an American Family — Reznor/NIN produce and contribute to Marilyn Manson
- 1995 — Further Down the Spiral — the remix album
- 1995 — Marilyn Manson’s Smells Like Children — Reznor produces
- 1995 — David Bowie — Reznor remixes “The Hearts Filthy Lesson”
- 1995–96 — Quake development/audio work — NIN work on the music and sound effects
- June 1996 — Quake released
- 1996 — Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar — Reznor heavily involved in production
- 1996 — Lost Highway soundtrack work — Reznor contributes original material and curates/produces the soundtrack
- November 1996 — Lost Highway soundtrack released
- February 1997 — Lost Highway film released — includes NIN’s “The Perfect Drug”
- 1997 — David Bowie — Reznor/NIN collaborate on “I’m Afraid of Americans”
- 1997 — Closure — NIN live/documentary release
- 1999 — The Fragile
Looking at that timeline,
it reminds me of what Gary Numan said on his What’s in My Bag? with Amoeba Music:
“Phenomenal work ethic makes hard working people look lazy.
Can seem to do pretty much anything.”