neminem - Head Like a Furious Angel (Nine Inch Nails + Rob Dougan + others)

So this has been... a while in the making. In one sense it's been 20 years in the making - track 5 is a mashup I made back in college, with a few things cleaned up that had always bugged me, and a couple others also reuse old ideas in new ways... Anyway, when the mashup idea that became the second track popped into my head randomly about this time last year, I realized it was funny it was the second time Rob Dougan's instrumental worked perfectly with a NIN vocal, and it immediately sprawled out of control. This is the first time I've made a whole album like this - I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

1. Head Like a Furious Angel

Nine Inch Nails - Head like a Hole (vocals)
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Rob Dougan - Furious Angels (instrumental)
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Britney Spears - Toxic (instrumental)

This also technically came from a mashup I made back in college, just Toxic and Furious Angels. They work so well, it seemed silly not to continue to include both. I do like it better with the NIN vocals than the original vocals though.

2. Clubbed the Hand that Feeds to Death

Nine Inch Nails - The Hand that Feeds (vocals)
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Rob Dougan - Clubbed to Death
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djpretzel - The Megiddo Brigade (Devil's Lab)

This was, again, the track that started me on the whole project, last fall. Originally it was just Clubbed to Death (honestly one of my favorite pieces of electronic-type music) with NIN lyrics, then randomly a while later I realized the Devil's Lab theme from FF6, one of the earwormiest things ever written for the SNES, also had basically the same progression. Of course, being a huge nerd with a huge collection of reinterpretations of video game music saved, I found one that fit perfectly in style with Clubbed to Death - really happy with how this turned out.

3. Left Me Closer to a Hidden Place

Nine Inch Nails - Closer
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Rob Dougan - Left Me For Dead
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Bjork - Hidden Place

In a sense, this mashup started as the second mashup I ever made, Left Me for a Hidden Place. It had a bunch of flaws, though I do still like it - it also had a lot of potential. Well, let's just say, I enjoy how now that the NIN vocals got involved, the meaning of the lyric, "I'm not sure what to do with it, or where to put it" sounds a bit different more... specific than it was likely originally intended to :p. (I also fixed a bunch of things that bugged me about the original version, while I was there, though.)

4. I'm Not Driving Down In It Anymore

Nine Inch Nails - Down in It (vocals)
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Rob Dougan - I'm Not Driving Anymore

And finally we get to one that is truly just a duet - these work so well as a vocal duet, lyrically. It was also about this point that I realized I was also creating a pretty clear story across the album as a whole, of a guy who falls in love, then has a breakdown followed by a breakup. This one being the start, when he realizes he can't take it anymore...

5. There's (Only) Me

Rob Dougan - There's Only Me
v.
NIN - Only

This was, again, a mashup I made in college, and thus, my first hint that Rob Dougan and NIN are *so* vocally and lyrically similar. It's simple, but again, the vocals work so well together. NIN actually released the full parts-files for this and a couple other of their songs back in college, too, so I got to be a lot more creative with *individual* bits and pieces of the NIN instrumental instead of just the instrumental as a whole, which was also fun. Anyway, for the purpose of this album, this is effectively v2 of that mashup (mostly the same, just cleaned up a few spots that needed it.)

6. Hurt Me Towards Death

Nine Inch Nails - Hurt (vocals)
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Johnny Cash - Hurt (vocals)
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Rob Dougan - Speed Me Towards Death

I know I'm not the first person to reinterpret the two equally-iconic versions of Hurt (I legitimately have a hard time remembering which was the original, they're so equally relevant)... but as is often the case, while they're both great, they're even better together. Anyway, yet again, Rob Dougan shows that he writes lyrics that sound exactly like they should be a duet with lyrics written by NIN, which I have, thus, done.

7. She Left Yesterday (She's Gone)

Rob Dougan - Born Yesterday
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The Beatles - Yesterday
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Rob Dougan - She's Leaving
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NIN - She's Gone Away (vocals)

And thus we get to the "rock bottom" part of the story I realized I'd created by accident. In terms of the story of the creation of this album, this was also the point last November when I learned that, somehow, I'd completely missed hearing that Rob Dougan, long-famous for having made exactly one incredible album and then never writing any more music... had released two more, equally good EPs in 2015 and 2016, lol. When I heard She's Leaving and realized that, while it is legitimately great, it's also the exact same progression as Born Yesterday, well, that became this. It also pulls aggressively from an existing mashup I made in college of just Born Yesterday + The Beatles. Yet again, of course, we also have Rob Dougan and NIN vocals ("She's leaving / she's gone") that seemed like they were designed to become a duet. It is interesting to note with his many songs participating, this lyrical similarity also seems to define an accidental liefmotif at the same time, in this case, it would appear, the "my partner just left me" liefmotif...

8. Nothing At All Can Stop Me Now, Cause I Just Don't Care

Nine Ich Nails - Piggy (vocals)
vs
Rob Dougan - Nothing At All
And finally: we get to the "epiphany" part of the story, and yet another instance where NIN and Dougan vocals just *really* wanted to be in a duet, there being a lot of "nothing" in both sets of lyrics. The moral of the lyrics created when you splice these songs together, and a pretty powerful one these days: if everything in your life is trash, if you'd honestly be happy just falling over dead, well, ironically there's a lot of power in having nothing left to lose...

9. Closer Frozen Chateau

Rob Dougan + Chateau
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Celldweller - Frozen
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Nine Inch Nails - Closer

I debated whether it'd be cheating to use the same NIN vocals twice in a 10-song album, but it just worked too well in both contexts. In this case alongside another song about a... similar topic, that, once again, also happens to have a similar chord progression as well (it's weird how often that seems to be be the case. The subject matter of the lietmotif, in this case, should be clear enough.)

10. Furious Angel On a Roll

Ashley O - On a Roll (vocals)
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Britney Spears - Toxic (instrumental)
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Rob Dougan - Furious Angels (instrumental)
And finally - the bookender at the end, where, in this again entirely accidental story that showed up when I realized that this was going to be an album, the cycle in this story continues... when I realized the pop song Netflix produced for that one episode of Black Mirror, was literally a non-funny song parody of a NIN song, just set in a major key because it was a pop song. Well, it seemed like a perfect bookending song to set it back as the conclusion (I also enjoyed getting to be a weird music nerd and jump back and forth between major and minor key several times, as it worked well in both modalities. :D)

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