Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV [2008]

Wikipedia: Ghosts I–IV (also known as Halo 26) is the sixth studio album by Nine Inch Nails and was released on March 2, 2008. It contains 36 instrumental tracks and was recorded in ten weeks of autumn 2007 and is the first Nine Inch Nails album released without a record label contract. Initially intended to be a five-track EP, the album is presented in the form of four nine-track instrumental EPs. The tracks do not have names, and are only identified by their track listing, position, and album art. The team behind the project included Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Alan Moulder, with instrumental contributions from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione.

The album was released under a Creative Commons license, and in a variety of different packages at different price-points, including a US$300 "Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition".The album was initially released digitally on the Nine Inch Nails official website, without any prior advertisement or promotion. Via the official Nine Inch Nails YouTube profile, a user-generated "film festival" was announced, where fans were invited to visually interpret the album and post the results. Accordingly, the album was reportedly stripped of much artwork and accompanying visual interpretation.

Critical reception of the album has generally been favorable, with many news agencies commenting on the unorthodox release of the album. Much coverage of the album has compared Ghosts I–IV to Radiohead's In Rainbows and Saul Williams' The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!.

All Music Guide (by Stephen Thomas Erlewine): Roughly a year after Year Zero -- a year marked by lots of sniping with his record company first about their clueless promotion then devolving into a tirade about their general uselessness -- Trent Reznor broke free of Interscope/Universal and became a free agent, releasing music where and when he wanted. To celebrate his freedom he released the four-part Ghosts, a clearinghouse of 36 instrumentals all created during the years he crafted Year Zero. It should come as no great surprise that Ghosts then plays like a sketchbook, a place where Reznor jotted down sounds and textures that flitted across his mind and then either took them no further, or decided to spin them into something entirely new for the full album. These aren't songs, they're seeds, and they (appropriately) aren't even graced with titles; they're all dubbed "Ghosts," parts one through 36, and if Reznor didn't spend enough time crafting them into proper songs, don't feel too bad if you don't spend enough time with Ghosts to sort through them, picking out which fragments are powered by a clenched electro beat and which are glassy ambient shards. Even fanatics might be hard-pressed to give Ghosts such a careful listen as it's simply not meant to be so closely observed. It's meant to be taken as surface, perhaps skimmed for samples, but generally to be used as mildly unsettling mood music -- a specialty of Reznor's, to be sure, but he's better and scarier when his ideas are more finely honed than they are here.

Tracklisting:
1-1 1 Ghosts I (2:49)
1-2 2 Ghosts I (3:16)
1-3 3 Ghosts I (3:51)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
1-4 4 Ghosts I (2:13)
Bass - Alessandro Cortini
Guitar - Adrian Belew , Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini
1-5 5 Ghosts I (2:52)
1-6 6 Ghosts I (4:19)
1-7 7 Ghosts I (2:01)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
1-8 8 Ghosts I (2:56)
1-9 9 Ghosts I (2:47)
1-10 10 Ghosts II (2:42)
Guitar - Adrian Belew
1-11 11 Ghosts II (2:17)
Guitar - Adrian Belew , Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini
1-12 12 Ghosts II (2:17)
1-13 13 Ghosts II (3:14)
1-14 14 Ghosts II (3:46)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
1-15 15 Ghosts II (1:53)
1-16 16 Ghosts II (2:30)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
1-17 17 Ghosts II (2:13)
Guitar - Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini
1-18 18 Ghosts II (5:23)
2-1 19 Ghosts III (2:12)
Drums - Brian Viglione
Electronics [Additional] - Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini , Brian Viglione
2-2 20 Ghosts III (3:39)
Guitar [Additional] - Alessandro Cortini
2-3 21 Ghosts III (2:54)
Guitar - Adrian Belew
2-4 22 Ghosts III (2:31)
Drums - Brian Viglione
Electronics - Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini , Brian Viglione
2-5 23 Ghosts III (2:44)
2-6 24 Ghosts III (2:39)
Guitar - Alessandro Cortini
2-7 25 Ghosts III (1:59)
Electronics - Adrian Belew
Guitar - Adrian Belew
Written-By - Adrian Belew
2-8 26 Ghosts III (2:26)
2-9 27 Ghosts III (2:52)
Guitar - Adrian Belew
Written-By - Adrian Belew
2-10 28 Ghosts IV (5:22)
Guitar [Additional] - Alessandro Cortini
2-11 29 Ghosts IV (2:55)
Electronics [Additional] - Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini
2-12 30 Ghosts IV (2:59)
Marimba - Adrian Belew
2-13 31 Ghosts IV (2:26)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
2-14 32 Ghosts IV (4:26)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
2-15 33 Ghosts IV (4:02)
Electronics [Additional] - Alessandro Cortini
Written-By - Alessandro Cortini
2-16 34 Ghosts IV (5:53)
2-17 35 Ghosts IV (3:30)
Guitar [Additional] - Adrian Belew
2-18 36 Ghosts IV (2:19)