You may or may not have heard of Saul Williams. The guy is an actor and poet as well as being an MC who does his rather more intelligent variation on the Hip Hop theme, adding elements of noise terror and drawing from his vast reservoir of poetic inflections.

Either way, Saul's work came to the attention of Trent Reznor, who asked Saul to support Nine Inch Nails on the first With Teeth tour. He ended up supporting NIN on three tours, the last of which resulting in the creation of both NIN's Year Zero and Saul's The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust. Trent not only produced the record but co-wrote, performed and sang on various songs.

The album is coming out on the 1st of November and you can download it for free or for a five dollar donation from http://niggytardust.com

Trent has already leaked two tracks:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8xc0xq
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BHXQZPFX

lyrics for "Break":

And when my fears arise I blow them out.
Death creeps through the streets over programmed beats. A rabid dog in heat on a dead end street. Oil slicks, the only rainbows that canvas gray concrete. Shadows of skyscrapers fall when Mohammed speaks. Corpses piled in heaps. Sores and decay, reeks. Placing tags on feet. A Nike Air Force Fleet. Custom made. Unique. Still in box. White sheet. Ripened blue, black, sweet. White tank top, wife beat…

Hearts in two-step beat...Break. Dance pray work whip… Break. Neck jump back kiss… Break. Ashes, dust, kill, crush… Break.

Consider yourself: less than, inferior to, half man, superior to woman, unbearable likeness. Consider yourself: almost, never quite, dark-skinned, lily white, black as sin, devils den, whiteness. Consider yourself: outcast, criminal, unseen, invisible, point blank, ready cocked trigger. Consider yourself: Hardcore, dirt poor, hustler, BCH, whore, reverend, doctor. Nigger.

Hearts in two-step beat...Break. Dance pray work whip… Break. Neck jump back kiss… Break. Ashes, dust, kill, crush… Break. Build up, pimp strut, slap…Break. Cotton, corn, crop, wheat…Break. Dance, whip, work, pray…Break. Neck, jump, back, kiss…Break.

Let it out. Blow it out. Spit it out. Get it out. Beat. Beatings. Beats. Beasts. Get it out. By the horns and get it out. Cough it up and spit it out. Get it out. Break the cycle, break the chain, break the hurt and break the pain. All my doubts and all my fears, break the spell that keeps me here. Break the cycle, break the chain, break the whip and break the pain. Get it out. Spit it out. Break. Break. Break. Break.

Another NIN fan here?

I liked the second track - Tr(n)igger best. Reminds me of Public Enemy a bit.

Yeah, it samples "Welcome to the Terrordome" for the main part of the track.

I prefer "Break" myself but I dig them both and I'm keenly awaiting this album! I've seen Saul live and he's a master. Can't wait to hear what he pulls out on this one, especially with TR in tow!

Haha, I knew there was something familiar. I haven't really listened to Public Enemy in years.


I downloaded the free version. I'll probably buy the $5 FLAC, but right now my prepaid Visa's empty.

awesome album, sounds so wierd

Here's some misc info regarding Saul's record to share with you from my perspective.
Part 1.

Black History Month
A Thavius track originally titled "Banana Peels". Probably my favorite track on the record and one I pushed to be first. Also one I had very little to do with musically aside from some arrangement work. This was always the first track I'd play for people from this project to freak them out. Try it on nice speakers REAL loud and you'll see what I mean.

Convict Colony
One of the first tracks we worked on together. We began the process of experimenting together by me giving him I think 10 tracks or so of stuff I had around. Some of it was new, some were orphans from various other projects and none of it was written with Saul in mind - I was just fishing around to see if anything inspired Saul. He came back with the intro drums from a demo I gave him (I think from a Tapeworm track) chopped up into the basics of what you now hear. It was so much better than what I gave him and unexpected - I was sold on the idea of pursuing the relationship and off we went.

Tr(n)igger
This track arrived on my doorstep while we were mixing the record. Saul had been working on this and when I heard it I knew it needed to be included. We had two rooms set up at Chalice where we mixed the record. Alan was mixing in the control room while I was set up with another rig in the small "live" room finessing various tracks and whatnot.
The relationship between Saul and myself had grown to a place by this time where we trusted each other's sensibilities and could get things accomplished without second-guessing everything too much.
And by the way, for those wondering how much Saul did vs myself in terms of the music - every track so far on the record is virtually unchanged from the way I first heard them aside from some finessing.

Sunday Bloody Sunday
We were halfway through the mix when I realized I was caught up with my duties in the second room. We discussed playing around with some covers and threw some ideas around. We did two - you've heard one. Saul suggested SBS and I spent about a week wrestling around with the right way to pull it off. It probably sounds more like a NIN arrangement than I would allow NIN to sound these days, but in this context I felt it was the right thing to do.
A record as sonically and lyrically complex and challenging as this one needs moments of accessibility to anchor things together and I think this performs that function well.

Break
Born in the woods of Malibu in a small place I was staying in from the simple challenge: can we make a piece of music Saul can flow over that combines unusual time signatures without sounding like math-rock? Atticus and I did the chorus by recording several 2-bar long heavy rock "songs" we then sampled and performed on the MPC. Fun to do and I still get goosebumps when Saul sings verse 2.

NiggyTardust
Another true product of collaboration. Born from two pieces of music I gave Saul spliced together - the verse was a fairly new thing and the chorus was from an unused Fragile track. Never would I have considered the two coming together and NEVER would I have imagined those lyrics involved! If you ever get access to the multitracks, I'm sure you can hear lots of laughing in the background. The vocoder over the end makes me smile every time. Very fun to work on.

More later - the coffee is wearing off.

"teitan" is Trent Reznor's screen name over at the NIN fan forum Echoing The Sound (<- click - I don't like how links aren't differentiated from regular text unless the mouse rolls over them here).