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How did I slip into this?

The Slip is the seventh studio album by Nine Inch Nails, released in 2008. One of the first releases on frontman Trent Reznor's then-newly-formed independent label The Null Corporation, the album's production was a deviation from the painstaking perfectionism that characterized past works. It was recorded in three weeks, and was originally intended to be an EP before becoming the full-length album it is now.

The album was released as a free download under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license on May 5, a couple weeks after it was finished, with a physical release out on July 22. The Slip has since been downloaded over 2 million times, and has sold at least 112,000 physical copies in the United States.

While the original website used to promote the album is no longer available, it is still available on the Internet Archive and the Free Music Archive. You can download the album here or here in the MP3 format, or here in the higher-end FLAC format.


Tracklist:

  1. "999,999" (1:25)
  2. "1,000,000" (3:56)
  3. "Letting You" (3:49)
  4. "Discipline" (4:19)
  5. "Echoplex" (4:45)
  6. "Head Down" (4:55)
  7. "Lights in the Sky" (3:29)
  8. "Corona Radiata" (7:34)
  9. "The Four of Us Are Dying" (4:37)
  10. "Demon Seed" (4:59)

Personnel:

  • Trent Reznor: vocals, most instruments
  • Robin Finck: guitar
  • Josh Freese: drums
  • Alessandro Cortini note 
  • Atticus Ross: programming

Tropes in the Sky:

  • Album Intro Track: "999,999".
  • Ate His Gun: "1,000,000":
    Put the gun
    In my mouth
    Close your eyes
    Blow my fuckin' brains out
    • According to one interpretation, the artwork for "Head Down" depicts this.
  • Call-Back: The Art is Resistance logo from the Year Zero ARG reappears in the artwork for "Letting You".
  • Epic Rocking: "Corona Radiata" (7:34). It even used to be the longest original song in the main Nine Inch Nails discography, until Add Violence's "The Background World" (11:44).
  • Four Is Death: "The Four of Us Are Dying".
  • Miniscule Rocking: "999,999" (1:25).
  • Non-Appearing Title: "999,999", "Echoplex", "Corona Radiata", "The Four of Us Are Dying", and "Demon Seed"; half the album consists of these.
  • One-Word Title: "Discipline" and "Echoplex".
  • Protest Song: "Letting You".
  • Quieter Than Silence: The majority of "Corona Radiata" is ambient noise until the last couple of minutes.
  • The Shut-In: "Echoplex" appears to be about one, with lyrics like "I'm safe in here" and "You will never ever get to me in here".
  • Splash of Color: The album cover is entirely in black and white, with the exception of the red stripe near the top.
    • This applies to most of the artwork associated with the songs, each being colored in shades of gray except for a thin red line (or lines). note 
  • Stop and Go: "1,000,000" features one not too long before the actual end of the song.
  • Textless Album Cover
  • Title by Number: "999,999" and "1,000,000".
  • Together in Death: The chorus of "Lights in the Sky" seems to imply this:
    Watching you drown
    I'll follow you down
    I am here right beside you
    The lights in the sky
    Have finally arrived
    I am staying right beside you

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