On the 7th day of 2009, Trent Reznor revealed a “gift” that he had reserved for his fans, something he had been talking about for about a month: Over 400 gigabytes of uncut HD Nine Inch Nails live footage, delivered via torrent websites to the fans.
This footage came from several cameras that were filming during the last leg of the band’s visually spectacular Lights In The Sky tour in 2008, in Victoria, Portland and Sacramento.
The band’s fan community of course needed no additional encouragement given such a extraordinary resource, with no creative limitations. A project called This One Is On Us sprung from the ether, its name inspired by Reznor’s own headline when he announced he would be giving away NIN’s most recent album The Slip for free (“this one’s on me”). The group’s aim was to put together a professional-quality DVD compiled from the best footage of all three gigs, to stand alongside the band’s own official live releases. After 12 months of obsessive work they presented the result, Another Version Of The Truth: The Gift.
Available in several different digital formats, the release’s professional quality audio and HD video can be sampled in this 1080p HD clip of Terrible Lie:
The Gift isn’t TOIOU’s first release. A few months ago, they presented The Downward Spiral Live, a complete video of NIN’s 2009 performance of their classic 1994 album in its entirety at Webster Hall in New York. It was constructed entirely from audio and video recorded by the audience. Their next release, Another Version Of The Truth: Las Vegas, which documents the final Lights In The Sky tour performance, is also being constructed from fan recordings. It’s great to see what fans can do with nothing more than a relaxed camera policy in concerts.
