Trent Reznor

The Exotic Birds was a synthpop music group formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1983 by three Cleveland Institute of Music percussion students, Andy... Kubiszewski, Tom Freer and Tim Adams. They wrote their own music, and were described as synth pop and dance. They achieved mainly local success, but appeared as an opening band for Culture Club, Eurythmics, and Information Society. The band's first single, "Dance the Night Away," was backed with an earlier recording, "Who Knows Why," by Kubiszewski and Nick Capetanakis The order of the songs was accidentally flipped on the record, so the older song appeared as the A side. "Who Knows Why" received moderate local radio play and became a surprise hit in Japan. The band eventually grew to five members. Adams left to do orchestral work, but Mark Best and Frank Vale signed on. Then by 1985, Trent Reznor joined the band on keyboards, programming and backing vocals. Shortly after that, Freer departed the band for the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and was replaced by Reznor's roommate, Chris Vrenna who would also later join Reznor in Nine Inch Nails.
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Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer,... songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction. Nine Inch Nails' music straddles a wide range of genres, while retaining a characteristic sound using electronic instruments and processing. After recording a new album, Reznor usually assembles a live band to perform with him. The touring band features a revolving lineup that often rearranges songs to fit a live setting. On stage, Nine Inch Nails often employs visual elements to accompany performances, which frequently include light shows. Underground music audiences warmly received Nine Inch Nails in its early years.
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Pigface is an industrial rock supergroup formed in 1990 by Martin Atkins and William Rieflin. Pigface was formed from Ministry's The Mind is a... Terrible Thing to Taste tour, which produced the In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up live album and video. For the tour, Al Jourgensen brought Atkins, Nivek Ogre and Chris Connelly. Also on the tour was Rieflin, regular Ministry drummer at the time. While Atkins enjoyed the dynamic of playing with a second drummer, he felt that the lineup was capable of doing much more than being, what he has frequently called, "a Ministry cover band." Once the tour was over, Atkins and Rieflin decided to continue working together and recruited several of their tourmates from The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour. Pigface was born with the intention of keeping a revolving-door style collaboration with many experimentally-minded musicians, many of whom, especially early on, had recorded for the influential industrial music record label Wax Trax!. Trent Reznor was also an early partner, before Nine Inch Nails became a household name.
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Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group. Interscope was founded in 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Interscope Communications' Ted Field with financial support from Atlantic Records . Initially... it was distributed by the Atlantic Records subsidiary East West Records America. A&R Executive John McClain and producer Beau Hill were also part of the original founding team. The original focus of the label was on hip-hop and urban music, but by the mid 2000s its range began to expand, to extent where its roster would be as wide ranging to include the industrial rock artist Nine Inch Nails , shock rocker Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit, Helmet, No Doubt and later the Latin artist Kings Of Flow in a unique partnership with Los Angeles based indie Latin label. Following UMG's acquisition of PolyGram in 1998, Geffen Records and A&M Records were merged into Interscope.
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Nothing Records was an American record label, specializing in industrial rock and electronic music, founded by John Malm Jr. and Trent Reznor in 1992. It is considered an example of a vanity label, where an artist is able to run a label, with some degree of independence, from within a larger parent... company, Interscope in this case. Nothing Records became largely defunct in 2004, due to legal action. It was still active as a record publisher, but after a few more releases was declared extinct, following the February 2007 inclusion of the Beside You in Time home video in markets. Nothing Records is most famous for its two original signings, Trent Reznor's own band Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. Still, the label gained semi-iconic status within the industrial rock scene, and even acquired its own online-fanzine in Sick Among the Pure, although this later became a more general industrial fanzine, and ceased to exist at all in 2005. The Nothing label would often reward its fanbase over the Internet — one form of this outreach was Radio Nothing: an exclusive collection of free MP3 music streams, compiled by Nothing label artists, producers and fans.
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Universal Music Group is a multinational music company. It the largest of the "big four" record companies by its leading market share and its multitude of global operations. Universal Music Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of French media conglomerate Vivendi. Universal Music Group owns a music... publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, which became the world's largest following the 2007 acquisition of BMG Music Publishing. The UMG corporate headquarters are located in Santa Monica, California, United States. "Universal Music" was once the music company attached to film studio Universal Pictures. Its origins go back to the formation of the American branch of Decca Records in 1934. The Decca Corporation of England spun American Decca off in 1939. MCA Inc. bought American Decca in 1962. The present organization was formed when its parent company Seagram purchased PolyGram and merged it with Universal Music Group in 1998. However, the name first appeared in 1996 when MCA Music Entertainment Group was renamed Universal Music Group.
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