![]() There are many composers that excel at channelling gorgeously dissonant scores – Thomas Newman, we're looking at you, buddy – but Trent and Atticus’ is a brand that's identifiably their own. Trent and Atticus have brought their own elegant, eerie and atonal stamp to Hollywood. Much like they did in the music industry, they conquered it on their own terms. What remains so impressive is not just that Trent and Atticus have achieved such success in Hollywood, it’s also the manner in which they have infiltrated it. As tempting as it is to look at the past decade as marking the ascension of Trent Reznor The Academy Award Winner™, in truth the surprise isn’t that he took to scoring a full film in 2010, it’s that he didn’t do it sooner. Even when Trent wasn’t explicitly soundtracking a project, Nine Inch Nails’ music was working overtime to lend a sense of grandeur to some films –2009’s Terminator Salvation may have disappointed fans, but its menacing trailer set to the strains of The Day The World Went Away was a glimpse of all that could – and should – have been. In 1996, he unveiled his pant-browning score for id’s seminal first person shooter Quake before re-entering Hollywood’s orbit the following year by producing the soundtrack for David Lynch’s Lost Highway. In 1994, Trent was compiling the soundtrack for Oliver Stone’s controversial film Natural Born Killers – contributing both new and reprised NIN music. There has, it seems, always been something about Trent’s sonics – its majestic ability to veer between soul-gnawing fragility and ear canal-annihilating aggression – that made it perfectly primed for film and TV. For over two decades previously, Nine Inch Nails’ music had been assaulting not just the charts but a variety of other mediums. While it’s possible to look at Trent and Atticus’ breakthrough success with The Social Network as a case of (quite literally) scoring big on their first attempt, it’s also somewhat misleading. For those who had followed his career since its noisy, groundbreaking inception, it was a strange sight indeed to see the man who had once delivered industrial barrages like Happiness In Slavery in a tux, looking far more Bond than bondage. At the time his shocked reaction made perfect sense. “To be standing up here in this company is humbling and flattering beyond words,” Trent continued holding his shiny new award. Just moments before, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman had opened an envelope and revealed that both Trent and his collaborator Atticus Ross had beaten the revered likes of Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat to win the Music (Original Score) category for The Social Network soundtrack at the 2011 Oscars. “Is this really happening?” he asked, the source of his surprise clutched firmly in his hands. “Wow,” said a visibly astonished Trent Reznor standing before a crowd comprised of Hollywood’s biggest directors and actors at LA’s Kodak Theatre. It’s surreal now to think about just how surreal it all seemed in 2011. ![]()
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