Lots of changes in the life of Trent Reznor. The newly wed has put NIN aside for a moment to start a new side project with his wife Mariqueen Maandig (formerly of the West Indian Girl) and musician/producer extraordinare Atticus Ross.

A few weeks ago the band’s official website went live with snippets of audio followed a few days later by their first single, “A Drowning.” Over the next few days the band released two more tracks “The Spaces in Between” and “The Believers,” sending fans cruising the internet in search of the new tunes. The band’s 6 song EP (which you could “order” for free) went live at midnight last night, arriving in inboxes, including mine, at an ungodly hour. Rather than wait until this morning to take a listen, I stayed up a few extra minutes to take a sneak peak and ended up playing the bloody thing on repeat for nearly an hour.

My favourite track off of the EP: “The Spaces In Between” which features Maandig’s gorgeous melodic voice. It’s a haunting little track and one I can’t stop listening to. NIN fans seem, so far at least, mixed on the release some loving the soundscapes (I’m in this camp – I was always a fan of Trent’s non-vocal tracks) while others find it too much of a deviation.

I’ve tucked a few videos after the break. If you like what you hear, I suggest downloading your own copy of the EP from the official website. The web makes being a completionist way too easy.

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Need some powerful sound blaring out your ceiling but not a stereo in sight? Luckily Klipsch has made some nifty speakers that fit right into any standard light bulb socket and play your music wirelessly from your PC, stereo system or iPod.

Now you’re thinking, “That’s pretty awesome, but damn it got dark in here all of a sudden.” Not so fast. These speakers also come with 5 and 6-inch light fixtures which are completely dimmable, meaning you can replace the usual bulbs you use with a set of these Klipsch ones, which will last for 40,000 hours.

The speakers contain a 2.5-inch wide dispersion driver and uses up 20 watts. The LightSpeaker kit comes with a transmitter and sends the audio to up to eight of the light bulbs with two separate zones.

The two LightSpeakers, transmitter, remote and cables cost $599, with individual LightSpeakers on sale for $249 at the end of the month.

a video demo under the seats…
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God Bless the Japanese. Here is an indie animation short that is breathtaking in both its simplicity and its complexity – and the music is fabulous. I have watched this far too many times. (Huge props to Mack at Twitch for this.)

I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t find anything cooler to do with 8 minutes and 33 seconds of your time today than watch this awesomely artistic footage of a woman performing sand art. I don’t know much about it because the site which pointed me over to YouTube to check this out is all in French and the YouTube description appears to be in Russian. But honestly who cares? For someone just puching around a bunch of sand, this is extremely fascinating. Watch this.

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Battles
“Mirrored”

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We haven’t tried it yet, but I was just introduced to TuneUp. If you can believe the demo video below, looks like a pretty slick plugin. Available for both Windows and Macs, the program will clean up all the garbage in your iTunes folder. In other words, it will find all of the missing artwork, clean up tracks (ya know, the group in your library marked “Track 01, Track 02, etc”) and even fix all the multiple spellings of a particular artist (Black Crowes, THE Black Crowes, Black Crows, etc). I really like the concert feature as well.

So a sort of demo version is free, which gives you 100 track fixes, 50 album covers and unlimited concert reminders and related content. Or you can download the “unlimited everything” version for $30 lifetime or $20 per year. If anyone bothers to try this out, let us know how well it works. Maybe it’s easier to just hunt for missing album artwork on your own and drag and drop? That’s what I’ve been doing.

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I recently installed Songbird in my newly revamped home PC and inadvertently used up my free trial subscription to Last.fm Radio. I loved it so much I thought to subscribe for a month and see how much use I get out of it and so far, it’s nothing short of awesome. Like Pandora, you pick your musician, style or even just a keyword, hit play and the site creates a radio station specific to whatever your criteria was. Pretty awesome.

But the story doesn’t end there, it only starts there. I was listening to Xandria and clicking through from one thing to another, Twittering the entire time of course, when a friend (thanks TheWeeJenny!) recommended I check out this band called Korpiklaani. Let me tell you, I was in shock when I noticed that they’re listed as “Viking Folk Metal”. I know what you’re thinking: what on earth does Viking Folk Metal sound like? Well, it sounds like these guys. I think of it as Celtic music on heavy drugs and I can’t stop listening. And seriously, with songs titled “Beer Beer”, “Happy Little Boozer” and “Let’s Drink” how could you NOT love it? Seriously, I listen to this and I want to run down to the local pub, buy a pint, pop these guys in and jump around.

I dare you to put either of these tunes on at the next party. It’s bound to bring down the house. These are what I call drinking songs done right!