Rob Sheridan (original) (raw)

Nine Inch Nails The Fragile released 25 years ago today. Here’s a 1999 digital camera photodump from the months surrounding the album’s release; a surreal, transformative time in my young life. Words can’t describe what it was like, but these photos and textures bring back the strangest hazy memories that feel like a dream: Not even a year out of high school, moving to New Orleans to work for my heroes as they were in the final year of recording a dense, challenging masterpiece of an album. Not everyone was ready for The Fragile at the time, but it now stands as one of the seminal works of pre-millennium art. If you’ve never experienced it, or haven’t in a while, it deserves a focused, solitary beginning-to-end listening in the highest fidelity, on your best sound system, at the loudest volume.

1: Recording The Fragile, Nothing Studios. 2: Various Fragile concept art by David Carson, Nothing Studios. 3: Gear, Nothing Studios. 4: Early NIN website concept screenshot. 5: Control Room A, Nothing Studios. 6: Live room, Nothing Studios. 7: The Fragile printer proofs, David Carson’s office, NYC. 8: Meeting with David Carson in his office, NYC. 9: Mixes, Nothing Studios. 10: Recording journals, Nothing Studios. 11: Filming the “We’re In This Together” video, Guadalajara, Mexico. 12: Band rehearsals, Bahamas. 13: Gear, Nothing Studios. 14: Robin Finck, Nothing Studios. 15: Charlie Clouser and Danny Lohner, band rehearsals, Nothing Studios. 16: The Day The World Went Away artwork, Nothing Studios. 17: MTV Awards rehearsals, NYC. 18: Skull, Nothing Studios. 19: Control Room B, Nothing Studios. 20: Various images posted to nin dot com teasing The Fragile in the months prior to its release.