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Lollapalooza soundcheck in Chicago last night. Tune in tonight, August 2nd, at lollapalooza.com or youtube.com/lollapalooza to watch the full NIN performance. The show starts around 10pm CST.

Each version of Hesitation Marks will have its own unique cover with artwork by Russell Mills. Pictured above:

Digital cover: “Turn And Burn" (Plaster, earth, oils, acrylics, etching varnish, bitumen, burning, rusted linen, blood, spent matches, on wood)

Deluxe CD cover: “Cargo In The Blood" (Burning, Polaroid frame, copper wire, mica, on velvet, on wood)

Standard CD cover: “Time And Again" (Plaster, earth, oils, acrylics, etching varnish, rusted linen, blood, microscope slides, on wood)

Vinyl cover: “Other  Murmurs" (Plaster, earth, oils, acrylics, etching varnish, collage, on canvas, on wood)

Some words from Russell about the artwork created for the album:

The artworks, (30 mixed media pieces) that I eventually produced towards uses in the Hesitation Marks releases, evolved out of lengthy exchanges between myself and Trent and in response to the conceptual ideas that thread through the tracks and to the sonic territory that the album explores. I’ve tried to lock into the album’s prevailing mood and echo the album’s essence. The ideas are not communicated in a literal or easily digested form, as this would be boring for me and would insult the intelligence of a potential audience. I’ve tried to make works that obliquely allude to the essence of the subject matter, to its emotional core. 

As with my self-initiated works - the paintings, assemblages, collages and multimedia installations - personal ideas and obsessions seep into these works. The organic, the natural, prevailing over or feeding into the industrial, the man made, is a common theme in my work generally and in this instance was particularly apt for the art required.

The works explore ideas of catharsis, of being into dissolution into being, both on a personal and sociological level. They allude to ideas about chaos and order. They deal with ways of suggesting presence in absence. They are a cross between the forensic and a pathology of the personal in which only fragments remain, in which minimal clues can suggest events that may have occurred. They attempt to harness the chaos of a situation, of now, of the personal trauma, of the human condition, into a form that is coherent, a form that accommodates the mess without disguising it as something else. It attempts to capture the essence of these ideas by implication and exclusion. Beneath the form lies the uncertainty and ceaseless flux of the mess, of the chaos.    

An amalgam of the contextually-anchored and the process-driven, they are hopefully powerful, arresting, seductive, suggestive and resonant. I hope that they will invite multiple readings.