How To Destroy Angels: yes it is Trent Reznor...

This video appeared yesterday online (sorry for the knockoff copy - the vimeo original won't embed on here properly). The name of the project is How To Destroy Angels; there are no official song titles as yet. At first, no-one owned up, but the rumour soon spread that this was Trent Reznor's new project with Mariqueen Maandig. The accompanying artwork shows someone who looks very much like Mariqueen, and, well, anyway, it is her, because the duo owned up today.

A six-track EP is pencilled in for the summer and rumoured tracklistings are already floating around. It's not known whether Trent and Mariqueen are recording as a duo, or whether they're part of a larger group, but all will probably be revealed, sooner rather than later. The video shows Mariqueen operating an interesting-looking synth that I would love to have a go on, and is there a hint of heavily-treated vocals there? It's not even certain that How To Destroy Angels, seemingly named after a Coil album, will feature any, or much vocal at all, and no clues other than the video have been given as to who's doing what within the band. It's tempting to think of it being the classic "man twiddling knobs while woman sings" setup, but who's to say it won't be the other way round? Mariqueen, judging by her revived Twitter, is quite keen on knobs at the moment.

And the music? Hard to tell right now, but the 40 seconds we do have is 40 seconds of dirty, threatening synth, and I like the sound of it very much. It could be a purely instrumental thing, but I could see this heading in the sort of direction that someone like Dot Allison has taken in her harder-edged work. Despite being described as the ex-lead singer of West Indian Girl in several hundred blog posts and articles, Mariqueen was/is actually more of a vocal effects singer than a frontwoman, and this might show in her new project.

As for Trent, he seems capable of turning his hand to most things. I'm looking forward...

(Official website is http://www.howtodestroyangels.com