You could trace this little curio’s origins back to 2024, when Reznor and Ross composed the score for the film Challengers . The pair commissioned a mixed (and remixed) version of their music from Ridha, who hadn’t enjoyed much clout since the blog house era, and was, by his own account, surprised to get the call . Ridha’s thumping mixtape version of the Challengers OST was a clearly superior product to the standard score album—a format that rarely works as a coherent listening experience, and that Reznor has been trying to improve on since Oliver Stone hired him to curate and edit the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. (Remember when soundtracks felt like mixtapes with dialog from the movie woven in? That was mostly Trent’s idea.) Despite Reznor and Ross’ imaginative score, Challengers failed to get the Oscar nod. It did, however, have the more interesting result of making Ridha a rare new addition to the Nine Inch Nails family. The idea of Nine Inch Nails as a band has always been something of a conceit.…