I didn't go out with a DAT machine and record any thing. That's something I want to do for the next album - maybe dedicate a month to accumulating good sounds. But I had so much work heaped on me that I didn't have time to do that sort of thing. When you're in the world of independent labels, you don't have four weeks to mix two tracks. On the last chorus of "Sanctified," you'll hear a weird little beat; that's kind of an obvious one.
At the end of the last song on the album, "Ringfinger," the idea was to get as many loops playing at the same time as possible. We got about 12 before we ran out of channels. For a lot of weird percussion things, I would cheat: I'd get a track up, and if I couldn't find something that would make a groove, I'd take, say, a Public Enemy two-bar loop, turn it backwards, modulate it through Turbosynth with an oscillator tuned to the pitch of the song, and get this weird flanging-type thing that's in key.
Every drum fill on "Terrible Lie" is lifted intact from some where. There are six other songs playing through that cut, recorded on tape, in and out, depending on where they worked. That sound has quite an interesting history. It started out as a woodblock. I ran it through a distortion pedal, sampled it, then did my Emax trick by dropping it down a couple of octaves.
Then I chopped off the beginning of it. I might also have put an envelope on it with Turbosynth. That's probably my favorite sound on the record. I did that in London, with John Fryer. He's done a lot of things on the 4 A. There's a dreamy quality to a lot of the stuff that he produces, so that track lent itself to him. It ended up being some sample off an [Akai] S with the filter way, way down.
He's the reverb master, so it was buried in the AMS reverb. All the weird stuff in the background is from a project he does called This Mortal Coil, which is a collaboration of 4 A. He had a bunch of half-inch tapes that they had done for backing tracks, with bass guitars slowed down. I was listening to them while he was mixing other things on the tape, checking out what was there, and accidentally brought this up in the mix.
We recorded it on a couple of tracks of track. Somehow it worked perfectly. Initially, I didn't intend that track to be on the album. It was supposed to be a b-side or something like that.
Lyrically, it didn't fit the flow of the record. So I figured I'd approach it in a different way, rather than in the Nine Inch Nails formula of small, big, small, big, big, small-verse, chorus, etc.
We had kind of run out of arrangement ideas, so we just threw up some loops and things. The percussion on it wasn't ten different parts; it was one loop that John had from something else, and it worked.
He's got disks of weird things I've never heard of. Actually, there was. I've had the Xpander since it came out. I've always considered it a great analog machine. But I'd gotten to the point where it was cumbersome to program. I had the same ten sounds I always thought were great in it.
Then, when I worked with Flood, he breathed new life into it for me. He's absolutely a master of programming the Xpander. We really got into the FM section, doing some weird modulation things I'd never attempted and coming up with very strange, non-analog sounds. That ended up being a big part of what we did for a lot of weird modulating sounds. For more information, see Pretty Hate Machine Tour The album also gained popularity through word-of-mouth and developed an underground following.
Monday 23 August Tuesday 24 August Wednesday 25 August Thursday 26 August Friday 27 August Saturday 28 August Sunday 29 August Monday 30 August Tuesday 31 August Wednesday 1 September Thursday 2 September Friday 3 September Saturday 4 September Sunday 5 September Monday 6 September Tuesday 7 September Wednesday 8 September Thursday 9 September Friday 10 September Saturday 11 September Sunday 12 September Monday 13 September Tuesday 14 September Wednesday 15 September Thursday 16 September Friday 17 September Saturday 18 September Sunday 19 September Monday 20 September Tuesday 21 September Wednesday 22 September Thursday 23 September Friday 24 September Saturday 25 September Sunday 26 September Monday 27 September Tuesday 28 September Wednesday 29 September Thursday 30 September Friday 1 October Saturday 2 October Sunday 3 October Monday 4 October Tuesday 5 October Wednesday 6 October Thursday 7 October Friday 8 October Saturday 9 October Sunday 10 October Monday 11 October Tuesday 12 October Wednesday 13 October Thursday 14 October Friday 15 October Saturday 16 October Sunday 17 October Monday 18 October Tuesday 19 October Wednesday 20 October Thursday 21 October Friday 22 October Saturday 23 October Sunday 24 October Monday 25 October Tuesday 26 October Wednesday 27 October Thursday 28 October Friday 29 October Saturday 30 October Sunday 31 October Monday 1 November Tuesday 2 November Wednesday 3 November Thursday 4 November Friday 5 November Ringfinger Total Time Bonus track on remaster: Get Down Make Love Queen cover It would be a bit of a stretch to provide a background into the industrial music of the 80's here, as it was a very active and creative scene.
They all served Raznor as a source of inspiration. Even his inclusion of funky bass loops and poppy hooks is entirely copied from another band, namely My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, who debuted the year before. So where it concerns originality, innovation and progressiveness, I have to give this album a big zero.
But that's only one of many way to look at an album. The actual quality of the songs is quite high. Obviously, you shouldn't look for musicianship or harmonic splendour here.
This music goes by other ethics such as the intensity of its alienated feel, the harshness of its sound, the aggression of the beats and the shout-along capability of the material. Quite a bit of similarities with metal actually : Raznor sure excels in the virtues expected in this genre and combines it with a knack for a good tune. He manages to keep the album varied and engaging for its entire course.
In the early 90's I was a huge fan of the 80's scene that paved the way for NIN, so the fact that I can trace each track back to its main influence will forever spoil the experience for me. All in all, it's a fine album that has turned out to be quite important in rock history. This is music from a scene as alien to Prog as rap is to folk, but it kind of touches avant-garde and RIO.
Still, I'd rather review the real thing, the original bands who broke the ground instead of this second tier band who only popularized it.
I'm happy to say that I did in fact get more than the cheap album price initially made me assume. These two extremes also happen to be my two personal picks from the album, showing me that Trent Reznor's music has never been about taking the middle ground.
This by no means that the rest of material is average, in fact it's all quite excellent and does a perfect job of creating a smooth album flow all throughout the material. I can't say that Pretty Hate Machine was an eye-opening album for me since I've so far not heard another full length Nine Inch Nails release, but I blame that mainly on me wanting to preserve the perfection of this self-sufficient experience without comparing it to some of Trent Reznor 's later albums.
I guess that some of the later singles I've heard did play a part in this decision as well. Even if it's not an album I play all too often, Pretty Hate Machine has definitely withstood the test of time and will continue to uphold a respectable place in my music collection.
This music is hardly progressive or original, but for me that's not really an issue when the songwriting bar is set so high. The bass is pumped and the beat is emphasized, making this album a club favorite at the time, yet still, there is enough going on in each song to bring me back for a listen when I feel I need that sort of attitude adjustment.
Great bass line. Nice atmospheric synths. Good guitar and effects in the chorus. At you hear some Gregorian chant style vocal sounds. Things pick up when the electronic snare drum comes in near the end. I've always loved how this song seques into the next via a spacey, atmospheric part.
Great atmospheric synth in the background. During the chorus where you hear "you make this all go away", there is a synthetic banging sound in one channel and a synthetic handclap sound in the other.
0コメント