Pretty Hate Machine

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Pretty Hate Machine
Studio album by Nine Inch Nails
Released	October 20, 1989
Recorded	Right Track, Cleveland; Blackwing & Roundhouse, London; Unique, New York City; Synchro Sound, Boston
Genre	Synthpop Electropop Industrial
Length	48:42
Label	TVT Records
Producer(s)	Trent Reznor, Flood, Adrian Sherwood, Keith LeBlanc, John Fryer
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Pitchfork Media (re-release) (5.6/10) link Q
Nine Inch Nails chronology
	Pretty Hate Machine (1989)	Broken (1992)

Pretty Hate Machine (also known as Halo 2) is an album by Nine Inch Nails released in 1989. Pretty Hate Machine is the second official Nine Inch Nails release and the band's first major release.

Working nights at Right Track Studio as a handyman and toilet cleaner,^[1] Trent Reznor used studio "down time" to record and develop his own music. Playing most of the keyboards, drum machines, guitars, and samplers himself, he recorded a demo.

Teaming up with manager John A. Malm, Jr. they sent the demo to various record labels. Reznor received serious offers from many of them. He signed a deal with TVT Records who, until then, were known mainly for releasing novelty and television jingle records.

Pretty Hate Machine was then recorded in various studios around the world with Reznor collaborating with some of his most idolized producers - Flood, Keith LeBlanc, Adrian Sherwood, and John Fryer.

The album was released on October 20, 1989 and was a critical success. It received radio airplay for the singles "Down in It", "Head Like a Hole" and "Sin". The album also gained popularity through word-of-mouth and developed an underground following. Reznor quickly hired a band for touring with The Jesus and Mary Chain, including guitarist and future Filter frontman Richard Patrick. NIN's live set was notorious for louder, more aggressive versions of the studio songs, and also for destroying their instruments at the end. Reznor preferred using the heel of his boots to strip the keys from expensive keyboards.

Since the album was released, a recording known as Purest Feeling surfaced. This bootleg album contains the original demo recordings of most of the tracks found on PHM, as well as a couple that were not used ("Purest Feeling", "Maybe Just Once" and instrumental intro to "Sanctified" called "Slate").

The entire album was covered by a string quartet in 2005 as The String Quartet Tribute to Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, arranged by Eric Gorfain.

Pretty Hate Machine went out of print through TVT Records, but was reissued by Rykodisc Records on November 22, 2005 with slight changes in the packaging. Reznor had expressed an interest in creating a "deluxe edition" with surround sound remastering and new/rare remixes, similar to the re-release of The Downward Spiral. Rykodisc liked the idea, but not enough to pay Reznor to do so [1].

On March 27 2007, on the NIN hotline (www.thenninhotline.net/news) appeared a blurb about a paperback based on Pretty Hate Machine titled "Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine (33 1/3)" by Daphne Carr. The book was also available for pre-order at amazon.com and a small variety of other online stores. The details of both the book's content and whether the book is fictional or non-fictional are yet to be discovered or announced.

Contents 1 Releases 2 Track listing 3 Personnel 4 Chart positions 4.1 Album 4.2 Singles 5 Miscellanea 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Releases

• TVT Records TVT 2610-1 - 12" Vinyl
• TVT Records TVT 2610-2 - CD

[edit] Track listing

1. "Head Like a Hole" – 4:59
2. "Terrible Lie" – 4:38
3. "Down in It" – 3:46
4. "Sanctified" – 5:48
5. "Something I Can Never Have" – 5:54
6. "Kinda I Want To" – 4:33
7. "Sin" – 4:06
8. "That's What I Get" – 4:30
9. "The Only Time" – 4:47
10. "Ringfinger" – 5:40

[edit] Personnel

• Trent Reznor – Arranger, Programming, Producer, Engineer, Digital Editing, Mixing
• Doug d'Angelis – Engineer
• Tony Dawsey – Mastering
• Flood – Programming, Producer, Engineer
• John Fryer – Producer, Engineer, Mixing
• Kennan Keating – Engineer
• Keith LeBlanc – Producer, Engineer, Remixing, Mixing
• Richard Patrick – Guitar (A droning guitar sound at the end of "Sanctified")
• Ken Quartarone – Engineer
• Adrian Sherwood – Producer, Engineer, Mixing
• Jeffrey Silverthorne – Photography
• Gary Talpas – Cover Design
• Chris Vrenna – Programming, Digital Editing

[edit] Chart positions

[edit] Album

Year	Title	Chart	Position
1990	Pretty Hate Machine	The Billboard 200	No. 75[2]

[edit] Singles

Year	Title	Chart	Position
1989	Down in It	Hot Dance Music/Club Play	No. 16[3]
1989	Down in It	Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales	No. 20
1989	Down in It	Modern Rock Tracks	No. 16[3]
1990	Head Like a Hole	Hot Dance Music/Club Play	No. 17[3]
1990	Head Like a Hole	Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales	No. 34
1990	Head Like a Hole	Modern Rock Tracks	No. 28[3]
1990	Sin	Hot Dance Music/Club Play	No. 10[3]
1990	Sin	Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales	No. 13

[edit] Miscellanea

• Some of the lyrics featured in the booklet are not found on the album. It is believed that Trent Reznor printed the full lyrics so that they would retain their meanings.
• The bands listed in the liner notes (Prince, Jane's Addiction and Public Enemy, amongst others) were all sampled on the album; parts of Prince's "Alphabet St." and Jane's Addiction's "Had a Dad" are prominently heard in "Ringfinger", while other samples were either edited or distorted to be unrecognizable (such as the intro to "Kinda I Want To").
• Musicologist Daphne Carr wrote a book on the album for Continuum's 33⅓ series, which will be available in Spring 2007 and has its own portal at MySpace

[edit] References

1. ^ Huey, Steve. Nine Inch Nails. Allmusic. Retrieved on February 3, 2007.
2. ^ Billboard.com
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Billboard.com "Artist History"

[edit] External links

• Nine Inch Nails' official site
• Halo 2 at NINCollector.com
• discogs.com:
  • Pretty Hate Machine (US CD)
  • Pretty Hate Machine (US CD Re-release)
  • Pretty Hate Machine (US LP)
  • Pretty Hate Machine (AT CD)
  • Pretty Hate Machine (UK CD)
  • Pretty Hate Machine (DE LP)