Sanctified
Song by Nine Inch Nails
I spent my teenage years playing guitar—all day long.
When you're thirteen or fourteen, all you want is to have a band to play with, but sometimes it isn't easy to find the right people. There aren't many bands around that don't change their original lineup.
Sometimes you find the right people, but you have different tastes, stories, goals, or attitudes. And maybe, after a while, all those differences come out, and you just quit or look for someone else to play with.
That was my situation when I finally decided to get a laptop and make music by myself. So, I started programming my drum machines, beats, and so on.
But after a while, you get tired of yourself.
It happens to everybody.
And then, you want to perform live, and this is also where a band can be helpful. Your buddies make it more fun. After a long period of solo artists and loop stations, I feel bands are coming back, even in the electronic music scene.
Trent Reznor started Nine Inch Nails in 1988 while working as an assistant engineer at Right Track Studios in Cleveland. He used studio "down-time" to record his first demos, which then he developed with the help of producers Flood, Keith LeBlanc, Adrian Sherwood, and John Fryer.
NIN's first album, Pretty Hate Machine, was released in 1989.
“Unable to find a band that could arrange the material as he desired, Reznor played all the instruments (except drums) himself.”
His combination of electronic and songwriting mixed with an aggressive rock attitude led the album to critical acclaim, marking the beginning of a new era.
When listening to Pretty Hate Machine now, it reminds me of some pissed-off version of Prince, with a funk attitude that Reznor further developed in the following albums.
“Head Like a Hole and Down in it are the most popular songs on the album, but I chose to write about Sanctified, the real trademark of NIN’s musical journey, which I believe culminated with The Downward Spiral (1994) and The Fragile (1999).”
Reznor mainly used an E-mu Emax, Prophet VS, Oberheim Xpander, and Minimoog as synthesizers, but in Sanctified, the leading tracks of the song are a looped bass riff and a keyboard melody that recalls Faith No More.
We can also hear a stereo panned guitar and the use of samples as part of the main drum machine beat (a big reverberated tom on the left channel and a sharp hi-hat "sound like" on the right channel, probably a cut sample), another technique that we still use today.
Nine Inch Nails have always been referred to as part of the Industrial music genre, but I've always found this category utterly wrong for them.
I find this term more appropriate for something more organic and less produced on laptops and computers like the German band Einstürzende Neubauten.
Reznor is always a massive example of fine production and excellent studio skills; this has led him to work as a producer with artists like David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, and Jane's Addiction, to name a few, making him one of the first examples of what an electronic music producer is today.
