UTTERMEDIA

There is really no synopsis or summary I could muster to introduce ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ with the deserved adequacy. A tenacious and raw album, it marked Trent Reznor’s first commercially successful album as Nine Inch Nails. More electro and synth than industrial, the scratchy guitars and undeniably MIDI drum tracks stamped a faint trademark for NIN’s catchy but dark soundscape.

Originally released in November 1989, the album appeared through TVT Records, an indie US label now probably better known for their tumulus relationship with PHM’s publishing rights. A short album by today’s standard, Reznor has always held a place in live performances for the early material. Uncharacteristically, the live band rarely wavered from the original structure of the songs.

21 years on, Reznor regained the control of the master recordings, and naturally a rerelease was imminent. Today, 22nd November 2011, Pretty Hate Machine is rereleased, remastered and artwork reimaged.

Pretty Hate Machine, for me, is that album that has always had pride of place clattering about in my car glovebox. It’s always the last thing I pack when I move house. It’s always that first album that I sync with my iPod. However, it’s never quite been that album that you first play on your brand new speakers or headphones.

For me, Pretty Hate Machine was a soundtrack to a point in my life where I was exploring society, sex, money, freedom and mischief. A point in my life which shaped me as a person, a point in my life where I learned as much good as I did bad. On or off the rails, Pretty Hate Machine just kept playing and playing and playing, and it never got boring. I still have the vinyl and 3 different CD pressings, in a very sturdy box, in a very dark corner of my attic - probably a handful of my most treasured possessions. To mature with an album is a beautiful thing.

The production is tight, and the mastering is fairly well balanced, yet at times it sounds “4-track” and the basslines (which sound great live) are lost in the mix. The guitar can be overpowering in chorus’ and the album as a whole was probably transfered a little quiet on the final mix. These aren’t problems, just observations that I would make if I were hard pushed to find fault.

However the new mix has dusted down and reassembled the intricate tracks with near-perfection. The synth basslines now push through enough to give each track a harder groove, as a result the guitars no longer sound quite so tinny. The sampling and foley seems to have had a lot of tweaking with some of the perhaps once insignificant sounds now grabbing your attention where they never used to. Sin, especially, sounds deeper, with the attack on the keys rethought.

The most beautiful thing about the whole remaster however isn’t what Trent has done, but what he hasn’t done. The vocals haven’t been touched. Not even tweaked. In today’s musical climate, it’s wholesomely refreshing to hear natural, emotional and somewhat flakey vocals over a track that has quite obviously matured over time.

The artwork has been reimaged tastefully, but frankly, if Rob Sheridan had offered up a whole new piece, it would have been equally glorious. There is a really insightful interview here about the cover art, and how the original source files were lost altogether. As a photography and designer, I was in geek heaven reading this. When you lose, mislay or forget to save original artwork, there really isn’t much you can do. You can’t “enhance” an image, no matter what American crime shows tell you. You have to work with what you’ve got, and in this case, recapture an original concept in a modern light. When you hold an album so close to your heart, it’s almost as much a pleasure to peruse sleeve art and cover details as much as it is to listen to the music, especially in an age when the physical release becomes less prevalent, and focus is rightly or wrongly on instant sales via digital outlets.

That part of a record that you can barely hear, but gives you goosebumps every time? It could feel almost invasive if someone fucked with that. But perhaps the artist knows that the avid listeners wait, every single time, for that very bar? And perhaps by tirelessly playing the same song to different crowds for decades, the artists knows that just turning that instrument up one tiny bit will make every single one of their hair’s stand on end, harder and straighter than ever before?