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Working nights at Right Track Studio as a handyman and janitor, [[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.
After the album was released, the aforementioned demo surfaced on a [[bootlegs|bootleg ]] called ''[[Purest Feeling (album)|Purest Feeling]]''. It contains the original demo recordings of most of the tracks found on the album, as well as a couple that were not used ("[[Purest Feeling (song)|Purest Feeling]]" and "[[Maybe Just Once]]").Two other batches of demos, distinct from those on ''Purest Feeling'', also exist. One batch ("Down In It", "Sanctified", "Kinda I Want To", and "Twist") can be found on the ''[[Demos and Remixes]]'' bootleg. Another batch ("Sin", "Terrible Lie", "Sanctified", "Ringfinger", and "Down In It") are on a cassette privately owned by [[Martin Atkins]].[https://exclaim.ca/music/article/early_demo_of_nine_inch_nails_pretty_hate_machine_hits_ebay]
''Pretty Hate Machine'' was recorded in various studios around the world with Reznor collaborating with some of his most idolized producers - [[Flood]] at Syncro Sound in Boston, Keith LeBlanc at Unique Recording Studios in New York, [[Adrian Sherwood]] at Roundhouse Studios in London, and John Fryer at Blackwing Studios in London. Flood was originally supposed to produce the entire album, but couldn't because of his prior commitment with Depeche Mode.[httphttps://www.theninhotline.netcom/archives/articles/getdowninit.shtmldisplay/530] Reznor used his own journal entries as sources and inspiration for the album's lyrics.[https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/21/trent-reznor-nine-inch-nails-youre-seeing-the-fall-of-america] He also listened extensively to [[Gary Numan]]'s album ''Telekon'' while recording the album.[https://www.electronicbeats.net/mr-style-icon-gary-numan-on-trent-reznor/]
After the album was finished, TVT Records were not happy about the direction the album had taken from the original demos. This would lead to friction between Reznor and the label. John Fryer elaborated:
<blockquote>'''Where did you get the samples that you used on the album?'''
A couple of people helped me. I'd say, "if you hear anything cool in a movie or any place else, just throw it onto cassette, and I'll dump it into the sampler." Of course, they were all hot to do it for a couple of days, then their interest waned and their output stopped. But every drum sound on ''Pretty Hate Machine'' is off of somebody else‘s else's record. I'd just gotten the Emax but I hated the factory sounds, and I didn't have anything transferred over from the Emulator. So I got a couple of albums out - Front 242, Scritti Politti, a bunch of things - and nicked sounds from here and there. Then I sequenced the songs, and took them into the studio, thinking, "Okay, if I'm gonna do it for real with a producer, let's get some real drum sounds." But the ones I had were pretty cool. We just EQ-ed them, and that's it.
'''Did you take any original industrial noise samples?'''
'''What was the source of the piano sound on "Something I Can Never Have"?'''
That‘s That's the one song I kind of backed away from. I did that in London, with John Fryer. He's done a lot of things on the 4 A.D. label, like Cocteau Twins, System Event, Xymox. 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] S900 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.D. artists. 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 24- track. Somehow it worked perfectly.
'''"That's What I Get" followed an unusual arrangement pattern, with a really big intro, after which the tune gradually diminished to nothing.'''
'''There doesn't seem to be a lot of synth on the album.'''
Actually, there was. I used a Prophet-VS, an Oberheim Xpander, and a little bit of Minimoog, which was down more than up in the studio. I've had the Xpander since it came out. I've always considered it a great analog machine. It's the only thing I've ever owned that‘s that's never let me down. 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. "Terrible Lie" was all Oberheim.</blockquote>
==Touring==
==External Links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20101229095515/http://portraitofdecayphm.netnin.com/wwwphm.prettyhatemachinenin.com/ Official remaster website (archived at Portrait of Decay)Wayback Machine]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCk49CqjOD0 ''Pretty Hate Machine'' EPK on YouTube]
*[http://nincatalog.com/pretty-hate-machine/ ''Pretty Hate Machine'' at nincatalog.com]
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