mod, Administrators
11,621
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
In April 2010, [[TVT Records#Bicycle Music|Bicycle Music]] bought the entirety of TVT's catalogue, including ''Pretty Hate Machine''. They confirmed that they would be reissuing the album once more[https://web.archive.org/web/20111005050050/http://www.bicyclemusic.com/downloads/TGH_Press%20Release_v4.pdf], and there was speculation that they would be willing to release the deluxe edition proposed by TVT in 2005.
<blockquote>
The co-publishing rights to Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails catalog include the songs from all album releases from ''Pretty Hate Machine'' through ''[[Year Zero]]''. As well, in acquiring the master recording rights to NIN’s groundbreaking debut, ''Pretty Hate Machine'', Bicycle will be responsible for re-releasing this album which has been out of print and unavailable through digital distribution outlets for several years. “It goes without saying how important these works are to the entire landscape of Alternative Rock. Our team sees incredible creative and business opportunities with this catalog and we look forward to working with our new partners and artists," said Steve Salm, Partner at Bicycle.
</blockquote>
On October 22, Reznor announced that the reissue was to be a remastered edition, stating on [[nin.com]][http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?9,1162370]:
<blockquote>
I'm happy to finally announce the re-issue of the first Nine Inch Nails record "Pretty Hate Machine", releasing worldwide 11/22. UMe and Bicycle Music Group managed to locate the original mixes, so I went in the studio with Tom Baker and remastered it for a greatly improved sonic experience. In addition, Rob reinterpreted [[Gary Talpas]]' original cover to make for a fresh new package.
It's been an interesting trip watching the fate of this record float from one set of hands to another (a long and depressing story) but it's finally wound up in friendly territory, allowing us to polish it up a bit and present it to you now. We had fun revisiting this old friend, hope you enjoy.
Reznor stated in one of his posts on the Prodigy internet service in the early 90s that "the cover of PHM is a photo of the blades of some sort of turbine stretched vertically so they would look somewhat like bones or a rib cage."[http://www.theninhotline.net/archives/articles/manager/display_article.php?id=327]
In an interview with [https://web.archive.org/web/20101101052703/http://sleevage.com/nin-pretty-hate-machine/ Sleevage.com], [[Rob Sheridan]] described the long process he went through to update the artwork for the 2010 re-issue:
<blockquote>
When we began the ''Pretty Hate Machine'' remaster project, Trent discussed with me the idea of tweaking the original artwork a bit to reflect that this was a different version of the album, updated from its original release. We talked about maybe just changing the color scheme a bit – Trent was keen on losing the distinctly 80′s hot pink color, for one. It seemed like a fairly straightforward project, as I certainly didn’t want to try and radically alter an album cover I’d been looking at since I was a teenager, and that some fans had known very well for more than two decades.
The first bump in the road was that no one had the original artwork. We left no stone unturned – we even reached out to the original designer, Gary Talpas, but he had given all his materials to [[Nothing Records ]] long ago. Our best guess is that those materials were lost somewhere in Trent’s split with his old management. I tried scanning the old vinyl cover, but it was poorly printed and looked like an absolute mess when scanned. Even after cleaning it up a bit, attempting to separate the colors was fairly disastrous, and the resolution was terrible.
In 2004 I redesigned NIN’s ''The Downward Spiral'' for its 10th anniversary [[The_Downward_Spiral_(halo)#Re-Release|Deluxe Edition]]. In that case, Trent still had all of [[Russell Mills’ Mills]]’ original art pieces that were used in the album, so I was able to re-photograph them and present the artwork in a new and interesting way. With this album, I didn’t have that luxury. It became clear to me that I was going to have to start from scratch.
I tried a number of different approaches – I even got some various mechanical parts from hardware stores and arranged them in a way that resembled the shape of the cover image (I’d remembered reading long ago that the original image was taken of some sort of factory machine, with spokes that looked like ribs), and photographed it in different ways, then attempted to push the contrast of the photos and pull shapes out of them. Nothing was working out very well though. It either looked too far away from the original cover, or like a weird, sad imitation of it.
At this point I was free to play with the color scheme. I tried a wide variety of colors, ranging from darker, more muted versions of the original color scheme, to ones that looked nothing like the original. The favorite – both of Trent and myself – was the dark blue/blue/off-white combo used in the final image. It was a bit similar to a PHM t-shirt that’s been around for a while, so there was a sense of familiarity in the colors.
I then carefully recreated the title font from the original cover, and the black frames it sat in. The font, a stretched-out version of Helvetica, looked dated to me, but I wanted to be respectful of the original design and not mess with it too much. When Trent saw what I’d done though, he wanted to try a new approach to the title text, as he felt the font was just too dated and could use a more modern look for this remaster. So I went back to the original album and looked at the font that had been used for the credits and lyrics, which turned out to be a slight variation of a font Gary Talpas later used in ''The Downward Spiral''. Putting the PHM title in that font was way too similar to ''The Downward Spiral'', but when I put it in caps it created an odd mix of vintage NIN and modern NIN – perfect for a 2010 remaster of a 1989 album. Trent liked this approach much better, and we settled on the way we wanted the title set on the album cover. The image sitting behind it – my recreated artwork – still felt a bit flat, though.
To push the art a bit further, I got the idea of printing the image out at a very high DPI and photographing it with a narrow depth of field, allowing parts of it to fall out of focus. This gave a new depth to the previously flat artwork, and it turned out to be exactly what the image was missing. After quite a few experiments, I ended up with the image that is now the cover, and immediately felt I’d finally gotten this thing to where I’d wanted it to be. I sent it to Trent without any of the type or anything on it, and while he’d been somewhat lukewarm on the previous material, he was immediately excited about this one. “That looks fucking great,” he told me, “we’ve got it.” I put the black frame and our new type treatment over the new cover image, and everything clicked. The new cover, with the unmistakable shape of the “ribs” and the interlacing effect, remained respectful to the original and still recognizable, while adding a more modern feel and a “fresh coat of paint” on the colors. This is not meant to replace the original cover. This is the cover for this 2010 remastered edition of the album.
*Digital editing and continuity: Trent Reznor, Chris Vrenna
*Mastering: Tony Dawsey at Masterdisk, NYC
*Sleeve: [[Gary Talpas]] for Föhn Design
*Portrait photography: Jeffrey Silverthorne
*Thank you: Bart Koster (The Right Track), Mike Shea, Michael S. Toorock, Roz Earls, Seb Shelton, Bryan Grant, Larry Bole, Alison Fryer, Michelle de Frasia, Gerry Gerard, Martin Horne, Sioux Zimmerman, Paul Conelly, [[Ron Musarra]], Steve Woolard, Mark Jowett and all at Nettwek, Howie Klein, Preston Sullivan/Carlyle, Kevin Donoghue/Native, Frederic Wahleer/Sub Rosa