• concept album
  • heavy, industrial sounds combined with melodic material
  • process: generating raw material (eg. 20 minutes improvised gtr) then cutting out interesting bits to sample and loop

01 ‘Mr Self Destruct’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. extreme contrast – very loud to very quiet, very full to very sparse
  2. call and response verses (‘and i control you’) – response heavily filtered

02 ‘Piggy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. lyric recurring as theme/chant throughout several songs
  2. drum loops made from different spaced drum recordings; both at a micro hit-by-hit level and at a macro part-by-part level

03 ‘Heresy’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. vox layering
  2. sfx (marching boots, machines) become percussion

04 ‘March Of The Pigs’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. switch from heavy to acoustic and clean ‘now, doesn’t that make you feel better?’
  2. significant moment of silence mid song

05 ‘Closer’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. piano melody from previous tracks – establishing itself as the album theme melody
  2. extreme, uncompromising lyric

06 ‘Ruiner’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. pre chorus bridge vox unintelligible – dimly audible vocal production
  2. final line ‘nothing can stop me now’ – hard cut right on the word ‘stop’ – prosody

07 ‘The Becoming’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. unusual rhythm – makes it hard to dance/tap foot to
  2. hard panned crossfade into next track

08 ‘I Do Not Want This’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. great beat
  2. contrast of plaintive acst elements (piano) with hard industrial elements (drums and noises)

09 ‘Big Man With A Gun’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. rapid fire drumming contrasted with relatively slow gtr chords
  2. return of key line ‘nothing can stop me now’

10 ‘A Warm Place’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. pretty, almost sickly so, melodic/harmonic content made interesting through textural production
  2. descending chord progression against ascending melody / track in 2 halves, same progression but in different keys

11 ‘ Eraser’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. long instrumental build
  2. when vox enter it is sudden and everything changes – like 2 tracks stitched together

12 – ‘Reptile’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. bass enter – bass is just one long note hold/throb/hum
  2. middle section features loop of ambient ‘other place’ sound (from film strk)
13 ‘The Downward Spiral’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. muffled, like a bad demo tape – as effect when contrasted either with previous section or with instrument on top
  2. sudden cuts and edits between sections and sudden ending

14 ‘ Hurt’ – The Downward Spiral (1994) – Nine Inch Nails

  1. one note riff – simple beat 1234 – changes texture (ie., becomes low note/chord)
  2. loop final note/chord and sustain for a long time