The Becoming (Still)

[Ryan]

"Annie, hold a little tighter. I might... might just, might slip away,"

Discuss the glory that is this version of the song here.

[botley]

"Annie, hold a little tighter. I might... might just, might slip away,"

Discuss the glory that is this version of the song here.

It's so good that every subsequent performance of the song feels influenced by it, even if they don't ever come close to its utterly unique instrumental arrangement.

The low-fi, live-off-the-floor intensity of Still's very restrained production approach adds to this song's gutteral menace, in deliberate contrast to the layered machinery of The Downward Spiral's epic studio-constructed chaos. It's almost too cliché to say the song epitomized the man-versus-machine dichotomy of Reznor's work, but these two wildly variant recordings prove this one piece of music perfectly epitomizes that concept.

[muad'nin]

It's so good that every subsequent performance of the song feels influenced by it, even if they don't ever come close to its utterly unique instrumental arrangement.

The low-fi, live-off-the-floor intensity of Still's very restrained production approach adds to this song's gutteral menace, in deliberate contrast to the layered machinery of The Downward Spiral's epic studio-constructed chaos. It's almost too cliché to say the song epitomized the man-versus-machine dichotomy of Reznor's work, but these two wildly variant recordings prove this one piece of music perfectly epitomizes that concept.

@botley you always have such insightful, articulate, thoughtful comments to make in relation to music. It makes me long for new additions to This Noise Inside My Head which, for the record, I still check regularly, hoping for new entries.

[botley]

Thanks, and well spotted! That was actually from an outline I had originally done for that site, which included some Downward Spiral-era tracks I haven't got around to completing work on.

The problem I ran into with updating that site is all the YouTube links were difficult to monitor and keep live whenever they would get pulled by copyright holders (even though I was using them for scholarly purposes under the "fair use" clause). For this track, I wouldn't even be able to use a YouTube link to the Still version because it's not up there anymore.

On another note... someone was translating all my writing into Russian! Totally bizarre.

[BenAkenobi]

may i ask where it's reposted?

[botley]

http://vk.com/topic-10464_28194381

[Halo Infinity]

The Becoming is easily one of my favorite songs from Still, and it certainly made me appreciate it on The Downward Spiral a whole lot more. I remember watching it over and over again on NIN.com in 2004.