Random NIN Thoughts

[botley]

It took me about twenty years of listening to the album version of "Sin" to figure out what the high-pitched squealing noise was on the introduction (just as the hi-hat pattern enters, it starts on the left side of the stereo image, then pans to the other side and back; crops up again several times throughout). Always thought maybe it was a violin sample, or something like that, but then TR casually dropped a truth-bomb in a recent interview that there was "sax on Pretty Hate Machine" and my brain — after a few moments of "WTF is he talking about, 'Purest Feeling' isn't on the album" — went "oh fuck, that noise is a saxophone played in the altissimo range with over-blowing". If you pitch shift it down a couple of tones this is easier to hear, but I'm pretty sure now that's exactly what it is.