Ohai everyone! Over the last few months I've been going back and revisiting The Downward Spiral, dissecting the production work, teasing out what gear made what sounds and the like. Listening to the isolated tracks and surround-sound rips I've identified three more sample sources that don't seem to be accounted for anywhere, two of which are extremely odd as I sampled these same exact parts of these films when I was 16 and bought my first EMU ESI-32 sampler back in 1998.

The first is a sample of a scream buried during the guitar solo breakdown of "Ruiner". It's easiest to hear in the isolated tracks found here, at the 3:02 mark:


The source is from the 1989 film Parents. It's played at two different pitches and can be found here:



Next up is a symphonic sample during the first half of "The Downward Spiral". It always sounded to me like an orchestra tuning, but you can hear it isolated at 0:48 here:


The source is a snippet of my favorite film score ever - Howard Shore's work on Dead Ringers. The sample is played down a whole step I believer. It's specifically the intro to the cue titled "Twins" and can be heard here:

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This one is so obscure I thought I was hearing things, but a quick google search turned up that Dead Ringers is actually Reznor's favorite film and it was an enormous tonal inspiration for TDS and The Fragile. Check it out: https://graffitiwithpunctuation.com/...ronenberg-1988

Lastly, we've got the second buried scream in "March of the Pigs". You can hear two samples layered over one another here at 0:32:

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The first has been identified as being from the film Sorcerer. The second is from the opening scene from The Exorcist II: The Heretic. It's pitched down slightly. You can find it here at around 2:30 or so:

. The same sample is played back at regular speed during the intro to the Reznor-remixed version of Marilyn Manson's "Get Your Gunn". Check that out here:




Hope this sheds light on some sonic mysteries we geeks have been trying to unravel for the last 27 years!