THE NIN HOTLINE

Tuesday December 14, 2010

Pretty Hate Machine demos listed on eBay for... $0.01 - now with samples!

Hotline ImageThere was a lot of excitement at the end of the month when a previously unreleased/unheard NIN demo tape showed up on eBay at a price of $20,000... or best offer. That listing's ended, but the tape has been re-listed this time as a traditional auction, and the first bid was $0.01. There's still a week to go, but bidding's already bumped the tape up to $280 at the time of this post.

There's a more detail in this auction listing, and there are two samples up on Martin Atkins' Facebook page, but the clips provided don't really give you the proper impression of the fidelity of the recording. I took the time to run them through autotune, a pirated Waves noise reduction plugin, and then compressed the shit out of the recording so that people could complain about the loudness war and dynamic range, and am presenting you my edits of the demo clips below. And don't tell me you want a copy on vinyl because it's not happening, chump.

Sin (Demo) Clip

Terrible Lie (demo) Clip

Well, obviously I didn't actually process those at all. Someone posted these clips online earlier this year, but I'm not sure if they want their name out there. But they're a good 20 seconds longer than what else is available, and seem to be recorded straight off the tape, rather than from a mic held somewhere near a speaker that's playing back the tape.