Down in It
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Down in It (also known as Halo 1) is a single by Nine Inch Nails for the song of the same name released in 1989.
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The Single
Down in It is the first official Nine Inch Nails release and is a single for the album Pretty Hate Machine. Initially released only on vinyl, a CD version was later created after the success of Pretty Hate Machine. The first track on this single, "Down in It (skin)," is the mix that is found on the album.
Releases
- TVT Records TVT 2611 - 12" Vinyl
- TVT Records TVT 2611-2 - CD
Track Listing
(all tracks remixed by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc)
- "Down in It (skin)" - 3:46
- "Down in It (shred)" - 6:56
- "Down in It (singe)" - 7:03
The Song
"Down in It" has attracted controversy due to its similarity to Skinny Puppy's song "Dig It." Trent Reznor has admitted that Skinny Puppy's song was a major influence [1] (http://www.9inchnails.com/encyclopedia/list.php?loc=s).
A music video was made for this song. It was directed by Eric Zimmerman and Benjamin Stokes and released in September, 1989. The original version of the video ended with Trent Reznor falling off of a building and dying in the street. This footage attracted the attention of the FBI. Reznor explained the story in a 1991 interview with Convulsion Magazine:"The first video we recorded was "Down in It" which was quite a while ago and one of the elements of the video was we had a bunch of super 8 cameras and we were throwing them off the edge of a building and seeing what it looked like. There was a scene were I was lying on the ground, appearing to be dead, in a lodgeresque pose and we had a camera with a big weather balloon filled with helium hooked up to it. So we started the camera, let it float upwards, and then if you pulled it back down and played it backwards it looked like the camera was coming out of my head from way up high. The first one we did, we started the film, I was laying on the ground and the ropes that were holding the balloon snapped, the camera just took off into the atmosphere. We went to the top of the building and looked at it and it was just a speck way out in the horizon. We shot this in chicago and the only thing we thought was like `man I hope that doesn't fall and kill somebody, a camera dropping 10,000 feet.' Well nothing really happened until over a year later, we got a call from my manager saying, this is the most unbelievable story, you will not believe what happened... The camera landed 200 miles away in a farmers field somewhere. He finds it and takes it to the police thinking that it's a surveillance camera for marijuana, they develop the film and think that it's some sort of snuff film of a murder, give it to the FBI and have pathologists looking at the body saying, yeah he's rotting (I had corn starch on me, right) he's been decomposing for 3 weeks. You could see the other members of the band walking away and they had these weird outfits on and they thought it was some kind of gang slaying. When the camera went up they could see it was Chicago so they went to the Chicago police department and they went to all the art schools and asked if this was anybodies work that you might know and traced it down to one of our video directors who went to one of the Art schools, then there was talk that I would have to appear and talk to prove that I was alive, stupid, but funny." [2] (http://www.obsolete.com/convulsion/interviews/convulse/1.5.html)This story was covered by the news magazine show Hard Copy on their March 5, 1991 episode.
"Down in It" has been covered by Eric Gorfain, The Meeks and Sacha.
External Links
- nin.com (http://www.nin.com)
- Halo 1 Lyrics (http://www.wellnowwhat.net/nin/halo01.html)
- nincollector.com: halo one (http://mike7478.homestead.com/files/halo01.htm)
- discogs.com: Down in It (CD5") (http://www.discogs.com/release/5237)
- discogs.com: Down in It (US 12") (http://www.discogs.com/release/203945)
- discogs.com: Down in It (UK 12") (http://www.discogs.com/release/318243)