The New Regime (Nine Inch Nails, Lostprophets) Singled Out Week: Final Day -What Brings Us Down

What Brings Us Down is a definite favorite of mine off of Speak Through The White Noise. The song has a completely individual character with a mood and feel all it's own.

The verses are pretty different because they're in 7/8 time, yet feel very fluid and natural. I've always found it interesting when songwriters come up with melodies and parts in odd time signatures where you don't notice them until you actually count them out. John Lennon did this quite a bit on more than a few Beatles songs. The chorus straightens out into 4/4 time with a big sequenced synth providing the rolling movement.

What is unique about this song from a recording standpoint is where and how it was constructed and completed. The bulk of it was recorded in a single day off at home during a NIN tour. I had purchased a vintage Roland RE-201 Space Echo and was very eager to use it when I got home, so lots of the guitar parts, rhodes parts, and other keyboard achieved their sound through that tape echo unit. Days off in the following two weeks were spent recording and emailing guitar and MIDI synth parts from various hotel rooms. To date, this was the only time I had recorded a song this way. It really makes you appreciate how advanced technology is when you can record something of such quality on a laptop at your own will. All of the backup vocals and harmonies were recorded in one night after a NIN show in NYC.