I have been in the process of sanitizing my (ever-growing) music collection. So far I have managed to sanitize 2762 songs in mp3, Vorbis, and FLAC formats, constituting roughly 8 days, 8 hours, and 50 minutes of music. For the past week in particular, I have been working on sanitizing the Nine Inch Nails discography, which — if you didn’t know — is quite extensive. So far I have managed to finished 21 of 27 Halos.

The first Halo that I sanitized was the 1989 album Pretty Hate Machine, which I set playing through as I worked on the other Halos. The opening song — “Head Like a Hole” — begins with a high-frequency percussion sample, and as soon as I heard it my mind began overlaying the instrumental section of another song over top of the beat. I knew the song I was hearing in my head was a NIN song, and decided it must have been a remix of “Head Like a Hole” that I had heard at some point.

I searched my NIN discography for all remixes of the song, and listened to them, but none of them fit the bill. In fact, most of them don’t even have this percussion sample at the start, so they didn’t even evoke the same familiarity. I finally got around to sanitizing Halo 21, or “Every Day Is Exactly the Same“, and it turns out the song I was thinking of is the Richard X remix of “Only” — BOOYASHAKA!!

I’m going to be honest with you.. this has been bugging me for over a week =/