Metal Machine Music
Encyclopedia
Metal Machine Music, subtitled *The Amine β Ring, is the fifth solo album
by Lou Reed
. It was originally released as a double album
by RCA Records
in 1975
. It was reissue
d on a single compact disc
by BMG
in 1997 and again by Buddah Records
in 2000.
As a radical departure from the rest of Reed's catalog, Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a grudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music
. The album features no songs or even recognizably structured compositions, eschewing melody
and rhythm
for an hour of over-modulated feedback
and guitar effects, intricately mixed at varying speeds by Reed himself. In the album's liner notes
he claimed to have invented heavy metal music
and asserted that Metal Machine Music was the ultimate conclusion of that genre
. The album made Reed a laughing stock in the rock industry while simultaneously opening the door for his later, more experimental
material. Historically, Metal Machine Music is now considered a seminal forerunner of industrial music
, noise rock
, and contemporary sound art
.
In 2010, Reed, Ulrich Krieger
, and Sarth Calhoun
collaborated to tour, playing free improvisation
inspired by the album, as Metal Machine Trio. That same year, Reed announced his plans to re-release Metal Machine Music in remastered form.
played at different speeds. This can be heard clearly if the album is played at 16 rpm with the balance adjusted to hear either the right or left channel only as each appears to be unrelated. The two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. He would then place the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings — the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track
tape recorder
in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo
. In its original form, each track occupied one side of an LP record and lasted exactly 16 minutes and 1 second, according to the label. The fourth side ended in a locked groove that caused the last 1.8 seconds of music to repeat endlessly (as had been done on John Cale's recording of Loop as a flexi-disc accompanying an edition of Aspen in late 1966). The rare 8-track tape
version has no silence in between programs, so that it plays continuously without gaps on most players. A quadraphonic disk was also released by RCA.
A major influence on Reed's recording, and an important source for an understanding of Reed's seriousness with the album, was the mid-1960s drone music
work of La Monte Young
's Theater of Eternal Music (whose members included John Cale
, Tony Conrad
, Angus Maclise
and Marian Zazeela
). Both Cale and Maclise were also members of The Velvet Underground
(Maclise left before the group began recording). The Theater of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification had influenced Cale's subsequent contribution to the Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback. Recent releases of works by Cale and Conrad from the mid-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series (The Dream Syndicate being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with Young) testify to the influence this important mid-sixties experimental work had on Reed ten years later.
In an interview with rock journalist Lester Bangs
, Reed claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical
works such as Beethoven
's Eroica
and Pastoral
Symphonies in the distortion, and that he had attempted to have the album released on RCA's Red Seal
classical label; however, it is not clear if he was being serious, though he has repeated the latter claim in a 2007 interview.
magazine as sounding like "the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and as displeasing to experience as "a night in a bus terminal
". In the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Billy Altman said it was "a two-disc set consisting of nothing more than ear-wrecking electronic sludge, guaranteed to clear any room of humans in record time." (This aspect of the album is referenced in the Bruce Sterling
short story Dori Bangs.) However, the first issue of the seminal New York zine Punk
, placed Reed and the album on its inaugural 1976 issue, presaging the advent of both punk and the discordance of the New York No Wave
scene. To quote critic Victor Bockris
, Reed's recording can be understood as "the ultimate conceptual punk album and the progenitor of New York punk rock." The album was ranked number two in the 1991 book The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell. The book gives sympathy to legendary record cutting engineer Bob Ludwig
for having to listen to the album in its entirety. (In fact, according to the liner notes of the 2000 reissue of the album, Ludwig was "totally into what Lou was doing" and compared the work to that of avant-garde classical composers Iannis Xenakis
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
.) In 2005, Q magazine included the album in a list of "Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists", and it ranked number four in Q' s fifty worst albums of all time list. It was again featured in Q magazine in December 2010 for the "Top Ten Career Suicides" list, where it came eighth overall. The Trouser Press
Record Guide referred to it as "four sides of unlistenable oscillator noise," parenthetically calling that assessment "a description, not a value judgment."
Probably the most sympathetic appraisal of Metal Machine Music was given by rock critic Lester Bangs
, who wrote that "as classical music it adds nothing to a genre that may well be depleted. As rock 'n' roll it's interesting garage electronic rock 'n' roll. As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless." Bangs later wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on Metal Machine Music titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum."
Many fans of Reed's more straightforward rock efforts returned their copies of Metal Machine Music to record stores, believing that the droning grind which allots for the album's entirety was actually the result of defective vinyl.
Despite the intensive criticism (or perhaps because of the exposure it generated), Metal Machine Music reportedly sold 100,000 copies in the US according to the liner notes of the Buddah Records
CD issue.
Side two
Side three
Side four
On the original vinyl release, timings for sides 1–3 were stated as "16:01", while the 4th side read "16:01 or ∞
", as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop. On CD, this locked groove was imitated for the final 2:22 of the track, fading out at the end.
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
by Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
. It was originally released as a double album
Double album
A double album is an audio album which spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically records and compact discs....
by RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
in 1975
1975 in music
-January–April:*January 2 - New York City U.S. District Court Judge Richard Owen rules that former Beatle John Lennon and his lawyers can have access to Department of Immigration files pertaining to his deportation case....
. It was reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....
d on a single compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
by BMG
BMG
Bertelsmann Music Group, , was a division of Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Japan's Sony Corporation of America on October 1, 2008. It was established in 1987 to combine the music label activities of Bertelsmann...
in 1997 and again by Buddah Records
Buddah Records
Buddah Records was founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding...
in 2000.
As a radical departure from the rest of Reed's catalog, Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a grudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
. The album features no songs or even recognizably structured compositions, eschewing melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
and rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
for an hour of over-modulated feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
and guitar effects, intricately mixed at varying speeds by Reed himself. In the album's liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
he claimed to have invented heavy metal music
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and asserted that Metal Machine Music was the ultimate conclusion of that genre
Music genre
A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...
. The album made Reed a laughing stock in the rock industry while simultaneously opening the door for his later, more experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
material. Historically, Metal Machine Music is now considered a seminal forerunner of industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, noise rock
Noise rock
Noise rock describes a style of post-punk rock music that became prominent in the 1980s. Noise rock makes use of the traditional instrumentation and iconography of rock, but incorporates atonality and especially dissonance, and also frequently discards usual songwriting conventions.-Style:Noise...
, and contemporary sound art
Sound art
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
.
In 2010, Reed, Ulrich Krieger
Ulrich Krieger
Ulrich Krieger is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles....
, and Sarth Calhoun
Sarth Calhoun
Sarth Calhoun is an electronic musician from Brooklyn, NY.He is a member of Lucibel Crater along with Leah Coloff and Paul Chuffo. He is also a member of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio, along with Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger. He was previously a member of Number19.He plays continuum fingerboard and...
collaborated to tour, playing free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
inspired by the album, as Metal Machine Trio. That same year, Reed announced his plans to re-release Metal Machine Music in remastered form.
Style
According to Reed (despite the original liner notes), the album entirely consists of guitar feedbackAudio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
played at different speeds. This can be heard clearly if the album is played at 16 rpm with the balance adjusted to hear either the right or left channel only as each appears to be unrelated. The two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. He would then place the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings — the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
tape recorder
Tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...
in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
. In its original form, each track occupied one side of an LP record and lasted exactly 16 minutes and 1 second, according to the label. The fourth side ended in a locked groove that caused the last 1.8 seconds of music to repeat endlessly (as had been done on John Cale's recording of Loop as a flexi-disc accompanying an edition of Aspen in late 1966). The rare 8-track tape
8-track cartridge
Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology. It was popular in the United States from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, but was relatively unknown in many European countries...
version has no silence in between programs, so that it plays continuously without gaps on most players. A quadraphonic disk was also released by RCA.
A major influence on Reed's recording, and an important source for an understanding of Reed's seriousness with the album, was the mid-1960s drone music
Drone music
Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics...
work of La Monte Young
La Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
's Theater of Eternal Music (whose members included John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
, Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...
, Angus Maclise
Angus MacLise
Angus MacLise was an American percussionist, composer, poet, occultist and calligrapher probably best known as the first drummer for the Velvet Underground.-Biography:...
and Marian Zazeela
Marian Zazeela
Marian Zazeela is a light-artist, designer, painter and musician based in New York City.-Life and work:Born to Russian-Jewish parents and raised in the Bronx, Marian Zazeela was educated at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and at Bennington College where she...
). Both Cale and Maclise were also members of The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
(Maclise left before the group began recording). The Theater of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification had influenced Cale's subsequent contribution to the Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback. Recent releases of works by Cale and Conrad from the mid-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series (The Dream Syndicate being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with Young) testify to the influence this important mid-sixties experimental work had on Reed ten years later.
In an interview with rock journalist Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
, Reed claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
works such as Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Eroica
Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major , also known as the Eroica , is a landmark musical work marking the full arrival of the composer's "middle-period," a series of unprecedented large scale works of emotional depth and structural rigor.The symphony is widely regarded as a mature...
and Pastoral
Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony , is a symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, and was completed in 1808...
Symphonies in the distortion, and that he had attempted to have the album released on RCA's Red Seal
RCA Red Seal Records
RCA Red Seal Records is a classical music label and is now part of Sony Masterworks.The Red Seal label was begun in 1902 by the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom and was quickly picked up by its United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company, and its president, Eldridge R. Johnson...
classical label; however, it is not clear if he was being serious, though he has repeated the latter claim in a 2007 interview.
Critical reception
On its release, it was reviewed in Rolling StoneRolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine as sounding like "the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and as displeasing to experience as "a night in a bus terminal
Bus station
A bus station is a structure where city or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. It is larger than a bus stop, which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can stop...
". In the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Billy Altman said it was "a two-disc set consisting of nothing more than ear-wrecking electronic sludge, guaranteed to clear any room of humans in record time." (This aspect of the album is referenced in the Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
short story Dori Bangs.) However, the first issue of the seminal New York zine Punk
Punk (magazine)
Punk is a music magazine/fanzine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and "resident punk" Legs McNeil in 1975. Its use of the term "punk rock," coined by writers for Creem magazine a few years earlier, led to its worldwide acceptance as the definition for the new bands that were...
, placed Reed and the album on its inaugural 1976 issue, presaging the advent of both punk and the discordance of the New York No Wave
No Wave
No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...
scene. To quote critic Victor Bockris
Victor Bockris
Victor Bockris is an English-born, U.S.-based author, primarily of biographies of artists, writers, and musicians.He has written about Lou Reed , Andy Warhol, Keith Richards, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern, Blondie, Patti Smith, and Muhammad Ali...
, Reed's recording can be understood as "the ultimate conceptual punk album and the progenitor of New York punk rock." The album was ranked number two in the 1991 book The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell. The book gives sympathy to legendary record cutting engineer Bob Ludwig
Bob Ludwig
Bob Ludwig is an American mastering engineer.He is a well known and respected figure within the music industry. His name is credited on the covers of albums released across the world, and he has won numerous awards....
for having to listen to the album in its entirety. (In fact, according to the liner notes of the 2000 reissue of the album, Ludwig was "totally into what Lou was doing" and compared the work to that of avant-garde classical composers Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.) In 2005, Q magazine included the album in a list of "Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists", and it ranked number four in Q
Trouser Press
Trouser Press was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow Who fan Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" ...
Record Guide referred to it as "four sides of unlistenable oscillator noise," parenthetically calling that assessment "a description, not a value judgment."
Probably the most sympathetic appraisal of Metal Machine Music was given by rock critic Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, author and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock 'n' roll criticism....
, who wrote that "as classical music it adds nothing to a genre that may well be depleted. As rock 'n' roll it's interesting garage electronic rock 'n' roll. As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless." Bangs later wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on Metal Machine Music titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum."
Many fans of Reed's more straightforward rock efforts returned their copies of Metal Machine Music to record stores, believing that the droning grind which allots for the album's entirety was actually the result of defective vinyl.
Despite the intensive criticism (or perhaps because of the exposure it generated), Metal Machine Music reportedly sold 100,000 copies in the US according to the liner notes of the Buddah Records
Buddah Records
Buddah Records was founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's founding...
CD issue.
Track listing
Side one- "Metal Machine Music, Part 1" – 16:10
Side two
- "Metal Machine Music, Part 2" – 15:53
Side three
- "Metal Machine Music, Part 3" – 16:13
Side four
- "Metal Machine Music, Part 4" – 15:55
On the original vinyl release, timings for sides 1–3 were stated as "16:01", while the 4th side read "16:01 or ∞
Infinity
Infinity is a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end. People have developed various ideas throughout history about the nature of infinity...
", as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop. On CD, this locked groove was imitated for the final 2:22 of the track, fading out at the end.
Further reading
- Morley, PaulPaul MorleyPaul Morley is an English journalist, who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications...
. "Metal Machine Music". Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City London: Bloomsbury, 2003. ISBN 0-7475-5778-0