''Metal Machine Music'' (subtitled ''*The Amine β Ring'') is the fifth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by American

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...

ian

Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...

. It was recorded on a three-speed Uher machine and was mastered/engineered by

Bob Ludwig Robert C. Ludwig (born c. 1945) is an American mastering engineer. He has mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists including Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed, Qu ...

. It was released as a double album in July 1975 by

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also A ...

, but taken off the market three weeks later. A radical departure from the rest of his catalog, the ''Metal Machine Music'' album features no songs or recognizably structured compositions, eschewing

melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...

and

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...

for modulated feedback and noise music guitar effects, mixed at varying speeds by Reed. Also in 1975, RCA released a

Quadrophonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for th ...

version of the ''Metal Machine Music'' recording that was produced by playing it back both forward and backward, and by flipping the tape over. The album cost Reed's reputation in the

music industry The music industry consists of the individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, ...

while simultaneously opening the door for some of his later, more

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...

material and has generally been panned by critics since its release. In 2008, Reed,

Ulrich Krieger Ulrich Krieger (born 1962 in Freiburg) is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles. Krieger's artistic work spans a broad field from contemporary classical composition and free impro ...

, and

Sarth Calhoun Sarth Calhoun is an American musician from Brooklyn, New York. Biography Sarth Calhoun grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He began playing music and writing lyrics at age six. In his teens, he stopped buying comic books to save up for his first bass ...

collaborated to tour playing

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...

inspired by the album as

Metal Machine Trio Metal Machine Trio was a group founded in 2008 by Lou Reed, Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun. The group played free improvised music, touching on various genres from free rock, free jazz, minimal music, noise music, electronica, to ambient mu ...

. In 2011, Reed re-released a remaster of ''Metal Machine Music.''

Style

A major influence on Reed's recording, for which he tuned all the guitar strings to the same note, was the mid-1960s

drone music Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harm ...

work of

La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...

Theatre of Eternal Music The Theatre of Eternal Music (later sometimes called The Dream Syndicate) was an avant-garde musical group formed by La Monte Young in New York City in 1962. The core of the group consisted of Young (voice, saxophone), Tony Conrad (violin), ...

, whose members included John Cale,

Tony Conrad Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both ...

Angus MacLise Angus William MacLise (March 14, 1938 – June 21, 1979) was an American percussionist, composer, poet, occultist and calligrapher, known as the first drummer for the Velvet Underground who abruptly quit due to disagreements with the band pla ...

and Marian Zazeela. Both Cale and MacLise were also members of

the Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The original line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise ...

. (MacLise left before the group began recording.) The Theatre of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification 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 mid-sixties experimental work had on Reed years later. In an interview with rock journalist

Lester Bangs Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for '' Creem'' and ''Rolling Stone'' magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music ...

, Reed stated that he "had also been listening to Xenakis a lot." He also claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical works such as

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...

's '' Eroica'' and ''

Pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...

'' Symphonies in the distortion, and that he had attempted to have the album released on RCA's Red Seal classical label. He repeated the latter claim in a 2007 interview.

Critical reception

''Metal Machine Music'' confounded reviewers and listeners when it was first released. '' The Stranger''s Dave Segal later claimed it was one of the most divisive records ever, challenging both critics and the artist's core audience much like

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

' '' Agharta'' album did around the same time. On release, it was reviewed in ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' magazine as sounding like "the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and as displeasing to experience as "a night in a

bus terminal A bus station or a bus interchange is a structure where city or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. While the term bus depot can also be used to refer to a bus station, it generally refers to a bus garage. A bus station is l ...

". In the 1979 ''

Rolling Stone Record Guide ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'', previously known as ''The Rolling Stone Record Guide'', is a book that contains professional music reviews written and edited by staff members from ''Rolling Stone'' magazine. Its first edition was published in 1 ...

'', 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 mentioned in the

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

short story "Dori Bangs".) The first issue of the seminal New York zine ''Punk'' placed Reed and the album in its inaugural 1976 issue, presaging the advent of both punk and the discordance of the New York No Wave scene. Reed biographer

Victor Bockris Victor Bockris (born 1949) is an English-born, U.S.-based author, primarily biographies of artists, writers, and musicians. He has written about Lou Reed (and The Velvet Underground), Andy Warhol, Keith Richards, William S. Burroughs, Terry Sou ...

wrote that the 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. ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...

'' critic

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

referred to ''Metal Machine Music'' as Reed's "answer to '' Environments''" and said it had "certainly raised consciousness in both the journalistic and business communities" and was not "totally unlistenable", though he admitted for white noise he would rather listen to "

Sister Ray "Sister Ray" is a song by the Velvet Underground that closes side two of their 1968 album ''White Light/White Heat''. The lyrics are by Lou Reed, with music composed by John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker and Reed. The song concerns dr ...

". Writing in ''

MusicHound Rock MusicHound (sometimes stylized as musicHound) was a compiler of genre-specific music guides published in the United States by Visible Ink Press between 1996 and 2002. After publishing eleven album guides, the MusicHound series was sold to London-b ...

'' (1999),

Greg Kot Greg Kot (born March 3, 1957) is an American music journalist and author. From 1990 until 2020, Kot was the rock music critic at the ''Chicago Tribune'', where he covered popular music and reported on music-related social, political and busines ...

gave the album a "woof!" rating (signifying "dog-food"), and opined: "The spin cycle of a washing machine has more melodic variation than the electronic drone that was ''Metal Machine Music''."Gary Graff & Daniel Durchholz (eds), ''MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide'', Visible Ink Press (Farmington Hills, MI, 1999; ), p. 931. In 2005, ''Q'' magazine included the album in a list of "Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists", and it ranked number four in ''Q'' list of the 50 worst albums of all time. It was again featured in ''Q'' in December 2010, on the magazine's "Top Ten Career Suicides" list, where it came eighth overall. The ''

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 fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...

Record Guide'' referred to it as "four sides of unlistenable oscillator noise", parenthetically calling that assessment "a description, not a value judgment". Mark Deming's review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

said that while

noise rock Noise rock (sometimes called noise punk) is a noise music, noise-oriented style of experimental rock that spun off from punk rock in the 1980s. Drawing on movements such as minimal music, minimalism, industrial music, and New York hardcore, a ...

groups "have created some sort of context for it", ''Metal Machine Music'' "hasn't gotten any more user friendly with time", given it "paus donly for side breaks with no rhythms, melodies, or formal structures to buffer the onslaught". Rock critic

wrote of ''Metal Machine Music'': "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 about the album, titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum". In 1998, ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The ...

'' included ''Metal Machine Music'' in its list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)", with Brian Duguid writing: In a December 2017 review, Mark Richardson of ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...

'' gave ''Metal Machine Music'' a score of 8.7 out of 10. He describes the album as an "exhilarating" listen. Despite the intense 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 (later known as Buddha Records) was an American record label 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 foundin ...

CD issue. The original edition was withdrawn within three weeks of its release.

Performance

Lou Reed did not perform ''Metal Machine Music'' on stage until March 2002, when he collaborated with an avant-garde classical ensemble at the

MaerzMusik MaerzMusik is a festival of the Berliner Festspiele and has been held annually since 2002 in March at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues. It is the successor festival to the Musik-Biennale Berlin and is considered one of the most im ...

festival in Berlin. The 10-member group Zeitkratzer performed the original album with Reed in a new arrangement by

, featuring classical string, wind, piano, and accordion. Live recordings with (2007) and without (2014; all-acoustic) Reed are available commercially. A few years later, Reed formed a band named

as a noise rock/experimental side project.

In popular culture

The language of the ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'' aliens known as the Breen was inspired by ''Metal Machine Music'', which the post-production sound staff were instructed to listen to when creating the electronic cackle that served as the Breen's voices. On ''

Mystery Science Theater 3000 ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (abbreviated as ''MST3K'') is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. ...

'',

Joel Hodgson Joel Hodgson (born February 20, 1960) is an American writer, comedian and television actor. He is best known for creating '' Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (''MST3K'') and starring in it as the character Joel Robinson. In 2007, ''MST3K'' was list ...

's character likened watching ''

Mighty Jack was a tokusatsu science fiction/espionage/Action genre, action TV series. Created by Japanese effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya, the show was produced by Tsuburaya Productions and was broadcast on Fuji Television, Fuji TV from April 6, 1968 to June ...

'' to "listening to two hours of Lou Reed's ''Metal Machine Music''."

Track listing

Side one # "Metal Machine Music A-1" – 16:10 Side two # "Metal Machine Music A-2" – 15:53 Side three # "Metal Machine Music A-3" – 16:13 Side four # "Metal Machine Music A-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

∞ The infinity symbol (\infty) is a List of mathematical symbols, mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity. This symbol is also called a lemniscate, after the lemniscate curves of a similar shape studied in algebraic geometry, or ...

", as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop, known as the

locked groove The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes (7, 10, or 12 inches), playback speeds (33, 45, or 78 RPM), and appearance (round black discs). However, since the commercial adoption of the gramophone record (ca ...

. On CD, this locked groove was imitated for the final 2:22 of the track, fading out at the end. On later CD, DVD, and BluRay reissues, the tracks are retitled as "Part 1", "Part 2", "Part 3", and "Part 4."

References

* * Fricke, David (2000). Liner notes. ''Metal Machine Music'' by Lou Reed, 1975. Buddah Records 74465 99752 2 (reissue). * *

Citations

External links

A humorous essay on the 25th anniversary of Metal Machine Music (Archive.org)

Section on Metal Machine Music from Sangild article about (minimal) noise

{{Authority control Lou Reed albums 1975 albums Noise rock albums by American artists RCA Records albums Albums produced by Lou Reed Buddah Records albums Instrumental albums Experimental rock albums by American artists