''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), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...

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 a ...

ian Lou Reed. 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, Que ...

. 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 ...

, 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 μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combina ...

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 re ...

for modulated

feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...

and noise music guitar effects, mixed at varying speeds by Reed. Also in 1975, RCA released a Quadrophonic 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 while simultaneously opening the door for some of his later, more experimental material and has generally been panned by critics since its release. In 2008, Reed, Ulrich Krieger, and Sarth Calhoun collaborated to tour playing free improvisation inspired by the album as Metal Machine Trio. 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 work of La Monte Young's

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 John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various sty ...

, 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 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, 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 classic ...

'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. 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, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' 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 ...

". 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 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 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'' 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 Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

''" 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". Writing in '' MusicHound Rock'' (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 busine ...

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 database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Music ...

said that while

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

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 Lester Bangs 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'' 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'' 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 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 i ...

festival in Berlin. The 10-member group Zeitkratzer performed the original album with Reed in a new arrangement by Ulrich Krieger, 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 Metal Machine Trio 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 WUCW, KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1 ...

'',

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 liste ...

's character likened watching '' Mighty Jack'' 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 ∞", as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop, known as the locked groove. 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