Metal Machine Music
Studio album by Lou Reed
Released	July 1975
Genre	Noise music
Length	64:11
Label	Buddah Records
Producer	Lou Reed
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Rolling Stone (not rated) RS 193
Lou Reed chronology
Lou Reed Live (1975) Metal Machine Music (1975) Coney Island Baby (1976)

Metal Machine Music (sometimes abbreviated MMM) is an album by Lou Reed. It was originally released as a two-disc LP by RCA Records in 1975. It was reissued on a single compact disc by BMG in 1998 and again by Buddha Records in 2000. cover for Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed This is an album cover. ... A studio album is a collection of previously unreleased, studio-recorded tracks by a recording artist. ... Lewis Allan Lou Reed[1] (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... While working at Kama Sutra Records, Art Kass was unhappy with the distribution deal with MGM Records and started Buddah Records around 1967. ... In the music industry, a record producer (or music producer) has many roles, among them controlling the recording sessions, coaching and guiding the musicians, organizing and scheduling production budget and resources, and supervising the recording, mixing and mastering processes. ... The All Music Guide (AMG) is a metadata database about music owned by All Media Guide. ... Image File history File links 1_stars. ... This article is about the magazine. ... Lewis Allan Lou Reed[1] (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. ... Lou Reed Live is a live album by Lou Reed, released in 1975. ... For the 2003 film, see Coney Island Baby (film). ... An album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. ... Lewis Allan Lou Reed[1] (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. ... A double album is an audio album of sufficient length that two units of the medium in which it is sold (especially records and compact discs) are necessary to contain the entirety of it. ... A gramophone record, (also phonograph record - often simply record) is an analog sound recording medium: a flat disc rotating at a constant angular velocity, with inscribed spiral grooves in which a stylus or needle rides. ... RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony BMG Music Entertainment. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A reissue or re-release is the new or repeated issue of an item. ... A Compact Disc or CD is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. ... BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group) is one of the six divisions of Bertelsmann. ... Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ... While working at Kama Sutra Records, Art Kass was unhappy with the distribution deal with MGM Records and started Buddah Records around 1967. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a begrudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music. Reed himself has said of the album "I was serious about it. I was also really, really stoned."^[1]. 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. Despite Reed's artistic seriousness, his decision to release Metal Machine Music as a begrudging rejoinder to his contractual obligations with RCA may be confirmed by the final sentence of Reed's liner notes which reads "My week beats your year." The sentence would suggest that the time Reed took to produce his recording defeated the commercial demands of his yearly contract. With subtle humour the sentence also contains the words: "My eek eats your ear." This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Liner notes are the booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or any sound recording container. ... Heavy metal (sometimes referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

Style

According to Reed (despite the original liner notes), the album entirely consists of guitar feedback played at different speeds. 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 around 16 minutes. The fourth side ended in a locked groove that caused the last few seconds of music to repeat endlessly. The rare 8-track tape version has no silence in between programs, so that it plays continuously without gaps on most players. Audio feedback (also known as the Larsen effect) is a special kind of feedback which occurs when a loop exists between an audio input (for example, a microphone or guitar pickup) and an audio output (for example, a loudspeaker). ... When sound is produced in an enclosed space multiple reflections build up and blend together creating reverberation or reverb. ... The Tascam 85 16B analogue tape recorder can record 16 tracks of audio on 1 inch (2. ... Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder. ... NY redirects here. ... Label for 2. ... The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes (7, 10, or 12 inches), playback speeds (33â…“, 45, or 78 RPM), and appearance (round black discs). ... The 8-track cartridge or Stereo 8 is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. ...

A major influence on Reed's recording, and an important source for an understanding of its seriousness, was the mid-1960s 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 Reed's 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-sixities, 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-sixities experimental work had on Reed ten years later. La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... It was a mid-sixties experimental musical group featuring La Monte Young and John Cale. ... John Davies Cale (born March 9, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... Angus MacLise (March 4, 1938 - June 21, 1979) was a percussionist, composer, mystic, shaman, poet, occultist and calligrapher. ... Marian Zazeela (b, ca. ... This article is about the American rock band. ... Dream Syndicate was an influential guitar driven band from L.A. from 1981 to 1989. ...

In an interview with rock journalist Lester Bangs, Reed claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical works such 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. A music critic is someone who reviews music, songs and albums, and writes about them. ... Lester Bangs during an interview Leslie Conway Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author and musician. ... This article discusses classical music in the first sense (see below). ... A portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820 Ludwig van Beethoven (IPA: ), (baptized December 17, 1770[1] – March 26, 1827) was a German composer. ... Eroica Symphony Title Page The Symphony No. ... Ludwig van Beethovens Symphony No. ... RCA Red Seal Records is a prestigious classical music label and is now part of Sony BMG Masterworks. ...

Critical reception

On its release, it was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine as sounding like "The tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and "a night in a bus terminal".^{[citation needed]} 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." 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. [1] Only Elvis Presley's concert byplay album Having Fun With Elvis On Stage ranked worse. 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. This article is about the magazine. ... The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as the Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that along with its sister publication, the magazine Rolling Stone, is one of the best places to find definitive reviews of popular music (apart from wikipedia!). // First Edition Title: The Rolling Stone Record Guide... Punk cover, issue 3, 1976 Punk was a fanzine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and resident punk Legs McNeil. ... No Wave was a short-lived but influential music and art scene that thrived briefly in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk scene there. ... Victor Bockris is an England-born, U.S.-based author, primarily of biographies of artists, writers, and musicians. ... Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often known simply as Elvis and also called The King of Rock n Roll or simply The King, was an American singer, musician and actor. ... Having Fun with Elvis on Stage is a 1974 live album from Elvis Presley that Presleys manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had RCA put out. ... Bob Ludwig (b. ... Iannis Xenakis Iannis Xenakis (Ιάννης Ξενάκης) (May 29, 1922 Brăila – February 4, 2001 Paris) was a Greek composer and architect who spent much of his life in Paris. ... Karlheinz Stockhausen (born August 22, 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. ... Q is a music and entertainment magazinepublished monthly in the United Kingdom. ...

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. Number Two: Kiss Alive!" Alive! were an all-women band playing jazz music. ...

Despite the intensive criticism (or perhaps because of the exposure it generated), Metal Machine Music has reportedly sold 100,000 copies in the US.^{[citation needed]}

Influence

Today the record is seen as an early form of ambient music and a defining pillar of the noise music and industrial music movements. Ambient music is a musical genre that incorporates elements of a number of different styles - including jazz, electronic music, new age, modern classical music, traditional, world, and noise. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... It has been suggested that Chicago Industrial be merged into this article or section. ...

References in music

• On their 1985 album Bad Moon Rising, Sonic Youth used samples from it in the songs "Brave Men Run (In My Family)" and "Society Is A Hole." Metal Machine Music was highly influential on Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo's solo endeavors, particularly his 1987 album From Here to Infinity, composed entirely of tape loops, feedback, and lock grooves.
• The influential German industrial rock band Die Krupps released the anthology "Metall Maschinen Musik" in 1991 and the single "Metal Machine Music" in 1992. The group's singer, Jürgen Engler, stated that the term "metal music" was invented by Lou Reed on Metal Machine Music. Engler has cited Lou Reed as one of his influences. [2]
• Japanese noise artist Merzbow is heavily influenced by this album, even titling his first released cassette Metal Acoustic Music.
• Noise-sculpting band Bailter Space referenced the album in the lyric, "Flying over Pacific Seas in a burning metal machine" in the song "Make," on their album Robot World.^{[citation needed]}
• David Bowie referenced the album in an article for Rolling Stone; the article listed Nine Inch Nails as one of music's "Immortals", and described in part a dream Bowie had about attending a birthday dinner for Lou Reed: "The music is a birthday surprise for Lou. Trent Reznor remixed this version of Metal Machine Music as a present." [3]
• The Smashing Pumpkins reference the album in their song "Heavy Metal Machine" from their 2000 album Machina/The Machines of God.^{[citation needed]}
• TV on the Radio use extended samples of the album for the verses of "Let the Devil In" from their 2006 album Return to Cookie Mountain.
• Metal Machine Music was presented at the Kunstlerhaus art center in Stuttgart as a sound installation in 1999, curated by the artist and then directer, Fareed Armaly.
• The German new music ensemble Zeitkratzer have played Metal Machine Music in concert, with Lou Reed as soloist, using tradition classical concert instruments from a score transcribed from the original recording. A CD release is scheduled for September 2007.[4]
• In 2002 Ulrich Maiss aka Cellectric premiered a solo cello version of Metal Machine Music entitled "CelloMachine". Lou Reed on CelloMachine (in an interview on CBC, October 2004): „[...] If you ever saw what Ulrich's doing you would, you know, open a fan club for him. [...] It’s like a rock approach to the cello - if you thought of the cello as a guitar with a feedback: off you go!"
• A small part of the album is used in the anime 'boogiepop phantom'.

Bad Moon Rising is the third album by the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, first released on Homestead Records in 1985. ... Sonic Youth is a seminal American alternative rock group formed in New York City in 1981. ... Lee Ranaldo at Ilosaarirock 2003 Lee Ranaldo (b. ... From Here to Infinity (rendered on the cover and label art as From Here → Infinity) is the first solo album by Sonic Youth guitarist/songwriter Lee Ranaldo. ... Tape loops are loops of prerecorded magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns. ... Audio feedback (also known as the Larsen effect) is a special kind of feedback which occurs when a loop exists between an audio input (for example, a microphone or guitar pickup) and an audio output (for example, a loudspeaker). ... The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes (7, 10, or 12 inches), playback speeds (33⅓, 45, or 78 RPM), and appearance (round black discs). ... Die Krupps is a German electropunk/EBM band, formed in 1980 by Jürgen Engler and Bernward Malaka in Düsseldorf. ... // Merzbow (Japanese; メルツバウ) is the name used by Japanese musician Masami Akita (秋田昌美 Akita Masami) for most of his experimental noise records, and is considered by many to be the earliest project among others in what has become known as the Japanese noise scene. He has released many CDs, LPs and cassettes... Bailter Space is a noise rock group that formed in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1987. ... Robot World is the third album by New Zealand band, Bailter Space released in 1993. ... David Bowie (IPA: []) (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and audio engineer. ... This article is about the magazine. ... “NIN” redirects here. ... The Smashing Pumpkins are an American alternative rock band that formed in Chicago in 1988. ... Heavy Metal Machine is a promotional sinlge release by The Smashing Pumpkins from their fifth studio album Machina/The Machines of God, released on cassette tape only. ... MACHINA/The Machines of God is The Smashing Pumpkins fifth studio album, released on February 29, 2000 (see Leap Year). ... TV on the Radio is a New York City indie rock band formed in 2001 whose music spans genres as diverse as free jazz, a cappella/doo-wop, soul, trip-hop and electro. ... Return to Cookie Mountain is a critically acclaimed album by TV on the Radio, released July 6, 2006 worldwide (except the United States) by 4AD. The album was released in the U.S. and Canada on September 12, 2006 by Interscope Records. ... Fareed Armaly (*1957 Iowa) is an Arab American artist, curator, and editor who lives an works in the US and Berlin, Europe. ...

Track listing

1. "Metal Machine Music, Part 1" – 16:10
2. "Metal Machine Music, Part 2" – 15:53
3. "Metal Machine Music, Part 3" – 16:13
4. "Metal Machine Music, Part 4" – 15:55

On the original vinyl release, timings for sides 1,2 and 3 were stated as "16:01". The timing on the 4th side read "16:01 or ∞" (the symbol for infinity), as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop.

References

• Bangs, Lester (1987). "How to Succeed in Torture Without Really Trying.", in Greil Marcus, Ed.: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-53896-X. 
• Fricke, David (2000). Liner notes. Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed, 1975. Buddha Records 74465 99752 2 (reissue).
• Guterman, Jimmy and Owen O'Donnell (1991). The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time. New York: Citadel Press. 

Lester Bangs during an interview Leslie Conway Bangs (December 14, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author and musician. ... Greil Marcus (2006) Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. ...

Citations

1. ^ The Stranger interview with Lou Reed.

Further reading

• Morley, Paul. "Metal Machine Music". Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City London: Bloomsbury, 2003. ISBN 0-7475-5778-0

This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Lou Reed

• A humorous essay on the 25th anniversary of Metal Machine Music
• Review at Gyrofrog
• Section on Metal Machine Music from Sangild article about (minimal) noise