Artist: Lou Reed
Title: Metal Machine Music
Genre: Noise Rock
Country: USA
Release date: 1975
The famous "unlistenable" album by Lou Reed (R.I.P.), consisting of more than a hour of guitar noise. Reed himself has later stated that he has invented heavy metal with this album, and asserted that it was the ultimate conclusion of that genre. That said, while the word "metal" in the title does reflect the nature of the album (which indeed sounds like metallic, scrapping noise), it's very far from what the early metal bands (such as Black Sabbath) were playing at that time; on the other hand, "Metal Machine Music" was highly influental on industrial music, punk, and noise rock. MMM had been included in various lists of the "worst albums of all time"
quite a lot of times, but I'm sure no one would raise an eyebrow if
something like this was released by Merzbow or Boyd Rice, not Lou Reed.
MMM is said to be primarily influenced by the works of the Theatre Of Eternal Music, a mid-1960s neo-Dadaist sound art project associated with The Velvet Underground. I haven't heard any of their music yet, but it seems like they playing mostly minimalistic noise and drone. Speaking of drone: the top comment on Youtube for MMM says "This is just Sunn O))) high-pitched". Well, the music of Sunn O))) always was an inexhaustible source of jokes, but this time it worked especially well. Some of the other comments are spot on too, for example: "Sounds like something Dalek the rapper would sample, i can dig it".
No comments:
Post a Comment