Lou Reed, a new version of “Metal Machine Music”
One of the most controversial records in rock history returns in a new version. For Record Store Day Black Friday, November 28, “Metal Machine Music: Power to Consume, Vol. 1” is released, a new version of “Metal Machine Music”, Lou Reed’s album of feedback and distortions released in 1975. For the 50th anniversary the album has been reissued in a special edition for Record Store Day.
The collection brings together Thurston Moore, Aaron Dilloway, Drew McDowall, Pharmakon, The Rita and Mark Solotroff to explore distortion, feedback and raw electronic textures in homage to the legacy of “Metal Machine Music”, as stated in the official communication.
Released in the summer of 1975, “Metal Machine Music” was a double album of noise, distorted guitars and feedback: four sides of the same duration (16’01”), with the last closed in “locked groove”, the circular groove that makes the vinyl spin endlessly. Lou Reed presented it with explicit liner notes “This album is not for parties/dancing/romance of background…”) and over time the work was read as a radical gesture: for some “the worst record in the history of rock”, for others an avant-garde act that challenged the industry and fans. “My week beats your year”, concluded Reed, challenging his listeners.
As Will Hermes recounts in the monumental biography “King of New York”:
“Metal Machine Music was an instrumental album of chiseled buzzes of feedback and was released in the same month as the live album. But rather than helping to solve Reed’s financial problems, that aggressive, hypnotic record created new ones. (…) ‘Metal Machine Music”s layered wall of noise, built with tape-recorded guitar bursts, sped up, slowed down, reversed and filtered through various devices, it wasn’t even too unusual for an experimental guitarist who had devised the single-note riffs of ‘The Ostrich’ and the layered solos of ‘What Goes On’. It also had some affinity with the Stockhausen-inspired tape manipulation featured in some Beatles tracks such as ‘Revolution #9’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ (…) ‘Metal Machine Music was also a quick fix to RCA’s demands, as well as an avant-garde slap to all those guys in suits who were harassing him. Reed must have thought this was a fantastic conceptual move. But it didn’t work.”
the tracklist of the new version
Side A
1. Thurston Moore – “Drone Cognizance”
Side B
1. Aaron Dilloway – “Psychic Motor Disorder”
2. Pharmakon – “Blunt Instruments”
Side C
1. Drew McDowall – “Feedback”
2. Mark Solotroff – “Terminal ’25”
Side D
1. The Rita – “109 90”
