Metal Machine Music
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Metal Machine Music, subtitled *The Amine β Ring, is the fifth solo album by American rock musician Lou Reed. It was originally released as a double album by RCA Records in 1975.
As a radical departure from the rest of Reed's catalog, Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a grudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music. The album features no songs or even recognizably structured compositions, eschewing melody and rhythm for an hour of over-modulated audio feedback and guitar effects, intricately mixed at varying speeds by Reed himself. In the album's liner notes he claimed to have invented heavy metal and asserted that Metal Machine Music was the ultimate conclusion of that genre. The album cost Reed credibility in the music industry while simultaneously opening the door for his later, more experimental material. Historically, Metal Machine Music is considered a seminal forerunner of industrial music, noise rock, and contemporary sound art.