Life changing albums

[victer]

A lot of older stuff I need to check out from this thread.

My list in no particular order would be :

- Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon. Quite the classic but it got me to the conclusion that composition > viruosity
- Dj Shadow - Endtroducing
- Laurent Garnier - Unreasonable Behavior
- Meshuggah - Catch 33
- BoC - Music has the right to children - Found that very late, but man what an album !
- KoRn - Untouchables - first listened to it as pre-teen, it made a strong impression on me and stuck on. I think Korn fans don't even particularly like it and I dont even think its their best but it was the first so it is special to me.

[subvers^v]

Got me through some dark times in my teenage years and made me realise how much comfort good music can bring.

[Amøbe]

- BoC - Music has the right to children - Found that very late, but man what an album !

I adore all of BoC's music, but I also often find myself in a position, where I feel like a black sheep, because I find their last album 'Tomorrow's Harvest' to be their best. It is a funny thing about cult bands - there sometimes seems to be a consensus among fans that you are not allowed to like anything besides their early stuff better. It is the same for Modest Mouse. Every time I have stumbled upon a discussion of their music, it is some agreed upon law that their first three (horribly recorded) albums are some of the greatest they have ever done. If you ask me, then it is on the Moon and antartica and then Good news for people who love bad news, where they find some interesting spot that is completely their own. Some mixture between bluegrass inspired indie, but made with a budget big enough for them to explore studio techniques and create a little sonic world of their own.

either way - I adore all of BoC's music.

[borg]

-not an album, but an airing of the 1983 Pop Rock Festival which featured Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Ozzy. Life never was the same after that.
-Pungent Effulgent - Ozric Tentacles Synths were for pussies before that
-Tri Repetae - Autechre and Waveform Transmissions Vol1 - Jeff Mills were my entry into pure electronic music
-Trust Us - Motorpsycho restored my faith in rock music
-Roxy&Elsewhere - Frank Zappa there was a time, early 00s, 90% of the music I listened to was Zappa (lasted about 3 years). Had this album already for a long time, but only turned a Zappa zealot much later.

Lots of favourite albums, but these are truly pivotal moments in my experiencing music.

[Ben Kohonays]

Dave Brubeck - Take Five
Need to listen to this again, but I remember loving this.

I have this on my youtube list, I love the piano solo from about 2mins in.

youtu.be/tT9Eh8wNMkw

Also, this is awesome.

youtu.be/2Qs1J612nZs

[timc3]

That TD phaedra album is proto AFX for sure. So mamy sounds & ideas from that in the DNA of AFX, whether intentional, via osmosis or simply following similar predictable paths with hardware.

Can only imagine what it sounded like to people in 1974

[mainst09]

for sure this one:

youtu.be/xL3MBMim36E

and this one:

youtu.be/hKrc-JrUWW4

[Ben Kohonays]

Just 'membered

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Not so much the music really, but I remember being told as a young kid that one guy had made all the music using multitracking and I found that concept fascinating.

[[wesellboxes]]

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Not so much the music really, but I remember being told as a young kid that one guy had made all the music using multitracking and I found that concept fascinating.

Certainly not life-changing or anything but for very similar reasons I was quite enamoured by the copy of War Of The World that sat around my grans. How it wasn't a band that did the music and how it was very different to the 3-minute pop songs on the radio.

[timc3]

I have this on my youtube list, I love the piano solo from about 2mins in.

Thanks mate!

[timc3]

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Not so much the music really, but I remember being told as a young kid that one guy had made all the music using multitracking and I found that concept fascinating.

Certainly not life-changing or anything but for very similar reasons I was quite enamoured by the copy of War Of The World that sat around my grans. How it wasn't a band that did the music and how it was very different to the 3-minute pop songs on the radio.

I loved that Jeff Wayne's War of the World album when I was younger, still listen to it occasionally. David Essex's voice seems really old fashioned now.

[Lost to the Void]

Wow.

Ok, so in no particular order, these are albums that changed my life in some way. Not necessarily my faves of all time, but albums that influenced me.



Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder


So this is complicated. I first heard this album driving across the deserts of Nevada and Arizona with my dad.
He got a job working for McDonnell Douglas in LA and moved out there when I was in my early teens.
And I would go a visit him whenever I could. Staying there the whole summer holidays, Christmas, just whenever.
My dad had gotten into ambient via a radio channel over there called The Wave.. Anyway he was taking me on a long road trip. From California to the grand canyon, the painted desert, petrified forest, meteor crater.....
And he kept playing this album. The huge timeless austere beauty of the high desert and this music just worked.
Deserts became my fave places, and still are. I've been back to Arizona many times. But this trip got me into ambient music and how it can represent size and space. And capturing the austere beauty and the threat of deserts is something I have been trying to do musically for ages

youtu.be/7_QiqN2RBnM

Bjork - Homogenic

This literally changed my life.
I love Bjork, ever since the Sugarcubes.
But her solo stuff, so experimental, so music, her voice like nothing else in the world. The woman is a genius.
I wanted some vocals of hers for a track.
I sampled 2 words from the track Joga, for a techno track. I played it out on CD at raves...
A mate heard the track, he worked at a distrib, said I should release it. If I pressed it, he said he would distribute it, and he thought it was a hit.
I pressed it. It sold out.
Sasha started caning it. We repressed it. It sold out.
Sasha closed his 2004 Glastonbury set with it, we repressed a fuck ton. It sold out. Graham Massey played it to Bjork at her Birthday party in plastic people. She loved it, got in touch with my distrib, gave the sign off, said well done, didn't want anything, no royalties, nothing.
From there I met Sasha, and went from scumfuck illegal rave promoter to top tier gigs in the flash of an eye.
That launched my label, which continued to get big support for the melodic sides of the releases. Took me all over the place for gigs, got all your superstar DJ support, your radio 1 people.....Licensing deals..... None of it expected or intended. And then my turning away from all that to go back underground led to Voidloss. So yeah. It all started here.
Bjork is an inconceivably talented songwriter. Truly singular.

youtu.be/oFV4QCq9SEU


William S Burroughs - Break Through in Grey Room

I've been a fan of Burroughs since I was in my mid teens.
He opened my mind. But hearing his voice for the first time, and the cutup experiments in particular, heavily influenced my vocal writing at the time, and also audio editing and looping. You could say that he and Gysin invented sampling. A lot of hip hop artists recognise his influence.

youtu.be/IbHH_WqsLVQ


Curve - Cuckoo

The people the band Garbage ripped off and made a commercial shite version of.
Dean's production was and is amazing. Big drums, swirling feedback, noise beds of guitars and synths and then the soft delicate voice of Holiday sitting in the middle.
The way Dean used controlled feedback influenced me heavily and still does to this day. An example of extremes in music. Aggression and fragility at the same time.

youtu.be/t2RCytDy_Vg

Depeche Mode - Songs of Faith and Devotion.

Was a fan of the Mode since I was a young kid as my sister was an early fan, she saw them play at her college to about 50 people and wouldn't stop talking about them.
SOFAD was a climax of sorts for them.
Alan Wilder had much more control of the production and it shows. The synths were phatter and darker. RealDrums and drum loops were used. The production was massive.
Some of the synth techniques and production techniques of both flood and wilder heavily influenced my production.
The live tour that followed this was insane. Anton Corbijns art production at its peak, the stage show was amazing.
Probably one of the best gigs I've ever seen was the Devotional tour. They were one of the biggest bands in the world then..
Depeche Mode are in my DNA, I grew up with them.
The excesses of this album were Synergistic to my life at the time. My band was touring, we were fucking animals, absolute monsters, I was seeing a girl at the time, a pharmacists daughter, she used to steal loads of drugs from her dad's pharmacy, she was also fucking insane. Man, she introduced me to a world of pharmaceuticals. Fucked me in every way you can fuck a person, physically, mentally, narcotically, metaphorically, metaphysically...... Corrupted me she did. Blew open the doors of perception and blew the bloody doors off.
Oh the link... She used to put this on for fuck times.

youtu.be/Vue-4Mv71Tc


Future Sound of London - Lifeforms

An example of the synergy between great songwriting and stunning innovative production. This album still stands up. It's still hard to work out what is going in. It's very acousmatic, synths and samples and real sounds all melded together. And considering the technology they used it's mindboggling how they did it. It's seemless.
The way they used low end on this was a big game changer for me.
I think it's an album everyone into electronic music should listen to, all the way through, at least once.
On the best speakers you can, or good headphones. Dim the lights and do the whole thing. It exists entirely within its own place, it is fully realised, and it takes you there. FUSOL are the shit.

youtu.be/scP0OVGtmZA


Ministry - Psalm 69

It was the first music that really gave me the aggression I desired combined with electronics and guitars. Industrial Metal at its finest.
Al in general was an influence on me anyway. His attitude and politics at the time were aligned with my own. I met him and very nearly got to work with him when I was in my industrial band. The way he treated vocals was a big thing for me. And compression, the way he used compression was pretty nuts. Ministry influenced my band for certain.
Corrosion is still one of the most brutal dance music tracks ever made.

youtu.be/dmCYD0Zuo2U


NIN - Downward Spiral

It's a work of art. A perfect concept album that tells a story and goes on a journey. It's also an emotional rollercoaster. It has some of the nasties and most brutal stuff Trent has ever done. And the production was just unlike anything ever done. The level of experimentalism and exploration and yet cohesiveness just blew me away. Influenced me in so many ways. The artwork too. Russel Mills was commissioned to paint the cover and the interior art for the story book.
The cover, like bruised flesh with rips and tears. This introduced me to Russel Mills paintings, which really influenced my painting and visual art. It got me into abstract expressionism. Russel Mills is amazing.
Genius.. NINs best work.

youtu.be/Ep-E2jZScwI


The God Machine - Scenes from the second story

A little known but legendary in a cult way, band from the grunge era who didn't really fit in. The music was super dense, loopy and hypnotic, the vocals were more like a mantra, and the writing was so pure and honest and cut like diamond with its brutal honesty. Philosophical and emotional and really heavy. I love the combination of extremes again, brutality and fragility. They loved repetition which is that whole mantric hypnotic dance music thing. To me this is techno even though it isn't.
They were a 3 piece and really filled out the sound. The drummer was incredible too.
youtu.be/4hDRF8TuFic

Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants

I'll never forget the first time I heard this album.
Whilst dubnobass was fantastic, Second Toughest developed and refined this sound. The songwriting is more together, the production is perfect Karl's use of vocals and his unique way of writing with found conversations. It all comes together perfectly. Their use of harmony and harmonics, especially filter resonance in a melodic way, influenced me a lot. At the time this album pushed my industrial band to more dance music realms, and finally we realised we were heading in different directions. I was heading fully into dance music and my partner was going deep into Gothic ebm. This album was the pivot that turned me from industrial to dance music.
Juanita/kiteless/To dream of love.... It's just amazing.
16 minutes, subtle changes constantly getting more beautiful and euphoric. I could listen to just this track on a loop forever.

There's a little story with the first time I heard this, and it's worth telling.

Ok, so, I had just spent the night at Slimelight in London. The legendary industrial goth club that used to be the batcave and has existed since the late 70's. I went during the peak of Slimelight. The industrial and goth scene was huge. Goths and rivetheads from all over the world came to Slimelight (which is at Electrowerkz. The Slimelight guys own the building). It was members only back then. You had to get signed in by two members to get in. To get a membership you had to do a test and get signed by two members.. I was full member, considered a regular, new Mack (RIP) and the rest.... It was awesome. Anything goes. Goths, fetish, S&M people, industrialists (Rivetheads, I was one of em).
3 floors, goth room, industrial room and techno/rhythmic noise. It was debauched, you could bring your own booze in .... Awesome place. Loved it. Blessed that I got to be there during its Zenith.
Aaaaanway, it was an all night every Saturday, 10pm to 8am.
We were bollocksed coming out at 8am.
My friend, Wiggy Phil.
Phil was. Interesting. He was a tall attractive man who looked a bit like the crow (from the comics), or Rod Stewart but with black hair. Which, as it turns out, was a wig.
Hence Wiggy Phil. He wore lipstick and nail varnish and makeup, sometimes he dressed as a woman, the crowds I was with at the time, this was just normal. Phil was Phil.. He was a total fucking London geezer though. His missus was a stunning fetish model. Aaaanway, Phil was mental. And I loved Phil.
So we all decided to go back to my friends house (this friend a few years later became my missus who I am with today) in White City, west London. The club is in Angel, North central London.
So first we all piled into the local Macdonald's. It always opened super early to serve the market stall holders when they were setting up on market st, and the whole club would descend on this McDonald's at 8am. Literally the whole club. It was part of the Slimelight ritual. Management tolerated it because everyone bought coffee or whatever. They were earning money at a time when they normally wouldn't. We'd all occupy the upstairs every Sunday morning. We'd all be up there smoking joints and doing lines, a McDonald's full of Goths and rubber fetishists and Rivetheads. Occasionally a norm from downstairs would have to come up and walk through the weirdness to get to the toilets. Lord knows what those poor civilians thought.
It was kinda mental looking back.

So Phil gave us all LSD. Penguins. Suuuuuuuper strong acid blotters.. Then he said let's go. So we all piled into his.... Ford Capri!!!!! So many of us stuffed in the back. Not a big space the rear seats of a Capri......
So we were all tripping our balls off driving through central London in a BRIGHT GOLD Ford Capri, and Phil stuck on Second Toughest. He had a great stereo....
Man it blew me away, driving through early morning empty London, Juanita. It was transcendent. Everyone went silent, none of us had heard it yet apart from Phil..... Underworld was generally popular in the industrial floor of Slimelight.... Then all of sudden, we were driving past madam toussauds. There was a huuuuuge que outside. Phil stopped the car. In the middle of the fucking road. This is Marelybone Road, a major road through London..... Underworld blaring out shaking the body panels. Mum's and dads and grannies and kids all now staring at this 6ft4 giant of a man/woman. With huge black rod Stewart/alien sex fiend hair, bright red lipstick, Cleopatra eye makeup, tight leather jacket, nothing under it but a bright red latex corset and nipple tassels on his nipples, and tight TIGHT pvc trousers, absolutely out of his box on acid (yes he was driving under the influence). And he stands on the railing partition in the middle of the road and Shouts as loud as he could in his builders voice...
"IIIIITTTTSSSS CCRRAAAAAAAPPPPP GO HOOOOOOME GO HOOOOOOME ITS JUST A BUNCH OF WAXY FACED BASTARDS IN THERE GO HOOOOOOME"
Then he pointed to a kid with a brand new little bike with stabilisers in the queue and shouted "Oi kid, nice bike!!"
Everyone was just staring at him. Musta been about 150 or more people in the queue....
Then he got back in and carried on driving as if nothing happened. Then when we hit the Westway, which is a big elevated dual carriageway in West London, and he said to stu sitting in the passenger seat "pass me poppers from the glove compartment..
Stu gave him the poppers, Phil said "take the wheel mate"
Got Stu to steer whilst he sniffed the poppers..and then went "Weeeeeeeeeeeeee" as we drove the Westway to White City...
As soon as I was physically capable I bought that album..
Whenever I hear that album I remember that fiasco.
The madness that followed when we got to our destination..... Man that was some thermonuclear strength LSD....
Aaaanway.

youtu.be/0oYoRg6Ws9U

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

The cream of the grunge era for me. They never really fit the format as they were more experimental than most.
Badmotorfinger introduced me to the stunning controlled feedback riffs and Arab scales of Kim Thayill. And the crazy tribal drumming of Matt Cameron. I completely changed the way I played drums after this album. The drums on Jesus Christ. It took me ages to learn that beat, but I learned so much.

youtu.be/Tn5OIo4FuPc


Steve Reich - Music for 18 musicians

The roots of techno lay with Steve Reich in many ways.
A drummer turned composer, he approaches composition with a drummers mindset. Cyclic phrases, drop step cycling, polyrhythms, staggered start points. Reich is a huge influence on my dance music. When I heard this I got back into complex polyrhythms and saw many new applications. Understanding Reich also helped me understand Arvo Part.
If you want to learn more about the musical modes of techno and how to get complexity from simplicity. Study this piece. Focus on an instrument and listen to the changes, the repetition, the shifting phrase start points, how parts are divided and pitched to different instruments.
It demonstrates the fundamentals of hypnotic rhythm.

youtu.be/ILpCKQlDmhc


Prodigy - Music for the gilted generation

Taking the attitude I craved from metal and industrial but applying it to rave music.... It influenced me heavily.
It was about the drums.
Great production too. Liam's drum treatments made me learn a lot. And Claustrophobic Sting is still a nasty nasty angry and evil acid track, no cheese at all.
I saw them play Claustrophobic Sting and other Jilted stuff at an illegal warehouse rave before this came out. This track just floored all of us. Acid had become pretty cheesy but this thing just took it all to the dark side of things.
I lost my mind when I first heard it live.

youtu.be/K_Ft8y-TMo8



Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa Fratres Symphony no3

The Gil Shaham performance in particular.
A composer friend of mine recommended this.
He thought it was in line with my likes.
As soon as I heard Fratres I became obsessed with it.
How could something so jagged and abrasive be so God damn beautiful and transcendent?
This led me to an obsession with Arvo Part.
I learned his Tintinabuli method, the twelve-tone technique, atonal composition. Part led me into music theory. I've written several classical pieces based on his techniques.
I still use Tintinabuli techniques in my electronic music.
His pure honesty is something influential to me as well. To fully commit to expressing your emotions as honestly and purely as you can. Arvo is an Angel on earth.
Fratres is a very hard piece to play, so it takes the world's best to give it justice.
It has these two distinct voices as does much of his later work. The hard and abrasive voice, and the gentle and comforting benevolent voice. This is expressed wonderfully in Fratres. And it resolves so wonderfully when the hard voice finally succumbs to beauty (at 6:10 in the piece) and completes the final chord in the sequence, that has been anticipated from the very beginning, but only once, because that is all that is needed. Genius..
Part has said the two voices represent his sins and the forgiveness of them.
Part always reminds me that the divine can be found in music.
And also his purity and genius makes my own efforts seem futile....

youtu.be/NLvLQpSFbV0


Neurosis - Honour found in decay

Ok. So Neurosis have been around forever. Originally a hardcore punk band they went on to essentially invent, or at least heavily influence post-metal and Doom.
I discovered them only a few years ago through my newfound love of Doom metal.
Basically this album kept me from quitting music.
I was a bit lost, long out of the illegal rave scene, doing my thing, but just feeling at odds. A lot of my peers around me had kinda sold out a bit. Techno was just feeling empty, without meaning. Parties were just centres of debauchery devoid of any connection to why I gravitated towards the music. Techno was commercial now. No one was saying anything. I just felt like none of it was worthwhile.
I needed someone to show me sign that you don't have to sell out. That you can have consistent integrity.
And then Neurosis fell into my lap.
I heard a live performance of this album. And I was just blown away. I normally don't like shouty growl vocals. But this just felt so real and heartfelt. The music was honest and brutal and tense and strained. The way they bend notes and make strings beat against each other.....
Then I found their history. Proper punks, stayed true for decades, never sold out, just did their thing. Started their own label so they could continue to do only what they wanted. They are purists with production. They only release when they have something to say. They only gig when they feel it is time. They all have jobs so that they don't have to rely on selling music. They are heavily influential to so many bands. And again they do that extreme opposites of fragility and open hearted expression with punishing walls of brutality.
There are few who make such outsider music who constantly progress and never ever compromise their artistic vision for any reason. They have literally become my heroes. For what they stand for as much as their music.
I saw them live and literally wept after the final breakdown in My Heart For Deliverance. Such emotional honesty. And they were so fucking loud.
They gave me faith to keep going, and in honour of that, I made and released a Doom Metal Album. Because....

youtu.be/ehhu6-Z0Fd0


Massive Attack - 100th Window

Love Massive Attack. Always have. Seen them live a billion times. This album caused a lot of fans to freak out. It ripped up the template for Trip Hop and went super dark and electronic. Basically it's all 3D on this, almost a solo album. The production is s t u n n i n g..... It's so well made. Some of the songwriting is truly transcendent. It really next level stuff for massive Attack, and it really influenced the techno I was making. I just love some of the electronic drums. So constrained with compression but so pressurised. It's like this restrained sound, like a whole herd of marauding buffalo being held back by a thin rope just in the verge of bursting through.. Really really influenced me.

youtu.be/nox08f16J8Y


White Zombie La Sexorcisto

The drums in this were so funky. They were so un-metal. The driving dancey drums and the samples influenced my drumming and my songwriting in the band at the time. It probably contributed to industrial influences coming in to the band and marked a point when we headed in that direction. The album had the drums very much front and centre.

youtu.be/lgNf3Y3NGXw

The Young God's - Second Nature

I've always love The Young Gods. They are labeled as industrial but they are really just their own thing. The doors crossed with coil and front 242.
This album just has this flawless acousmatic production.
Lots and lots of synths and samples but it all blends seamlessly and you never really fully know what is a guitar or a synth, what drums are real and what are sampled or generated. Live it was amazing.
They have influenced my songwriting and production in many ways.

youtu.be/hi7iWz5VBNI

Burial - Burial

I think this album changed many things and influenced many people. It's one of those albums where you can spot a change, a post and pre burial shift.
For me it was his use of drums, in particular the way he used kick drums... And swing and going off grid.
The drums on this album are just fucking dope. This album is just dope. It captures a time and a feeling.
Yeah, Burial is genius.

youtu.be/CGYyS5vXupo

[[wesellboxes]]

Again not sure it they'd fall into the category of life changing, but if I was going to be sealed up and shot in a probe towards Mars, Lifeforms and Second Toughest In The Infants would be two of the ten LP's I'd take.

[timc3]

@Lost to the Void - that's a great write up. I must admit that I would say that I was greatly influenced by the Prodigy, back in their early days they used to go to GoldDiggers in Chippenham which was an amazingly messy old rave club back in the day. I liked the albums, but seeing them in that space was something else. Being close to Bristol and often going down there the whole Massive Attack, Portishead and rest from around there was also heavily influential and Bristol had quite a good DnB scene in the 90s as well.

Most of the stuff that I would say was near life changing wasn't always captured in album form - more travelling around to various venues/fields/forests and hearing it in place like you said about being in that car travelling around London. Have many memories of Underworld on tapes whilst driving in the middle of the night to venues, or listening to the Orb afterwards..

[Lost to the Void]

@Lost to the Void - that's a great write up. I must admit that I would say that I was greatly influenced by the Prodigy, back in their early days they used to go to GoldDiggers in Chippenham which was an amazingly messy old rave club back in the day. I liked the albums, but seeing them in that space was something else. Being close to Bristol and often going down there the whole Massive Attack, Portishead and rest from around there was also heavily influential and Bristol had quite a good DnB scene in the 90s as well.

Most of the stuff that I would say was near life changing wasn't always captured in album form - more travelling around to various venues/fields/forests and hearing it in place like you said about being in that car travelling around London. Have many memories of Underworld on tapes whilst driving in the middle of the night to venues, or listening to the Orb afterwards..

Yeah most of my life changing musical moments have been gigs.
Seeing Throbbing Gristle at the Astoria when they reformed in 2004 was unforgettable. One of those "I was there" historical moments.
There were so many known experimental musicians in the audience. I remember seeing Tony Surgeon there in particular.
No one knew what to expect. Would they be terrible? Would the flame have gone out?

It was transcendent. Utterly unique. Their legendary status secure. I was blown away. That gig was one of the things that made me rethink everything, musically.

Also, it was all so deadly serious.
Gen (who had just got their new tits fitted) called out the crowd at one point, and kept shouting "say something original, just for once".
And the whole place went quiet. And my mate Spencer, who was a glorious idiot, shouted "Show us your tits".
Which was both crass and funny at the time. And Gen seemed to approve.

[timc3]

Now I doubly wished I was there!

[[wesellboxes]]

That whole TG concert is on YouTube and is quite excellent, especially the crescendo Discipline.

[Lost to the Void]

That whole TG concert is on YouTube and is quite excellent, especially the crescendo Discipline.

youtu.be/6dcYKO4QuWU

Certainly is. I'll never forget it.
The Astoria has been knocked down now

[The_G]

For me it's got to be these:

Joy Division - Closer
The Cure - Disintegration
Slowdive - Souvlaki
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Herbie Hancock - Headhunters
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 2
Plastikman - Sheet One (yeah he's a yacht techno douche now, but this blew my mind when I first heard it)
Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse
Makeup & Vanity Set - 88:88 and Wilderness

[Ben Kohonays]

Remembered another one....

Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

So if you're unaware of this I'll try to explain. This is stuff I read about the album a long time ago and from memory so might not be 100% accurate, but let's be honest Lou Reed has been known to exaggerate and bullshit on occasion and what with the myth and legend stuff of the music industry.....anyway:

So the story goes, under contractual obligation to produce a new album and having made a little money for the label Reed went into the studio to make MMM. Supposedly, he plugged several guitars into several amps, turned them up loud and leant the guitars up against the grille(s) of the amps to create a behemoth of feedback which he then recorded. These were 'mixed' into stereo recordings. Another rumour is, of the 4 tracks on the album, only 2 were recordings and the other 2 were just the first 2 played backwards.

This was released by the label in 1975, as a double f'kin album.

It absolutely blows my mind that he got away with this. It blows it even further that a major label would put it out. If ever there were a case study for the right conditions allowing you to do pretty much whatever you want, this should be it.

And yes, I've listened to every last minute of it, more than once. (which is more than Lou did, he wrote in the liner notes that he hadn't listened to it all the way through).

AND I like it (mood permitting).




It should be said there are many rumours and stories about this, some of them propogated by Reed himself. He has claimed in interviews that he mixed in some classical pieces and/or recreated some classical pieces within the noise. How much truth there is to these myriad stories we will probably never know.