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30-415: The name of the group refers to Reed's 1975 noise album Metal Machine Music , which was considered one of the most provocative albums ever. The soundscapes of this dense, abstract, controversial album serve as a reference point for Metal Machine Trio's improvisations. The noisy, abstract music of the trio counteracts the expectations of Reed's regular audience for song-based rock music. The official flyer for

60-548: A Quadrophonic version of the Metal Machine Music recording that was produced by playing it back both forward and backward, and by flipping the tape over. The album cost Reed his reputation in the music industry while simultaneously opening the door for some of his later, more experimental material and has generally been panned by critics since its release. In 2008, Reed, Ulrich Krieger , and Sarth Calhoun collaborated to tour playing free improvisation inspired by

90-415: A children's choir that urged listeners to go shopping at Walmart . As described by the online service UbuWeb , "The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos... with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition." The conceptual artists also recorded " The Most Wanted Song ", a love song designed based on survey results to feature

120-777: A band named Metal Machine Trio as a noise rock/experimental side project. The language of the Star Trek aliens known as the Breen was inspired by Metal Machine Music , which the post-production sound staff were instructed to listen to when creating the electronic cackle that served as the Breen's voices. On Mystery Science Theater 3000 , Joel Hodgson 's character likened watching Mighty Jack to "listening to two hours of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music ." Later on Mystery Science Theater 3000 Michael J. Nelson 's character says "Monster gets up and immediately puts on his Metal Machine Music" due to

150-599: A film is annually awarded the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song . This "award" was given from the ceremony's inception in 1980 until 1999 and resurfaced in 2002. It parodies the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Some publications have compiled lists of the "worst" music videos ever. Album cover artwork has also been subject to "all-time worst" lists. Individual tastes can vary widely such that very little consensus can be achieved. For example,

180-467: A group setting. Other avant-garde outputs he ventured into since the 2000s included his improvisational meetings with John Zorn , who was surprise guest artist at the second night at Blender Theater, Laurie Anderson in their duo‚ Yellow Pony, and his electronic ambient drone release Hudson River Wind Meditations . The media reception of MM3 generally considered Reed tapping into a different part of his creative energy again, that for many years only held

210-865: A place at the fringe of his rock output, reclaiming a part of his "musical legacy that has been neglected for too long". Reed found musical partners in Ulrich Krieger on electric saxophone and Sarth Calhoun on various electronics. Krieger, professor for composition and experimental sound practices at the California Institute of the Arts , had experience as a performer of contemporary composed music, free improvisation , experimental rock and noise . Beside writing original electronic and chamber music, he had arranged Metal Machine Music for classical chamber ensemble in 2002. Sarth Calhoun produces electronic soundscapes and processes his fellow performers in real time. He uses

240-553: A tongue-in-cheek article about the album, titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum". In 1998, The Wire included Metal Machine Music in its list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)", with Brian Duguid writing: Q magazine featured Metal Machine Music in its 50 Worst Records of All Time ... What higher recommendation could you possibly need? ... [ Metal Machine Music ]

270-458: Is at once the pre-eminent deranged noise record, an impossibly cacophonous screech of electric torment, and also a classic of Minimalism ; some of the most enigmatic, exquisite harmonies ever documented. It's a pity the CD reissues can't include the original double LP's locked groove , but even if it doesn't last forever, the music is infinitely convoluted. It still awaits a proper critical reappraisal—even

300-409: The "worst ever". Examples of sources include VH1 's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever" and Blender magazine's "Run for Your Life! It's the 50 Worst Songs Ever!". In 1953, following the success of Harry Kari's "Yes, Sir...," Tony Burrello and Tom Murray, bitter that their more serious music was struggling to find an audience without success, decided to launch Horrible Records to intentionally record

330-520: The House. The group played further shows at the New York Blender Theater at Gramercy on April 23 and 24, 2009. The group is now inactive following the death of Lou Reed on October 27, 2013. Metal Machine Music Metal Machine Music (subtitled *The Amine β Ring ) is the fifth studio album by American rock musician Lou Reed . It was recorded on a three-speed Uher machine and

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360-595: The New York Blender Theatre stated: “No songs. No vocals.” MM3's music has an eclectic approach to improvisation including ambient drones, electronic sounds, noise music , aggressive free playing, heavy distortion on guitar and saxophone, extended feedback passages, raga -like drones, for which the Velvet Underground were famous, and occasional rhythm and blues and heavy metal reminiscence. With MM3 Reed continued to cultivate his avant-garde side in

390-472: The Velvet Underground (MacLise left before the group began recording). The Theatre of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification 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-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series ( The Dream Syndicate being

420-467: The album a "woof!" rating (signifying "dog-food"), and opined: "The spin cycle of a washing machine has more melodic variation than the electronic drone that was Metal Machine Music ." 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 list of the 50 worst albums of all time. It was again featured in Q in December 2010, on

450-430: The album as Metal Machine Trio . In 2011, Reed released a remastered version of Metal Machine Music. A major influence on Reed's recording, for which he tuned all the guitar strings to the same note, was the mid-1960s drone music work of La Monte Young 's Theatre of Eternal Music , whose members included John Cale , Tony Conrad , Angus MacLise and Marian Zazeela . Both Cale and MacLise were also members of

480-552: The album is mentioned in the Bruce Sterling short story "Dori Bangs".) The first issue of the seminal New York zine Punk placed Reed and the album in its inaugural 1976 issue, presaging the advent of both punk and the discordance of the New York No Wave scene. Reed biographer Victor Bockris wrote that the recording can be understood as "the ultimate conceptual punk album and the progenitor of New York punk rock". The album

510-440: The alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with Young) testify to the influence this mid-sixties experimental work had on Reed years later. In an interview with rock journalist Lester Bangs , Reed stated that he "had also been listening to Xenakis a lot." He also claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical works such as Beethoven 's Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies in

540-518: The background music during the mutation scene in The Horror of Party Beach . Side one Side two Side three Side four On the original vinyl release, timings for sides 1–3 were stated as "16:01", while the 4th side read "16:01 or ∞ ", as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop, known as the locked groove . On CD, this locked groove was imitated for the final 2:22 of the track, fading out at

570-449: The distortion, and that he had attempted to have the album released on RCA's Red Seal classical label. He repeated the latter claim in a 2007 interview. Metal Machine Music confounded reviewers and listeners when it was first released. The Stranger ' s Dave Segal later claimed it was one of the most divisive records ever, challenging both critics and the artist's core audience much like Miles Davis ' Agharta album did around

600-636: The electronic controller Continuum Fingerboard and the Kyma Workstation. He is member of the band Lucibel Crater. The group premiered at REDCAT , part of the Disney Concert Hall Complex in downtown Los Angeles, California, on October 2 and 3, 2008, under the title "Unclassified: Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger". A live double CD of these shows, entitled The Creation of the Universe , was released December 22, 2008 on Reed's own label Best Seat in

630-433: The end. On later CD, DVD, and BluRay reissues, the tracks are retitled as "Part 1", "Part 2", "Part 3", and "Part 4." List of music considered the worst This list consists of albums or songs considered the worst examples of popular music , based on reviews, polls and sentiment from music critics , musicians and the public. The following songs have been named by critics, broadcasters, composers, and listeners as

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660-454: The gleefully enthusiastic Lester Bangs didn't fully 'get' Metal Machine Music . In a December 2017 review, Mark Richardson of Pitchfork gave Metal Machine Music a score of 8.7 out of 10. He describes the album as an "exhilarating" listen. Despite the intense criticism (or perhaps because of the exposure it generated), Metal Machine Music reportedly sold 100,000 copies in the US, according to

690-754: The liner notes of the Buddah Records CD issue. The original edition was withdrawn within three weeks of its release. Lou Reed did not perform Metal Machine Music on stage until March 2002, when he collaborated with an avant-garde classical ensemble at the MaerzMusik festival in Berlin. The 10-member group Zeitkratzer performed the original album with Reed in a new arrangement by Ulrich Krieger , featuring classical string, wind, piano, and accordion. Live recordings with (2007) and without (2014; all-acoustic) Reed are available commercially. A few years later, Reed formed

720-542: The magazine's "Top Ten Career Suicides" list, where it came eighth overall. The Trouser Press Record Guide referred to it as "four sides of unlistenable oscillator noise", parenthetically calling that assessment "a description, not a value judgment". Mark Deming's review for AllMusic said that while noise rock groups "have created some sort of context for it", Metal Machine Music "hasn't gotten any more user friendly with time", given it "paus[ed] only for side breaks with no rhythms, melodies, or formal structures to buffer

750-447: The most popular subject and instrumentation. Both tracks include, as an in-joke, references to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein . Classical music media has run fewer "worst-ever" lists than have been produced for pop music, either for composers or individual pieces. There have been articles on the worst recorded versions (including those of Florence Foster Jenkins ) and the worst classical album covers . The worst song to appear in

780-407: The onslaught". Rock critic Lester Bangs wrote of Metal Machine Music : "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

810-492: The same time. On release, it was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine as sounding like "the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and as displeasing to experience as "a night in a bus terminal ". 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". (This aspect of

840-454: The worst music possible. The label recorded one single, " There's a New Sound " by Burrello, b-sided by "Fish", sung by former silent film actress Leona Anderson . In 1997, artists Komar and Melamid and composer Dave Soldier released " The Most Unwanted Song ," designed after surveying 500 people to determine the most annoying lyrical and musical elements. These elements included bagpipes , cowboy music , an opera singer rapping and

870-490: Was mastered/engineered by Bob Ludwig . It was released as a double album in July 1975 by RCA Records , but taken off the market three weeks later. A radical departure from the rest of his catalog, the Metal Machine Music album features no songs or recognizably structured compositions, eschewing melody and rhythm for modulated feedback and noise music guitar effects, mixed at varying speeds by Reed. Also in 1975, RCA released

900-566: Was ranked number two in the 1991 book The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to Metal Machine Music as Reed's "answer to Environments " and said it had "certainly raised consciousness in both the journalistic and business communities" and was not "totally unlistenable", though he admitted for white noise he would rather listen to " Sister Ray ". Writing in MusicHound Rock (1999), Greg Kot gave

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