HiRez Poll Reed, Lou - Metal Machine Music [Blu-Ray Audio]

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Rate the BDA Disc of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music

  • 8:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 6:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 5:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2:

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1: Poor Surround, Poor Fidelity, Poor Content

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    7

JonUrban

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Thanks to QQ Forum Members Cai Campbell and Jonathan (ArmyofQuad) Gatarz, we are proud to add this Blu-Ray surround music disc to our polls. Through Jonathan's communication with Lou Reed and his "people", and the ability to let them hear Cai Campbell's conversion of the original CD-4 Quadradisc, we now have this historic quadraphonic album saved forever in the Blu-Ray format.

AUDIO SETUP
PCM Stereo 96/24
QUAD PCM 96/24
Dolby AC3 4.0


Please post your thoughts and comments on the disc, it's content, and it's audio quality.
 

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I got mine today. Honestly, I can't vote yet as I have no idea how to rate it. It is one trippy ride, in 4 parts, but each part sounded pretty much the same to me. Maybe when I can listen to it without distractions...
 
I listened to my BluRay today. Though it's hard to distinguish it from Cai's conversion I am glad I supported a surround title. The separation is really quite good and it is a nice simple disc which plays fine in the Oppo 83. It would have been nice to get some bonus mixes.................. Kidding!!!!
 
Jon,

I hope you're not saying this release is from Cai's CD-4 conversion . . . :)


I tried ordering this when first announced, but somehow ended up with a stereo CD instead.
Said CD is about as useful to me as a large box of unwashed boulders.
 
reed-metal-machine-music-q8.jpg

I've been reading a lot of Lester Bangs lately. Here's a segment from one of many articles about MMM by Bangs.

In 1975, Lester Bangs proposed six theories concerning Metal Machine Music. The list appeared in the September issue of Creem Magazine under the title “Monolith or Monotone?”

1. The new Lou Reed album is “some kind of ultimate antisocial act.”
2. It is the logical and inevitable culmination of aggressive tendencies that find their roots in early Velvet Underground albums and the Stooges’ Fun House.
3. It is the sound of anxiety. (“You know when you get so tense and anxiety-ridden that all the nerves at the back of your neck snarl up into one burning ball? Well, if that gland could make music, it would sound like this album.”)
4. Metal Machine Music is Reed’s circulatory system amplified.
5. The album is a corporate death wish in the form of a commercial suicide.
6. or “anybody who doesn’t jack off at least three times a day is a queer.”

http://machinemusic.org/2010/01/26/quadraphonic-lou-reed-and-the-metal-machine-music/

Then there's the classic article by Bangs titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made."

http://www.rocknroll.net/loureed/articles/mmmbangs.html

And from the collection of Bangs' writing: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung is this bit from Creem 1976, the article "How To Succeed in Torture Without Really Trying."

"What we have here is a one-hour two-record set of nothing, absolutely nothing but screaming feedback noise recorded at various frequencies, played back against various other noise layers, split down the middle into two totally separate channels of utterly inhuman shrieks and hisses, and sold to an audience that was, to put it as mildly as possible, unprepared for it. Because sentient humans simply find it impossible not to vacate any room where it is playing. With certain isolated exceptions: mutants, mental patients, shriek freaks, masochists, sadists, amphetamine addicts, hate buffs, drug-numbed weirdos too walled off by chemicals to feel anything, other people whose nervous systems are already so bent out of shape that it sounds perfectly acceptable, the last category possibly including the author of this article."

Also from an interview in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, Lou himself states that he loves the album: "There are about seven thousand different melodies going on at one time or another, and each time around there’s more. Like harmonics increase, and melodies increase, in a different combination again. I don’t expect anybody with no musical background to get it. I took classical piano for fifteen fucking years."

BTW, I am one of the owners of MMM on BD-Audio.
 
At low volume it sounds like Philip Glass to me. I just got the CD-4 a few days ago, still want the BD-A. This spring I'm going to play it on the outdoor quad system, quietly, blending in with the crickets. Imagination music!:alienrob:

Yep, I'm a fan of Lester Bangs also.
 
I own it, but I wouldn't know where to begin at rating it, unless I gave it a 2, and I won't do that, so I abstain from voting. I understand that this was a way to fulfill his contract with RCA to deliver two more albums by a certain date, and this was Lou's way of saying "in your face", and fits well with his rebel persona. I like all of Lou's music throughout his career, Velvet Underground, his solo career, and even his "Lulu" album with Metallica is a good collaboration. He was an iconic groundbreaking artist and will certainly be missed. This album has great packaging, good authoring with different screen shots for each track, and as Bob Romano points out above, good separation of channels. Even though I'm sure that a good amount of effort was used in making the recording, the content, IMO, would be a more than suitable substitution for water boarding. I'm glad I purchased the disc to support surround releases and just for the novelty of the thing, but if you don't own it, don't beat yourself up trying to find one. You just saved yourself some dough.
 
I'm glad I purchased the disc to support surround releases and just for the novelty of the thing, but if you don't own it, don't beat yourself up trying to find one. You just saved yourself some dough.

I've never known what to make of it, either. I also bought the Blu-ray for essentially the same reasons as you, but the one time I attempted to seriously listen to it I probably got only about half-way.

And I love quite a bit of Yoko Ono's stuff, if that provides any perspective. My complaint about the live version of "Don't Worry Kyoko" isn't that Yoko is screaming, it's that the released version is obviously edited!
 
I'd still like to find a copy. Amazon and eBay are confusing as usual. Stereo vinyl is pictured but the description says Blu-Ray. Oh well, listened to part of one side last night and feared for my tweeters. It can be engrossing when multiple pseudo random things almost form a pattern, but yeah, not music, more like an audio art "installation". If nothing else, he certainly took the noise/feedback thing to its extreme here, assuring no one could ever (or would ever) be more obnoxious.
 
This album just demonstrates yet again how far Lou Reed was ahead of his time. In this case, ahead of "enhanced interrogation" techniques at Guantánamo Bay.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamo
Although the disc can still be purchased for a fairly low price, I'll be content with the 1.5 minute excerpt contained on my Between Thought And Expression box set. Stereo is good enough for this one.

All snarkiness aside, I genuinely admire Lou's balls for putting this out. He was a risk taker who did things his own way, and succeeded despite (or is it because of?). He could be a real asshole, but he was authentic. I think that's why Lester Bangs loved Lou so much... he was like that too. And if Laurie Anderson loved him, he's okay in my book.
 
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