Review - Lou Reed: Metal Machine Music

It’s confusing. You don’t hear stuff like this …ever. Not on purpose; not accidentally. I’ve heard the album questioned a number of times. I’ve had lengthy discussions on the album. I’ve heard rumors, but I also have my own theories. And I’m not really sure that the truth matters. Not for this one. Maybe it’s out there, but I’d rather speak on conjecture to what it could be and might mean.

This is Metal Machine Music. Best listened to at excessive volumes in a small, dark room, this is Lou Reed’s brainchild, consisting of an hour of nothing but modulated guitar feedback. My understanding is that this was recorded by taking two guitars and amps in a room, cranking them, and letting resonant harmonics do the rest. And that doesn’t seem too far from whatever the truth happens to be.

Essentially, it is one of the earliest and most well-known experiments delving into noise music. And this may be one of the rawest examples of noise music. After all, what else would you call an hour of guitar feedback?

But just as importantly as it is noise, I think there is music in there. Throughout the hour you hear oscillations, harmonic resonance, and amplitude swells. Those types of properties are what shape sound and what shape music. Those are some of the key building blocks of what the general public will call “music.” And, for the most part, this is being achieved naturally. Yes, it has a start and an end (sort of; the original record has track 4 drop into an infinite loop), but between those fixed points is nature. It’s the resonance of the room, coupled with the perpetual motion of the amplified string vibrations playing the very strings which are being vibrated.

The whole piece could be summed up by saying that it is energy, in the form of sound, searching for stability. And, in a sense, with the last 1.8 seconds originally falling into an infinite loop, that is how the piece resolves.

When you think about it, mathematically, it makes sense that a) you would eventually reach some infinite loop and b) it would take a long time. Granted, the infinite loop at the end was fabricated, but the concepts still remain. Given two guitars and two amps, you have two systems, each being comprised of 2 (or 3) pickup inputs, which each have a minimum of 6 string (I would assume that 6-string guitars were used) inputs. Those different strings are different gages, are tuned uniquely, and may even have the ability to fall out of tune with the intense resonant forces being placed on them. That resonance comes from the output from the speakers and the geometry of the room, but is dictated by everything down to the outlet voltage and how that fluctuates. Perhaps it could be phrased as "the music of science" ...or physics, or nature, etc.

When you’re talking about music, you’re usually thinking of this pretty sounding stuff. You’re looking for all of the right tonal properties and everything to be acting in harmony with one another. You’re looking for order that is dictated by that harmony of notes and tonal textures meshing together.

And that’s what throws people with this piece. It isn’t that glorious harmony or man and machine. Instead, it’s the process by which natural laws governing machines are able to form that harmony; it’s so much deeper than the crap playing over the speakers today at work.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a fun listen. The first time I listened to this album, I was alone, in the dark, playing it as loudly as I could. It was an experiment. It started out confusing, but ended incredibly disorienting. See, there are methods of torture/interrogation involving sensory depravation involving excessively loud music, darkness, and probably some other weird, messed up crap, designed to make you lose every frame of reference you have. And that first hour was what I would imagine that to be like. I could see where that sort of thing could mess people up.

But I think the strangest part is the silence when it is over. When you're searching for resolution for so long, you lose sight of what resolution is. Silence doesn’t make sense. Lost within the hour of trying to see construct within a wall of noise, the silence ends up as unsettling as the noise. It’s an interesting place to be.

And unless you live under a rock, you probably know that Lou died the other day, October 27. Otherwise, I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t have subjected myself to this in the middle of my work day. Not that the album isn’t intriguing; it’s just not the easiest listening. At all. After silence stops being so unsettling, I’m gonna stick with that for the rest of the day. But if you haven't had your fill of Lou for the day, check out the album:

New Music Review - the autumn

I live in a small town. Adamstown, PA is the antique capitol of the country, apparently. Within a few miles, there are dozens of little antique shops and a few monolithic warehouses that hold relics from the past. Aside from those, there are a few gas stations, a Dunkin Donuts, and a bunch of fields.

The closest “cities” are Reading and Lancaster. Reading, as in Reading Railroad (pronounced red-ing) from Monopoly, is mostly an artistic vacuum; it has little to offer. I’ve met some good people there , but the music isn’t innovative - it's mostly one-dimensional. Lancaster, on the other hand, has a growing arts scene. It’s seen some national acts form within its bounds and they’ve definitely helped the area to grow. Beyond those, we’re not terribly far from Philly; which, like most major cities, boasts its fair share of competent musicians

But in between cities, in rural Pennsylvania, art is somewhat of an anomaly. Art is something you read about from afar. You hear music on the radio there, but it isn’t art …right? As much as I loathe cities, they do art pretty well. Rural Pennsylvania, though much more livable, can be a dreary vacuum of musical irrelevancy at times ...most of the time.

So I try to be musically relevant; I try to make people think and feel in ways that are far more complex than rural PA demands. And sometimes it seems like I’m the only one. The cultural monotony in some areas holds artistic progress in bondage. And it’s dark. The prospects of playing with another Mark Hunsberger seem increasingly unfavorable. Those people don’t exist here to talk to, let alone collab with.

But I recently found a light. Maybe not for collaboration or even to see live. But someone is out there making great music. In Ephrata; a short hop, skip, and jump down the road from Adamstown.

It happened last week. I got my weekly Reverbnation email and saw that my local ranking in the instrumental category had dropped to 7. Not long ago, there weren’t even 7 instrumental acts claiming to be from Denver, PA, so I was intrigued. Having come from Reading, I was expecting a bunch of “beat producers” or something hip-hoppy like that. Occasionally, they'll pop up on the charts, but only fall back to irrevalancy. Yes, there were a few of them on there; however, one of the artists caught my eye, the autumn.

Clearly with a name like the autumn, the act couldn’t be a tasteless wannabe rap producer, could they? The singer-songwriter styled photo further distanced the autumn from what I was expecting. After clicking on their profile, I then saw bands cited in their “sounds like” section the likes of Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You; two of my favorite post-rock bands of all time!

Hitting play on the first track, Migration Patterns, I expected to be disappointed. I expected a poor recording with stagnant writing. Yes, I’m cynical; I’ve held my hopes too high, too often. At best, I was hoping for a cheap knock off of This Will Destroy You. At best.

And then it happened. The first note resounded, masterfully catching every nuance in its droning reverberation, echoing through the space so perfectly laid out for it. And then another, powerfully building sustain. Nearly 30 seconds of single note sonic perfection passed, leading into a textural sea of spacey overdriven guitars, drums, and bass.

These are stories. They’re emotive of their respective titles, aptly named, but in no need of explanation. Each piece flows from note to note with such fluidity as to read as words read within a single breath. There is nothing lost to poor attack or poorly intonated instrument. And tonally, it’s all there.

Later, after further investigation, I discover that it’s just this one guy, Chris; he’s a local worship leader and wanted to do something different, expressing his testimony in music, but not burning out on vocals. Post-rock is the perfect canvas for such expression. And this guy, Chris, nails it. I'm intrigued to hear more about each piece and how it fits into his testimony and why each piece came into existence. There is more meaning interjected into an individual song than in other artists' entire albums.

And I really want to know what kind of mind did all of this. ONE person did this?! Not many people are gifted enough to be able to piece together such intricate, cohesive work.

And, again, this is a single guy. In small-town Lancaster county, nonetheless. There is hope.

 

 

Again, check this out: http://www.reverbnation.com/theautumnmusic

Perception: The Color IQ Test

Perception. It’s how we relate to the world. What we sense is how we understand our environment. Ultimately, our memories are shaped by what we perceive. One could argue that our entire being is just an I/O device of perception. I’d argue that we all have souls and are more than that, but that strays from the direction I’d like to take this.

So we all have these inputs: ears, eyes, tongues, and all the other stuff like that. But we only know what we perceive. Something that looks bright, sounds loud, or smells sweet to me is a perception that I can use to relate with others, but can never use to understand from another perspective. And we often times don’t think of things like this unless there is a known “disability” that we are trying to understand or overcome. For instance, I have friends who are partially color blind. I can comprehend that they see blue and green as the same color, but even still, that doesn’t change my perspective of what blue and green are.

There’s this test that I took the other day that got me thinking about this. It’s a color IQ test. Basically, there are four color continuums with starting and ending color tiles and you have to put other color tiles in order between the two. With a score of 0 being “perfect” and 99 being bad, I scored a 4, considerably lower than I anticipated. My issues were all in the blue region. While this doesn’t help us to be able to perceive what others do, it attempts to quantifiably relate my perception of color to another’s. And for the engineer in me, that’s an important first step; being able to quantify a deviation in perception, at the very least, acknowledges the differences, and at best, can give you an idea of how what you perceive relates to that of others.

We have vision tests and corrective procedures that also relate to eye sight. There, however, it is much easier to get everyone to a baseline of 20/20. It may be a bit easier to understand someone’s blurry vision than their colorblindness as simulating this is easier and makes more sense.

But what of our other senses? And mainly, I’m talking about sound and our ability to understand and decode waves of pressurized air.

We can test frequency ranges. They test both frequency and volume with most standard hearing tests. It’s known that, as you age, you lose higher frequencies. Have you ever heard a high-pitch sound (maybe a tv on in a room) that drove you crazy, but no one else could hear it and you couldn’t understand why? It doesn’t initially make sense to us as to how something so obnoxious could go unnoticed, yet clearly the others in the room lack your perception and can, therefore, not relate.

And then some people start to have all frequencies go, which, to my understanding, is more like truncating the amplitude than using a rolling filter; it’s more about volume than frequency. It’s easier to understand volume than pitch, in the same way that it is easier to understand poor eyesight than colorblindness, so I think, in general, this is a pretty easy concept to pick up on.

So, just like the color IQ test, we can have similar aural IQ test.

But the problem is that the connection to actual art is nearly non-existent. Because art is subjective. There is no IQ test for it. Dissonance and disorder can be beautiful and interesting, while melody can be stagnant and boring. In the same way, modern art can be intriguing while still life can be ordinary. There are no rules. Even guidelines are useless.

And this sort of thing drives someone like me crazy. The objectivity of opinion will always fall inferior to fact, and the fact is that there aren’t constants or magical formulas that make one piece of art good, while another bad.

So even if you can’t see the color blue or purple, or even if you can’t hear the frequency of the cymbals or of the bass, your ability to perceive art as good or bad doesn’t ever change. Because art is subjective. That’s how people can make “art” out of dead animals or Lou Reed can make an album of guitar feedback and still have the piece adorned with the label: “art.”

And we can argue properties. We can argue complexity and depth. We can argue tone. And these are all things we can try to put quantitative values to. That are ultimately meaningless… Because you can’t ever say x + y + z = art. It’s about perception. Except, unlike colorblindness or frequency hearing loss, you can’t ever quantify enough in order to adequately perceive as another perceives.

And I'll leave you with some Lou Reed.