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Lou Reed’s Aural Assault ‘Metal Machine Music’ Gets Tribute Album From Members of Dinosaur Jr., Unrest, More

Lou Reed's sonically confrontational 1975 work 'Metal Machine Music' is receiving a tribute album featuring members of Dinosaur Jr, Unrest and more.

Taken off the market after just three weeks, it was an unprecedented “career suicide” move that baffled and enraged fans and nearly cost him his record deal (RCA’s president exacted a promise from Reed that he would not do such a thing again, and he remained with the label for another couple of years). However, with the gradual acceptance of noise and ambient music as an art form – to its credit, RCA briefly considered releasing the album on its classical wing, Red Seal – “Metal Machine Music” has aged well and become a kind of landmark for those genres and audience provocation as well and has been the subject of at least one past tribute album (Alejandro Cohen’s “High Velocity” in 2013). It is about to receive another on May 3 with “Metal Machine Muzak,” a tribute album dubbed “an ambient reimagining” featuring four long-form tracks, each clocking in at 16 minutes and 1 second, by four indie rock luminaries: Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh), Cory Hanson (Wand), W. Cullen Hart (The Olivia Tremor Control) and Mark Robinson (Unrest).

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