Just Noise? A comparison between Luigi Russolo's “Risveglio di una Citta” (1913) and 's “Metal Machine Music” (1974)

Roland van Dierendonck Essentials in Art and Music assignment 5 (Representation) 24-12-2014

Perhaps the oldest methodology in art is that of representation, to take aspects of the world around us and to re- present them in an artist's creation. In a wide range of media, people have tried to capture details or abstractions of natural occurring or man-made realities of many kinds. Even noise, generally unwanted, “nonmusical, loud, harsh, or discordant”, sound has been a subject of arti This essay compares works of two infamous, unconventional noise-lovers, “Risveglio di una Citta” (1913) by Luigi Russolo and “Metal Machine Music” (1975) by Lou Reed. After being briefly introduced, both works are compared with respect to the noise itself, the intention behind it's creation and the public's reaction to the work, including both initial responses and the reputation of the artworks over time.

Controlling the noise: Russolo's machines After the industrial revolution in the second half of the nineteenth century, machines took up a larger role in everyday life. This changed the soundtrack of urban life dramatically. The Italian futurist movement embraced the progress towards modernity and the dynamic and technology that came along with it. Luigi Russolo (1885 – 1947) was one of the futurists. Russolo envisioned that by copying the timbres and pitches of machines, new music could be created that went beyond the traditional musical forms.ii In his manifesto “The Art of Noise” he elaborated this idea, classifying noise into into six categories and philosophizing about the possibilities that combining these sounds would yield.iii Russolo implemented this idea with the creation of Intonarumori, roughly translated as “Noise intonators”. These wooden instruments with inbuilt speaker cones use a variety of mechanisms to produce sounds resembling urban and rural noises. Russolo saw the noises as abstracts, that would lose the connection with their source through the recombination with other sounds, and could create rich compositions. For the intonarumori Russolo created pieces such as “Risveglio di una Citta” (“Waking up of a City”, 1913) a piece displaying his delight in “combining (…) the noise of trams, of automobile engines, of carriages and brawling crowds”iv,iii Russolo was eager to show his intonarumori, using them all in the first six bars.iv

“Real” and really loud: Reed's machine music Following the disbandment of his band in the early seventies, musician Lou Reed (1942 – 2013) embarked on a solo career. After releasing four song-filled , Reed shocked everyone with his fifth solo offering, a 64-minutes long assault of ear-splitting electronic feedback - ending in a locked groove. “Metal Machine Music” (MMM, 1975) was presented in a musical context, divided in four parts with a length of 16:01 each. v Reed recorded feedback created by leaning two electric guitars on amplifiers facing each other, which he manipulated through effect pedals such as tremolo, ring modulator and reverb pedals and stereo-separated. Or, in Reed's own words, MMM is a record with “rock orientation, melodically disguised, i.e. drag” , created using “No synthesizers, no Arp. No instruments?”vi Listening to it is unbearable for the average man, even Reed himself admitted in the liner notes that he himself could not listen through it.vii But what does the noise represent? The shrieks and squeaks, grumbles and groans that constitute MMM are often compared to industrial sounds and the noises of electrical apparatuses like refrigerators, not in the last because of the “Metal Machine” in the title.viii Other clues can be found in the liner notes of MMM. With multiple references to methamphetamine, a.k.a. speed, and the notion that a record has to “hypertensive people”, it has been argued that MMM, not coincidentally subtitled “The Amine β Ring” is a representation of the effect of speed on one's nervous system.iv,ix A last hypothesis is that the sound itself does not need explanation - it just is - or as Reed wrote in the liner notes “this is what I meant by "real" rock, about "real" things”.iv

Comparing the noise Whereas the noises in Russolo's “Risveglio di una Citta” are highly controlled, “Metal Machine Music” is a long, chaotic overstimulation of your ears. Russolo's instruments were capable of playing quartertones and shifting dynamically in volume. According to musicians that played them, the glissando's between notes make some instruments work like voices.x And the internal rhythms of the machines adds to the experience. One can truly distinguish the sounds of different intonarumori. In MMM, one cannot really distinguish anything, the splitting of sounds into left and right not making it easier to swallow. Reed's noise is quickly produced and violent as a hooligan – as (big fan) Lester Bang's put it “any idiot with the equipment could have made this ”.xi Russolo's noise is sophisticated. He even thought up a new musical notation suited for this type of music.

The intentions behind the noise-making Russolo believed that as urban life quickly changed, our perception would change along. In his manifesto, he wrote that although he and other futurists had enjoyed , they found that society needed other sounds that would trigger deeper feelings and understanding in modern men. iii Russolo's intention behind “Risveglio” was to enrich the palette of composers, multiplying the available timbres. It is important to realize, however, that he did not want the listener to think of the inspiration of the sounds created, but to listen to the sounds as abstractions, as new tones in the ensemble. Reed's intentions are more ambiguous. In the liner notes he wrote “ This record is not for parties/dancing/background romance”vii.. But why did he make it? Often, MMM is explained as a big “fuck you” to his audience and his . Another explanation is that is was an exaggeration of Reed's minimalist approach to music, stripping all things necessary. Yet another that it is a metaphor for either the oppressive feeling of living in New York City, or the effects of tinnitus or a hypertensed mindset. Seen in the light of it's dense, impenetrable notes and it's sub-subtitle “dexrorotory components synthesis of symphatomimetic musics”, William Ham even went as far as comparing MMM to literature, callin it the Finnegans Wake of rock!xii The last, but perhaps most honest, explanation is that the sped-up Reed just really liked the thrill of the sounds that were captured on MMM. Reed simply loved the unexpectingly harmonic guitar feedback As he later said in an interview, “I was serious about it. I was also really, really stoned.”ix

Reception of the noise: “is that music?” One can see similarities in the reputation of “Risveglio di una Citta” and “Machine Metal Music” over time. After the first public concert of Russolo's compositions in Milan in 1913 riots broke out, the crowd booing to the performers even before the start of the show. Af the end of the concert, futurists were fighting the irritated crowd in the hall-ways.xiii The initial succes of Reed's effort was the similar. A total of 150,000, mainly unprepared, consumers bought the record. Within week's of it's release, many of them went back, disappointed or outraged, to their record stores to return the record, leading label RCA to withdraw the album after two weeks on saleviiixiv The critics were equally negative, a majority giving the LP one star out of five, it even got pronounced “Worst Album of the Year” by . After the initial let downs, both artists saw the reputation of their works change during their lifetime. Russolo's concerts between 1913 and 1927 were a great success, with ten thousands of people watching the shows in London. The turnover from his instruments was rather low, however.xiii His futurist ideas fainted away, only to reappear again after the second world war in musique concrète.iv His instruments were long-forgotten, but seem to be in a revival. In 2009 a night-long concert with 16 intonarumori was given at the Performa 09 biennal in New York to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Futirsm.x The faith of Reed's noise-album bears resemblances to the former story. Initially seen as garbage, the album slowly gained a following, with later industrial bands quoting it as one of their main inspirations. In 2002, the ensemble Zeitkratzer even transcribed the piece to classical instruments (rather ironically, as the creation of the original was rather uncontrolled), taking MMM to concert halls.xv Zeitkratzer controlled the noise, doing what even Reed thought was impossible. Perhaps the grains of time smoothen art's edges. Perhaps history transforms rebels into a part of the establishment. Conceptions change, listeners adapt, and the noise-loving radicals now are even more radical than the noise-addicts then. Answers to the questions “what is noise?” and, simultaneously, “what is music?”, seem to shift as years go by. Though discussion will always remain. There might be more similarities between the personas of Reed and Russolo than one could think when comparing the music they left us. In his last interview he did before his death, Reed seems to paraphrase Russolo's ideas. Like the latter described the pleasures of urban industrial sounds to the ear in his manifesto, Reed described sound as “the inexplicable (…) and yet we have these astonishing ears (…) But what is sound. Sound is more than just noise. And ordered sound is music. The first sound we hear is our mother's heart beat. And than there is the wind.”xvi i "noise." Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary. 2010. 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. 23 Dec. 2014 (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/noise ) ii Sitsky, Larry. Music of the twentieth-century avant-garde: a biocritical sourcebook. ABC-CLIO, 2002. iii Russolo, Luigi. “The Art of Noise”, 1913. iv Venn, Edward. "Rethinking Russolo." Tempo 64.251 (2010): 8-16. v Reed, Lou. Metal Machine Music. RCA, 1975. LP vi Starostin, George. “Metal Machine Music” Only Solitaire. Retrieved from: http://starling.rinet.ru/music/reed.htm#Music vii Reed, Lou. Liner Notes. Reed, Lou. Metal Machine Music. RCA, 1975. LP viii Ham, William. Eine Kleine Nichtmusik: Metal Machine Music Turns 25. Dancing about architecture essay archive. (http://www.dancingaboutarc.com/essays/e050101.html ) ix Metzger, Richard. “Is Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' the Ultimate Headtrip Album? Dangerous Minds, 2011. Retrieved from: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/is_lou_reeds_metal_machine_music_the_ultimate_headtrip_album x PERFORMA. “Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners.” YouTube. Web. 9 March, 2012. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqej96ZVoo8 xi Bangs, Lester. “The Greatest Album Ever Made” , 1976. Retrieved from: http://www.rocknroll.net/loureed/articles/mmmbangs.html xii Ham, William. Start the Industrial Revolution Without Me: Metal Machine Music Turns 25, Part 2. Dancing about architecture essay archive. (http://www.dancingaboutarc.com/essays/e052201.html ) xiii Bijsterveld, Karin. Mechanical sound: Technology, culture and public noise in the twentieth century. Mit xiv Iglis, Sam. “Lou Reed & Zeitkratzer. Metal Machine Music” Sound on Sound, December 2007. Derived from: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec07/articles/metalmachine.htm xv MetalMachineManiac. “Zeitkratzer (Lou Reed) Metal Machine Music Part 1 (Live)” YouTube. Web. 16 November, 2011. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3hbBGpGF5o xvi Rolling Stone. “Lou Reed's Last Words: Watch His Final Interview”. Rolling Stone. November 8, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/lou-reeds-last-words-watch-his-final-interview- 20131108