Metal Machine Music, remix

now here's something i've been meaning to do for a very long time.

i've been a HUGE fan of this record ever since i first heard it around tenth grade (it may well be my favorite record, if there is such a thing, and of course it inspired the name of this blog), but i always felt like it would be really interesting to slow it down until you could (maybe? hopefully?) identify it as guitar feedback rather than the crazy squalling chipmunk death screeches of glory that it is. recently i read that by slowing it down to 16rpm and listening to either the right channel or left channel independent of the other you could start to make out what's going on, so that's what i did: readjusted the pitch and tempo to roughly 48% of the original and split the tracks into mono files of each channel. unfortunately, that sounded way too slow to me (tho' if you do it without changing th' pitch - just slow the tempo - it does sound pretty great) so i started experimenting with different values, beginning with 75% (seemed appropriate). judging by just kind of an innate sense of how the knocking delay sounds in the left channel of side one "should" sound, i felt like this was too fast so i then tried 70% (still a bit too fast), and then 65% (sounded fucking incredible but something said 'split the difference'), so here ya have it, 67% of the lp tempo. of course keep in mind that i have no idea how much lou sped his multitrack tapes up, if indeed that's what he did - and heck, he could've been messing with the pitch control on the deck the whole time he was recording (…and mixing…and mastering…); this is just something i wanted to hear and i think it sounds fantastic at the same time that it offers insight (well, at least a little) into what the origins of the signals are. this now gives you over three hours of MMM, and taking into account the sad fact that even thurston moore admitted he's never listened to it all the way thru - blasphemy - you can pride yrself on being one of the chosen when you reach the end of this journey!

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