I'm not meditating with Lou. I've meditated before and I've listened to a lot of Lou Reed albums, and somehow the two just don't mix. The degree to which Hudson River Wind Meditations resonates with you is in direct proportion to how much you can jettison the baggage (good and bad) the Velvet Underground legend carries with him. Somehow I keep going back to songs about scoring in the seedy depths of NYC whenever I think of Lou, his early stuff that heavy and memorable.
As he got older, continued to pursue Eastern (for lack of a better, more encompassing term) philosophies of movement and meditation, Lou Reed found himself in a better spiritual place than he was when he recorded Take No Prisoners, for example. And, oddly, Hudson River Wind Meditations sits nicely as a counterpoint to Metal Machine Music. Both are atonal and outside melodic convention, but at least this meditation record actually seems to want to nudge a listener into a better place.
Opener "Move Your Heart" eases in and creates a vibe like the sound of waves lapping against a shore. The regularity of the sounds here likely did help Lou manage his breathing, an essential part of meditation. "Find Your Note" at more than 30 minutes is a bit harsher. It sounds almost like feedback, or a note held and repeated. It's jarring but in a way that suggests a focus being sharpened on a point in the distance. These two cuts make up nearly an hour of the record with two much shorter pieces sort of serving up brief reprises of the sounds earlier on the album. The whole enterprise maintains a certain grace and precision, even if fans of "Sweet Jane" are going to find nothing to hold onto as they look inward and dream of Nirvana.
Hudson River Wind Meditations by Lou Reed is out on Light in the Attic.
[Photo: Julian Schnabel]
