The Velvet Underground White Light/White Heat (45th Anniversary Edition) 180g 2LP

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 272/500!

The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, its best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited by many critics as one of the most important and influential groups of the 1960s. In a 1982 interview Brian Eno made the often repeated statement that while the first Velvet Underground album may have sold only 30,000 copies in its early years, "Everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."

White Light/White Heat is the second studio album by American rock band The Velvet Underground, released in 1968. It was the band's last with violist and founding member John Cale. In 2003, the album was ranked #272 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

After the disappointing sales of the Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the band's relationship with Andy Warhol deteriorated. They toured throughout most of 1967. Many of their live performances featured noisy improvisations that would become key elements on White Light/White Heat. The band eventually fired Warhol and parted ways with Nico; and ultimately went on to record their second album with Tom Wilson credited as producer.

The album was recorded in just two days, and with a noticeably different style than The Velvet Underground & Nico. John Cale described White Light/White Heat as "a very rabid record...The first one had some gentility, some beauty. The second one was consciously anti-beauty." Sterling Morrison said, "We were all pulling in the same direction. We may have been dragging each other off a cliff, but we were all definitely going in the same direction. In the White Light/White Heat era, our lives were chaos. That's what's reflected in the record."

Drowning their songs in guitar fuzz and drone, VU made the most extreme disc in their extreme catalog. 'Sister Ray' is 17 minutes of amplifiers screaming.

1968's White Light/White Heat was a no-holds-barred frontal assault on cultural and aesthetic propriety... [T]he purest and rawest document of the key Velvets lineup of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker, capturing the group at their toughest and most abrasive... [A]nyone wanting to hear their guitar-mauling tribal frenzy straight with no chaser will love it, and those benighted souls who think of the Velvets as some sort of folk-rock band are advised to crank their stereo up to ten and give side two a spin.

The best of our fury laid out on vinyl, for the world to catch a glimpse.