I felt kind of guilty as I was reading (re-reading) Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung and Bangs castigates those of us who don't play White Light/White Heat every day, and who's copies are pristeen and near mint. I have to admit that my copy is pretty blemish free, its a recent reissue which I swapped from the old remastered cd, which in turn had replaced the cassette I'd bought in a dump bin somewhere for a couple of quid. The cassette cover was white with a strangely blurred image of toy soldiers. I'm going to run downstairs in a bit and see if I still own it because its really weird. Anyway, I brushed off Lesters grumbling and spun the record, headphones on, feet up. Its not that I don't play it enough- I just haven't played it recently. I still love it, the production sound and original mastering is awful (I'm guessing the remaster is only on the cd) but that has always been a part of its charm. If you didn't know it, the disconcertingly Smell the Glove-like black mirror sleeve does in fact contain a black on black image of a skull and crossbone tattoo.

Strangely this is a perfect representation of what you will find contained within - sludgy, dark music that fills your head with musical shadows. It's so dense that the drums are all but squeezed to the far left and right of the mix as Reed and Cale wrestle for dominance in the mix. It sounds like a conventional drum kit Mo is thumping but it's hard to tell.

There's something refreshing about this album, like a dose of mouthwash for your ears. As far as perfect pop product goes this is a million miles away from any other album of its time. Due to the back and forth of the instruments in the mix it feels as if they were actually fighting over the knobs and sliders in the control room. Is there a Mono mix? I think that would be almost unbearable but something I should investigate further.

A guy mails himself to Wisconsin to the girl who thought she'd left him behind and he gets his head split open. Thats The Gift - a rambling sprawling spoken word/jam that takes up 40% of side one. The VU are in the right channel, Cale is in the Left reading a drole tale of love by Reed that shouldn't really work but does. By this point in their career they are so far off the map you need GPS to find 'em, and it gets better.

Jumping to side two we have I heard her Call my Name which is no wave 10 years early. As a song it almost makes no sense, the mix is so overloaded that almost everything but the ludicrous, atonal guitar solo gets squeezed like fingers in a meat grinder with Reed gurning through gritted, speed decaying teeth churning the handle making mincemeat of everyone else. And as if that weren't enough you're about to get hit with Sister Ray - 17 minutes of delerium inducing riffing that sounds like somebody fed weird drugs to a garage band and taped their eyes shut. Drag queen prostitutes and sailors loom large in Reeds heroin soaked lyrics as the band live up to the promises of Booker Tease (the instrumental from the Right channel of The Gift back on side one) and unleashes the never ending grind with three chords and Cales hammering organ solos. The bass plops in and out, as if they're back to fighting again in the control room and then it all speeds up and just goes batshit.

The band have often been quoted as saying the live version they played never made it onto this album, that it was bigger, badder, better and so forth, but really what happens on the stage never happens in the studio. That White Light was ever actually recorded in a studio and made it onto album is something you can be grateful for every time you play it. Which hopefully will be more than just a couple of times. Their first album is often criticised as being unlistenable, but really, that is a comment best reserved for this one.