Samiul Bashar Samin
Sixteen of Lou Reed’s solo recordings will comprise a new box set due out this fall. The RCA & Arista Album Collection spans the late Velvet Underground frontman’s albums between 1972 and 1986. Reed spent the months prior to his death in 2013 remastering each of the LPs, which include Transformer, Berlin and Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, among many others. The box set will come out on October 7th.
In addition to the collection’s 17 discs (live record Take No Prisoners spans two CDs), The RCA & Arista Album Collection contains five 8-by-10 art prints and a reproduction of a rare promotional poster. It also features an 80-page book that includes memorabilia from Reed’s private collection, interviews with Reed and rarely seen artwork and photos and liner notes by co-producer Hal Willner. Similarly, producer Hal Willner wrote in the box set’s liner notes how gratifying it was to watch Reed listen to many of his past works, as they remastered the albums in June and July of 2013. “This box set was Lou’s last project,” he wrote. “Everyone who was in that room or around Lou during this period witnessed a beautiful thing as he enthusiastically relived that whole period of his work with the joy of rediscovery, excitedly pointing out subtleties in sounds he hadn’t heard in years. In retrospect, reminiscing about these sessions done less than four months before he died, the moments seem even more magnified.”