Composer Paul Lansky describes his 1989 work Not So Heavy Metal as "an attempt to glorify the blazing, whining, intense macho character of a guitar intent on grabbing us by the throat and throttling us." The work features electric guitar improvisations by performer and composer Steve Mackey, who subjects his gritty hard-rock blues stylings to Lansky's surreal computer manipulations. The result is a kind of sonic caricature, in that the already exaggerated gestures of Mackey's guitar are made even larger and more aggressive, as if they were heard inside some kind of sonic house of mirrors.

This kind of approach has been seen before in Lansky's work, perhaps most clearly in Guy's Harp, from 1984. In that piece, Lansky turned the sound of Guy DeRosa's harmonica improvisations into an entire ensemble of sounds, with layers and loops of texture comprised solely of digital manipulations of the initial harmonica sounds. In Not So Heavy Metal, however, the featured instrument seems more intent on resisting Lansky's digital adornments and clearly distances itself from the electronic musical environment within which Lansky places it. This effect can at times be dizzying: about at the composition's middle point, a series of elaborate computer timbres—evoking glockenspiels, log drums, and other real and imagined instruments—work themselves into busy filigrees that leap back and forth across the stereophonic spectrum at vertiginous speeds; all the while, the guitar remains in the center stage, seemingly oblivious to its sonic surroundings, staying aloof until the composition's conclusion.

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