Washing Machine (album)

Washing Machine is the ninth studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth, released on September 26, 1995 by DGC Records. It was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and produced by the band and John Siket, who also engineered the band's previous two albums. The album features more open-ended pieces than its predecessors and contains some of the band's longest songs, including the 20-minute ballad "The Diamond Sea", which is the lengthiest track to feature on any of Sonic Youth's studio albums.

Upon release, Washing Machine reached No. 58 on the US Billboard Top 200 chart and No. 39 on the UK Albums Chart. Two songs from the album, "The Diamond Sea" and "Little Trouble Girl", were released as singles. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised the band for exploring new challenges as well as the guitar playing between band members Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. In 1996, the album was ranked at No. 18 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1995.

Washing machine

A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, or washer) is a machine used to wash laundry, such as clothing and sheets. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids, and is performed by specialist businesses) or ultrasonic cleaners.

Washing by hand

Laundering by hand involves soaking, beating, scrubbing, and rinsing dirty textiles. Before indoor plumbing, the housewife also had to carry all the water used for washing, boiling, and rinsing the laundry; according to an 1886 calculation, women fetched water eight to ten times every day from a pump, well, or spring. Water for the laundry would be hand carried, heated on a fire for washing, then poured into the tub. That made the warm soapy water precious; it would be reused, first to wash the least soiled clothing, then to wash progressively dirtier laundry.

Removal of soap and water from the clothing after washing was originally a separate process. First, soap would be rinsed out with clear water. After rinsing, the soaking wet clothing would be formed into a roll and twisted by hand to extract water. The entire process often occupied an entire day of hard work, plus drying and ironing.