The idea that a small group of string and wind players could faithfully recreate every squeal, drone, pulse and howl of Metal Machine Music sounds absurd, but the results speak for themselves. And whatever your opinion of the original, it’s hard to deny that the Zeitkratzer performance, recently released on DVD with a 5.1 mix by Reed himself, is an extraordinary feat of musicianship.
So they did, and I was astonished by it.” So much so that Reed agreed to join the group on guitar for the occasion.
Let ’em do five minutes and they would send it to me and I could see what he was talking about. “He said that he could transcribe it and these guys could play it. It’s impossible!” was Lou Reed’s reaction on hearing that Krieger had transcribed and arranged Metal Machine Music for piano, strings and saxophone. These have included pioneers of electronic and industrial music, but also avant–garde classical musicians such as Ulrich Krieger and Reinhold Friedl of unorthodox chamber ensemble Zeitkratzer. Nevertheless, Metal Machine Music has always had a hard core of devoted admirers. What’s more, unlike much ground–breaking music from the ’70s, it sounds every bit as jarring and difficult today as it did 30 years ago. Since then, it has been widely dismissed as a bad joke or a two–fingered salute to the record label, and the name Metal Machine Music has become synonymous with ‘unlistenable’. Instead, waves of shrieking guitar feedback created a brutal sonic assault which, thanks to the locked groove at the end of side four, was literally never–ending.ĭeleted by RCA after two weeks on sale, the album attracted the highest number of returns of any record ever.
There were no drums, no singing, and no songs. Each side bore a single track lasting exactly 16 minutes and one second. Classical interpretations of guitar music might not be new - but when the guitar music in question consists of 64 minutes of deafening feedback, it takes a lot of interpreting!įew records have alienated audiences like Lou Reed’s 1975 double album Metal Machine Music.
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