The German ensemble zeitkratzer performs “Metal Machine Music”, Lou Reed’s cursed album, tonight with acoustic instruments.
The German instrumental ensemble zeitkratzer performs tonight at 20:00 at the Théâtre Garonne in Toulouse, France, as part of the àlúnisson(s) / musiques à Garonne festival, playing their version of Lou Reed’s legendary album Metal Machine Music.
zeitkratzer is a Berlin-based ensemble founded in 1999 by Reinhold Friedl with the aim of interweaving contemporary repertoires, noise, improvised music, experimental rock, industrial music, folk and early music, from Karlheinz Stockhausen to Kraftwerk or Laurie Anderson. zeitkratzer released in 2014, on his own label, his version of Metal Machine Music, the most experimental album ever composed by Lou Reed, which the New Yorker musician originally released in 1975, five years after leaving The Velvet Underground and barely a year after releasing Sally Can’t Dance, his historically most successful album. Pressed by RCA, his record company, to immediately deliver an album to follow in the triumphant wake of the previous one, Reed instead delivered an hour-long album filled with continuous feedback and noise that, although a commercial failure, became a cult album and attracted the attention of many experimental musicians. In 2001, Berlin-based composer Ulrich Krieger contacted Reed to present his transcription of Metal Machine Music into score for amplified acoustic instruments, creating an orchestral work that had a new sound: classical chamber music instruments sounding like electric guitars.
The first performance of this work took place on 28 January 2005 by the Swedish Great Learning Orchestra at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm. Subsequently, in 2014, a year after Lou Reed’s death, zeitkratzer recorded their own version of the piece, renewing and enriching the listening experience of a music that was created to be uncomfortable. zeitkratzer’s current line-up consists of its conductor and pianist, Reinhold Friedl; Frank Gratkowski (clarinets), Matt David (trumpet), Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Mark Weiser (guitar), Maurice de Martin (percussion), Burkhard Schlothauer (viola), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) and Uli Philipp (double bass).