Lou Reed, Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of the Universe

Lou Reed’s landmark 1975 album Metal Machine Music came as a radical departure from his previous albums. Devoid of lyrics, melody, harmony, and any traditional musical structure, the album is more than an hour of guitar feedback, distorted noise and tape loops. The atonal drone of Reed’s screeching wall of noise had its conceptual foundations in the aesthetics and techniques of repetitive drone composition, and while it was widely panned by fans and critics alike upon its release, it has come to influence an entirely new generation of musicians in the decades since. More than 30 years after the album’s release, Reed performed it live at New York’s Blender Theater. Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of the Universe is an immersive sound environment developed in close collaboration with Reed and the acoustic specialists at the Arup Engineering SoundLab in New York to recreate Reed’s acoustic perspective for museum visitors, thus creating a fully immersive sound environment. As an experimental sound environment that lacks a compositional structure, the installation envelops its audience fully, underscoring its durational experience.

Metal Machine Trio Musicians: Reed—guitar, continuum fingerboard , electronics; Ulrich Krieger—electric saxophone, electronics; Sarth Calhoun—continuum fingerboard, electronics.