Conspiracy · Dream
Metal Machine Trio
Metal Machine Trio was an improvising group of Lou Reed, the saxophonist Ulrich Krieger and me. It formed around two nights at REDCAT in Los Angeles on October 2 and 3, 2008, billed as “Unclassified: Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger”. The group name refers to Metal Machine Music, Reed’s 1975 album.
The recordings of those two nights were released in 2009 as the double live album The Creation of the Universe.
Lou said, I don’t want to play duo, I have this electronic guy in New York and I’d like to bring him along. So he brought Sarth Calhoun in.
Ulrich Krieger, OC Weekly, January 27, 2012
The phone call
In 2008 Lou called me up and told me he was doing a free improvised noise gig at The REDCAT in LA with saxophonist and composer Ulrich Krieger. Ulrich had made a real impression on Lou by arranging Metal Machine Music for orchestral ensemble ... a rare and some might say unnatural feat that should be impossible. I had done a tour with Lou’s rock band, processing and sampling the various instruments on stage, and we had talked about doing some duet shows performing the meditation music we’d been working on. That stuff was drones and melodies combined with pure noise, so this seemed only natural.
Ulrich had billed us as “Unclassified” because obviously the group had no name yet. The shows in LA were great, they sold out right away and we added a second set on one of the nights.
How Ulrich remembers it
Krieger wrote his account after Lou died in 2013. He puts the trio’s formation in the same place: two nights at REDCAT announced under a name that was not a band name, with two days of rehearsal, both shows sold out inside a day and late shows added.
The photograph running with that essay is captioned MM3, Redcat, Los Angeles, October 2008. Left to right: Sarth Calhoun, Stewart Hurwood (guitar tech), Lou Reed, Ulrich Krieger.
He also records what the trio became at scale. At Lollapalooza in 2009 they played a ten minute noise interlude between well known Reed songs, and on later tours Lou would play MM3 recordings before and after shows.
Lou decided to bring Sarth along at the last minute; he met him at tai chi practice, played with him at home and wanted his electronic sounds for this concert.
Ulrich Krieger, “Unclassifiable”, The Wire, 2013
Calhoun started playing his Continuum as if it was a throbbing Hammond organ, creating a low undulating swarm of sound.
Rolling Stone, April 2009
Who played what
Lou had guitar, electronics and a small Continuum. Ulrich had tenor saxophone and live electronics. I played Continuum and processed the band through Kyma. The shows could go from pure unrelenting noise to what Laurie described as almost improvised classical music.
We recorded the sets with a matched pair of Schoeps and a stereo Royer, and released them as they were, pure ambient microphone tracks with no direct lines. That stuff was released as a double live CD, “Creation of the Universe.” This was the start of the group which was eventually renamed The Metal Machine Trio, and we went on to play in Europe, Brazil, and Australia.
The Creation of the Universe
The recordThe Creation of the Universe, 2009. Two tracks, the two REDCAT nights nearly whole. On Apple Music and Discogs.
On Thursday night at the Blender Theater at Gramercy, onstage between Sarth Calhoun and Ulrich Krieger, two much younger musicians, he was making noise: improvised, loud, heavily processed, and some of it ugly enough to make people leave.
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times, April 25, 2009
We called the music “Deep Noise” because that’s what it was. At times though, it felt almost like improvised classical music, or something which didn’t have a name.
The dates, from REDCAT through New York, Europe, Sydney and São Paulo, are on Sightings.
The creditSarth Calhoun, Continuum Fingerboard and live processing through Kyma, one third of Metal Machine Trio with Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger, from REDCAT in October 2008 through São Paulo in November 2010; on The Creation of the Universe, 2009.
Metal Machine Trio began at REDCAT on October 2 and 3, 2008. The album documents those nights. A later installation with the same title uses the second Gramercy performance from April 24, 2009, with John Zorn, not the REDCAT album tape. My account is from the Metal Machine Trio page of my old WordPress site; Laurie’s phrase is as I remember it.