Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio – Royal Festival Hall, London 19/04/10

So here it is then. The live event inspired by the album that Rolling Stone dubbed “ear-wrecking electronic sludge” and Lester Bangs claimed was a “giant FUCK YOU” from Lou to the world and respresentative of “Lou’s soul” more than anything he’d recorded to date.

Despite its notoriety as being almost unlistenable, it’s become a forgotten reference point in recent years – something for Lou and Velvet Underground completists more than anyone else. For those who haven’t had the (dis)pleasure of listening to Metal Machine Music in its entirity, the 1975 album consists of two records with one sixteen minute track per side composed almost entirely of guitar feedback played back via loops and distortion. I’ve only managed two listens of the whole thing in my entire life and it’s not anything I could ever be attached to in any conceivable way. But the record is arguably before its time and a very real ancestor to any form of noise rock since then – from Sonic Youth to My Bloody Valentine. Kevin Shields is actually at tonight’s show, along with Warren Ellis, Bobby Gillespie and a man in a Batman costume.

‘Recreation’ of such a record in a traditional way would be almost impossible (no to mention quite pointless) and tonight takes the ethos of Metal Machine Music as its inspiration. Reed first performed this show last April in New York with Sarth Calhoun and Ulrich Krieger; the three make up the ‘Metal Machine Trio’. Calhoun is stage right behind a stack of laptops, Krieger stands stage left moving between sax and a massive gong. And then there’s Reed, sandwiched between gong and a series of machines I’m told is called a ‘continuum’ and sitting on what looks like a cheap office chair with wheels.

To attempt to describe the sound in detail would be futile. Nevertheless, I shall do so anyway: it’s basically a form of improvised noise loops that originate primarily from guitar and arrive through what seems like an endless process of sampling, distortion and looping with occasional trips to the gong and kettle drum from both Reed and Krieger.

Visually it’s pretty intense – these three musicians working together to create such an incredible sound. Lou, clearly the director of the enterprise, sporadically barks orders at Calhoun and shows an uncharacteristic enthusiasm when he delivers something unexpected and wonderful through frantic macbook-key-tapping. On saxophone, Krieger’s style is spookily reminiscent of Bill Pullman’s demonic jazz delivery in David Lynch’s Lost Highway but his wailing represents the nearest thing to a discernable melody we get all night.

There’s a very real and compelling human element in the chaos that makes it immediately more engaging than on record. Lester Bangs pointed out the “anti-human, anti-emotional” nature of Metal Machine Music came from the fact that the album wasn’t made by people but by machines. There’s a near perfect symbiosis between the musicians tonight as layers of feedback, inverted guitar riffs and percussion are folded up, duplicated then stripped back throughout the ninety minutes of performance. “Like sonic trepanning mixed with experimental jazz improv,” quips my companion and yet the three men on stage seem to know exactly what they’re doing.

As with the record, some of the same questions remain: What exactly is the purpose of the performance? Does it occupy a similar space to the likes of John Cage’s ’4’33′? Is it meant to challenge our perceptions of music and structure? Or is it simply symbolic of an artist in his latter years, given to re-examination and attempting to make sense of it all?

Whether Lou wants to reverse history’s opinion of Metal Machine Music is largely missing the point. The challenge to such art is to examine our response to it. Many walk out – maybe ten or so in the first few minutes and another fifty before the hour mark is hit. For those who remain, all we can do is let ourselves sit back and allow these cacophonous waves of noise to wash over us. It’s a violent but beautiful aural poetry.