While there’s certainly some debate about the whole point of scoring Noise music for new music ensembles – who gains, the academy or Noise music? – it’s unarguably a powerful strategy in the hands of Zeitkratzer. This is the follow-up to their striking interpretation of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and it’s all based around orchestral re-thinks of material by William Bennett/Whitehouse. The tracks are drawn from contemporary Whitehouse albums – Cruise, Birdseed, Racket – and transposed to clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano, harp, percussion, violin, violincello and double bass. The orchestra capture the speed-blur of the later warped Whitehouse style using dense vortices of strings and brass above overlapping pile-ups of percussion. Of course Whitehouse have always had more sonic affinity with avant classical music – the influence of Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Penderecki etc – than ‘Noise’ per se and hearing the music in this context reveals Bennett as someone with a highly specific compositional voice. That this was recorded on a night when Zeitkratzer alternated between Whitehouse and Morton Feldman pieces makes it all the more remarkable. I can’t think of anyone else so committed to expanding the canon of contemporary avant garde performance as Zeitkratzer and this is another thrilling instalment. Recommended.