JOHN CALE & TERRY RILEY - Church Of Anthrax
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:11 pmJOHN CALE & TERRY RILEY - Church Of Anthrax (Wounded Bird; USA) A
one-time-only collaboration between former Velvet Underground
co-founder John Cale and minimalist composer Terry Riley, 1971's
Church of Anthrax doesn't sound too much like the solo work of
either. Around this time, Riley's works were along the lines of "A
Rainbow in Curved Air" or "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band":
pattern music with an obsessive attention to repetition and tricks
with an analogue delay machine that gave his music a refractory,
almost hallucinogenic quality. Though Cale was trained in a similar
aesthetic (he played with La Monte Young, surely the most minimal of
all minimalist composers), he had largely left it behind by 1971, and
so Church of Anthrax mixes Riley's drones and patterns with a more
muscular and melodic bent versed in both free jazz and experimental
rock. Not quite modern classical music, but not at all rock & roll
either, Church of Anthrax sounds in retrospect like it was a huge
influence on later post-minimalist composers like Andrew Poppy, Wim
Mertens, and Michael Nyman, who mix similar doses of minimalism,
rock, and jazz. On its own merits, the album is always interesting,
and the centerpiece "The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles"
is probably the point where Riley and Cale approach each other on the
most equal footing. - Stewart Mason, AMG
one-time-only collaboration between former Velvet Underground
co-founder John Cale and minimalist composer Terry Riley, 1971's
Church of Anthrax doesn't sound too much like the solo work of
either. Around this time, Riley's works were along the lines of "A
Rainbow in Curved Air" or "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band":
pattern music with an obsessive attention to repetition and tricks
with an analogue delay machine that gave his music a refractory,
almost hallucinogenic quality. Though Cale was trained in a similar
aesthetic (he played with La Monte Young, surely the most minimal of
all minimalist composers), he had largely left it behind by 1971, and
so Church of Anthrax mixes Riley's drones and patterns with a more
muscular and melodic bent versed in both free jazz and experimental
rock. Not quite modern classical music, but not at all rock & roll
either, Church of Anthrax sounds in retrospect like it was a huge
influence on later post-minimalist composers like Andrew Poppy, Wim
Mertens, and Michael Nyman, who mix similar doses of minimalism,
rock, and jazz. On its own merits, the album is always interesting,
and the centerpiece "The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles"
is probably the point where Riley and Cale approach each other on the
most equal footing. - Stewart Mason, AMG