This third CD of sixties Cale droneand bang is perhaps going to be of most interest to fans of the firstcouple of VU albums as it opens with two long duets with guitaristSterling Morrison. The first could be described as a primitive ambientSonic Youth prediction. 'Stainless Steel Gamelan' finds Cale andMorrison shimmering hazily for ten minutes or so, both hammering awayat one guitar. Cale counterpoints Morrison's beautiful arpeggios withthe gamelan like bashing that gives the track its title. 'At about thistime Mozart was dead and Joseph Conrad was sailing the Seven Seaslearning English' has a poetically fitting if lugubrious title. Calechops up viola drone with the pause button on a tape recorder, fuckingup time in a way which might have suggested the title's historicalnotions. It opens with a deep rolling viola drone over which Morrisonbounces screwdriver handle guitar flotsam. Nearly eight minutes intothe twenty six, Cale starts going amphetamine crazy on the pause buttonmaking hacked random squeakings that'll probably give people who regardRadiodead as 'experimental' a hard time, but should pose no problem topeople who feel that word is a better description of Nurse With Woundrecords. I've never heard anything quite like this before!A vaguely medieval flavoured jazzy trio with horse hoof cloppingpercussionist Angus Maclise and saxophonist Terry Jennings is pleasant,but doesn't really seem to fit in too well with the rest of therelatively exploratory music here. There's a fantastically noisyassault on a piano fed through Tony Conrad's 'thunder machine' (Vox ampreverb) with the suitably ravaged title 'After the Locust' which mighthave sat better on the second CD with the other Conrad duets. It goesout on a humourous lack of notes as Cale's recording of dense layeredviola drones is interupted by a fireman ordering him to go play faraway out in the country somewhere. Of course since then the drone hasled him and his nose far away to several different countries. -
Read More
