Loureed John Cale

Live set by former Velvet Underground member and the ringmaster of the avant-garde, Mr. John Cale. The album is virtually a career retrospective, recorded live on John's 2006 European tour. Cale felt like he'd finally found the personnel to interpret his songs with new twists, new dimensions and new emotions. None more so evident than the track 'Gun', originally appearing on 1974's Eno & Manzanera produced Fear but now sounding akin to a heavy arsenal of crunching weaponry. Inspired, Cale recorded the dates and the band began to tear up a 40 year musical history book, challenging and breathing new life into Cale's work.

Mercy is the seventeenth studio album by Welsh musician and composer John Cale. It was released on 20 January 2023 by Double Six Records, making it Cale's first album of new songs in over a decade. It features collaborations with Tony Allen, Laurel Halo, Weyes Blood, Tei Shi, Animal Collective's Avey Tare and Panda Bear, Dev Hynes, Sylvan Esso, Actress and Fat White Family. It was inspired by current events such as Donald Trump's presidency, Brexit, COVID-19, climate change, civil rights and right-wing extremism.

One of John Cale's very finest solo efforts, Paris 1919 is also among his most accessible records, one which grows in depth and resonance with each successive listen. A consciously literary work – the songs even bear titles like "Child's Christmas in Wales," "Macbeth," and "Graham Greene" – Paris 1919 is close in spirit to a collection of short stories; the songs are richly poetic, enigmatic period pieces strongly evocative of their time and place. Chris Thomas' production is appropriately lush and sweeping, with many tracks set to orchestral accompaniment; indeed, there's little here to suggest either Cale's noisy, abrasive past or the chaos about to resurface in his subsequent work – for better or worse, his music never achieved a similar beauty again. –Allmusic 4,5/5.

Funding Velvet Underground member John Cale performed the band’s 1967 masterpiece, The Velvet Underground & Nico, alongside selections from its follow-up, White Light/White Heat, during a gig at La Philharmonie de Paris. As previously reported, he was joined by a handful of guest performers including Animal Collective, Mark Lanegan, Pete Doherty and Carl Barât of The Libertines, and more…

John Cale - Artificial Intelligence (1985) {Beggars Banquet BBL 68CD}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 257 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 101 Mb
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© 1985 Beggars Banquet | BBL 68CD
Rock / Art Rock / Experimental / Avant-Garde

Though this is still nowhere near prime John Cale, 1985's Artificial Intelligence is a big step up from its predecessor, 1984's weak and sloppy Caribbean Sunset. For the first time in his career, Cale works with a collaborator on each song: Rock journalist Larry Sloman (later to gain a certain measure of fame as the model for the pesky Ratso character in Kinky Friedman's comic mystery novels) wrote the lyrics for all nine songs, with guitarist and co-producer David Young chipping in on two of them.

John Cale - Eat/Kiss: Music for the Films of Andy Warholol (1997) {Rykodisc HNCD 1407}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 363 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 160 Mb
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© 1997 Hannibal Records / Rykodisc | HNCD 1407
Modern Classical / Minimal / Experimental / Avant-Garde / Stage & Screen

John Cale's soundtracks for two of Andy Warhol's experimental films of the early 1960s, premiered in 1994 and recorded live at a concert at Lille, France in 1995, are multi-part free-form works on which his keyboards are accompanied by fellow ex-Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole, and a string quartet. The abstract nature of the films allows Cale free rein to create impressionistic soundscapes occasionally reminiscent of the ambient work of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. Cale fans should note that though some of the music is melodic, there is none of the pop or rock found on many of his albums, but then most Cale fans probably are adventurous enough to give this a try.