John Cale & Terry Riley

Church of Anthrax (1971) ...

John Cale returns from Velvet Underground to his avant garde background joining up with arch minimalist Terry Riley ...  Early 'rock-based' minimalism group ...

Church of Anthrax ... 

Ides of March ... 

This album marks a cross-pollination. Cale may have been returning to his Minimalist roots, but he still had the sound of VU’s white noise ringing in his ears and as a consequence managed to produce a brilliantly messy, repetitious rock record. Early Minimalism had much in common with rock anyway: the ensembles which Philip Glass and Steve Reich were establishing, as well as the previously-mentioned Theatre Of Eternal Music, resembled rock groups as much as they did traditional classical ensembles... headheritage.co.uk ...

The Hall of Mirrors In The Palace of Versaille ...

  

This album is a fantastically raw piece of music which is unlike any of Cale’s other solo albums. It also has an strange ancient-ness to it comparable to Amon Düül II’s ‘Phallus Dei’. The combination of its general lack of conventional song structure and its street-suss edge makes it rank alongside much of what was being produced in Germany at the time, in that it was pushing the limits of rock music’s sound in a similar direction. Cale’s comment that “‘Anthrax’ is just an improvised gig with Terry” shows that he himself may not have regarded it as a particularly important album. However, it stands up as an inspired exercise in minimalist rock music... headheritage