NEW JOHN CALE 5xLP box in WOOD CASE Velvet Underground

$

61

Artist: JOHN CALE
Title: New York in the 1960s
Label: TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS
Catalog Number: TOE-LP-87

FIVE LPS IN BLACK-LACQUERED WOOD BOX WITH LIBRETTO, BONUS TRACKS AND MORE.

JOHN CALE'S great credit, both inside and outside the Velvet Underground, was to have found the inoculation dosage that would addict the music industry to SOUND without alienating one world from the other. But outside the "official" VU there was also an uncut version of the virus, incubated behind the slum walls of the 1960s Lower East Side, and maintained live in the liquid nitrogen of these insolently recorded reel-to-reel audiotapes, recorded and produced by Tony Conrad and now available in the massive Table of the Elements 5xLP boxed set, "New York in the 1960s."

"The recordings in this three-disc series come from another underground, a deep vein of labor and experimentation that parallels Cale's time with the Velvets. It is jubilantly private music, made alone and with like-minded spirits -- Tony Conrad, Sterling Morrison, original Velvets percussionist Angus MacLise -- far from the hot light of the Velvets' public notoriety and the rough politics of Cale's relationship with Reed. And it is important music, an illuminating, heretofore unknown chapter in Cale's creative advance.

"What is truly extraordinary about the sixteen performances spread across these three volumes -- Sun Blindness Music, Dream Interpretation and Stainless Gamelan -- is their explosive foresight. The florid distortion of Cale's guitar pieces and the tandem bull-elephant hum of his viola and Conrad's violin prefigure the aggressive majesty and expressive dissonance of punk rock, No Wave and the Transfigured Guitar movement led by Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham and Sonic Youth. In his pulsing keyboard essays, Cale marries the grace and science of minimalism to the mainstream throb of rock & roll, a full decade ahead of Brian Eno and the Berlin-era David Bowie. When Cale tests the barriers of possibility in his tools - the guts of an abandoned piano, the jammed keys on an organ, the pause control of a Wollensak tape recorder - he generates a synthetic music that connects Edgard Varése, Henry Cowell and Karlheinz Stockhausen with contemporary electronica and turntablism.

"These recordings have been virtually unheard since they were made more than three decades ago. But their prescience is undeniable. So is their power and purity. Working in the shadows of both pop and art, building on discoveries and inventions from his life before and with the Velvets, Cale committed to tape a highly personal and exhilarating vision of the future of music. It now sounds like fact."

--David Fricke, from the liner notes

• Earliest recordings by VELVET UNDERGROUND founder and ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME member JOHN CALE
• Gorgeous, limited-edition release in BLACK-LACQUERED WOOD BOX with black paper libretto
• Liner notes by ROLLING STONE’S DAVID FRICKE
• Features rare and previously unreleased recordings
• Includes performances by fellow VELVET UNDERGROUND members STERLING MORRISON and ANGUS MACLISE and minimalist pioneer TONY CONRAD
• All material previously unissued on vinyl
• Includes BONUS TRACKS featuring pioneering artist and filmmaker JACK SMITH

"Shuddering rhythms at first sparkle like sunlight on water, before evoking the incandescence of a star going supernova. A reinvention of what we know of the past, and a treasure brought to light... Astonishing."
-- The Wire

"Proves once again that La Monte Young's claim that he was the defining moment in minimalism is just insane."
-- Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

"These aural documents have been a long time in coming. They could have exploded the myth. Instead they are an awesome, concrete substantiation of all the excitement their long non-appearance has generated. They completely re-write the territory of minimalism with willful abandon and supercharged exhilaration. A revelation."
-- Monocular Times

"You'd think Table of the Elements had cornered the market on historic minimalist documents. And they pretty much have."
-- Pitchfork

"As devastating as the rock & roll on the Velvets' 'Sister Ray.'"
-- All Music Guide

"Number 1 Release of 2001."
-- Washington City Paper

"Best of 2001" -- Downtown Music Gallery, NYC

"Tops of 2001" -- Songs of Praise (FR)

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"John Cale is rock's international traveler. His work is a trans-continental drift of moons and maps, seas and seachange, envoys and ennui...his eye has spanned the globe and his mind ranged as far from rock's parochial trails as it's possible to get...his world is bounded only by the limits of his imagination."
--The Wire

"This music is the intimate expression of a committed seeker, a strange magic finally heard in its humble seductive essence."
--Rolling Stone

Performers:
JOHN CALE with
TONY CONRAD
TERRY JENNINGS
ANGUS MACLISE
STERLING MORRISON and
JACK SMITH

LP 1
SIDE 1
1) Sun Blindness Music pt. 1 [21:21]

SIDE 2
2) Sun Blindness Music pt. 2 [21:32]

LP 2
SIDE 3
1) Summer Heat [11:06]
2) The Second Fortress [10:36]

SIDE 4
3) Dream Interpretation [20:33]

LP 3
SIDE 5
1) Ex-Cathedra [5:03]
2) [untitled] for piano [12:28]
3) Carousel [2:32]

SIDE 6
1) A Midnight Rain of Green Wrens at the World's Tallest Building [3:19]
2) Hot Scoria [9:21]

LP 4
SIDE 7
1) Stainless Steel Gamelan [10:30]
2) At About This Time Mozart Was Dead And Joseph Conrad Was Sailing the Seven Seas Learning English Pt. 1 [7:00]

SIDE 8
1) At About This Time Mozart Was Dead And Joseph Conrad Was Sailing the Seven Seas Learning English Pt. 2 [19:27]

LP 5
SIDE 9
1) Terry's Cha-Cha [8:20]
2) After the Locust [4:18]
3) Big Apple Express [5:41]

SIDE 10
BONUS TRACKS
1) Cold Starry Nights [2:19]
2) Silent Shadows on Cinemaroc Island [8:45]