John Cale & Terry Riley - The Church of Anthrax

One of the most influential avant-rock ensembles, Velvet Underground, was very much influenced by classical minimalism, particularly by the work of La Monte Young. Terry Riley was also one of the early practitioners of repetitive avant-garde music. So it's logical that John Cale, the most gifted of the Velvets (who was sacked in 1968) would team up with Riley to make a record. When an avant-garde minimalist composer and an experimental rock musician meet to collaborate, you'd expect the results to be as drone-heavy as possible. Unlike Tony Conrad's meeting with Faust in 1972, this album is surprisingly jazz-influenced, but definitely not the kind of jazz-fusion you'd expect from Miles Davis, Weather Report or Soft Machine, although Church of Anthrax at times allows comparisons with the latter band's third album. A heavy street-smart feel carries the nine-minute title track with its rumbling bass-line and skittering drums setting a heavy basis for a melange of colorful keyboards and mesmerizing snake-charmer like soprano sax from Riley, culminating with tortured, yet subdued droning atonal guitars. "The Hall Of Mirrors In The Palace Of Versailles" follows and it appears to be a sedater affair, more in line with Terry Riley's work, the interplay between Cale's piano and Riley's sax is blissful. "The Soul of Patrick Lee" is pure John Cale track which, if Cale hadn't left the Velvets in 1968, wouldn't have sounded out of place on Velvet Underground's third, or even fourth album, the only track with vocals too. "March Ides" is possibly the most jazz-oriented piece, and quite idiosyncratic at that: pounding semi-ragtime piano sets the basis for the song and mingles with more skittering drum work, creating thus a quirky 11-minute improvisation. "The Protégé" is among the shortest tracks on this album, but it also seems the most repetitive, until the false sense of security is chased away by a burst of violent feedback that concludes Church Of Anthrax.