Comments for Cale, John, The Academy In Peril

On this album, John Cale goes sort of cod-classical, making use of his improvisational techniques. Some of the tracks feature the London symphony orchestra as well. The first track has a scratchy guitar line with lots of instrumental parts over it (including horn, marimba, piano, organ and violin). It's sort of catchy in it's own weird way, but it's not typical of the album. A lot of the album is actually made up of solo piano pieces. The first of these, 'Brahms', is interesting in concept, but doesn't really get going very well. It's a bit like the last track, only not as pleasing. Track 3, 'Legs Larry at the television centre', is a piece for string quartet (I think) and is pretty uninspiring to start with, but even less so when the narration starts over the top. It's quite a relief when it ends, but then the album just goes to another piano solo piece. Unless you have a lot of patience, all the piano solo pieces can get quite tiring. Anyway, on the vinyl version of this record you actually change sides now. The next track is an intro leading into 'Days of steam'. Probably the best track on the album. Bouncy and happy sounding. Sounds like John Cale's just having a lot of fun with his orchestral friends. Very enjoyable. The 3 orchestral pieces that follow are also rather uninteresting tracks. Following that is the utterly mad 'King Harry', with creepy whispering from John Cale over the top of some lively sounding marimba music. The last track on the album is 'John Milton', yet another piano instrumental. It has the inclusion of some rather mysterious sounding strings over the top, and it all goes quite well until about somewhere in the middle, at which point Cale knocks about with a 3 note piano bit, leading into a big orchestral crescendo, sounding horribly like something out of a '70s sci-fi film. Then there's some more piano stuff, then some more orchestral stuff, then some more piano stuff, ending the piece quite abruptly after about 8 minutes. This is another good track unless you're expecting an actual song. It's unlike any of John Cale's other albums, so fans of 'Paris 1919' or 'Fear' won't necessarily like this album. It's not the most obvious choice to make when buying John Cale albums, but it's enjoyable enough if you have patience.