Sun Blindness Music
(Table Of The Elements - Re 75) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Home-recorded improvisations from 1965 through 1968, this is the first disc of three documenting Cale’s solo experiments and collaborations with other members of New York’s avant-garde underground (all previously unreleased until 2001). Without any real structure, the title track -- an incredibly extended improvisation consisting of just Cale and the Vox Continental organ -- explores minimalist sound dimensions, jams keys into place, locks into a series of drones, mounts pressure on the organ, clusters notes and creates a dissonant wash of noise. Resonant, booming drones escalate and disintegrate into silence as he prepares to wedge another cluster of keys in place. Raucous, guitar-driven “Summer Heat” is so awash with massive distortion that is sounds like pounding percussion more than guitar strumming, predating Branca’s guitar symphonies, Arnold Dreyblatt’s “sound of one string” experiments, and Metal Machine Music “The Second Fortress” manipulates the Vox in a series of high-pitched drones, and repetitious ambient textures.