5. John Cale & Terry RileyChurch Of Anthrax
I’m an enormous Terry Riley fan. For me, Steve Reich and Terry Riley are the twin pillars of minimalism. Simplicity, harmony and repetition: they’re very important things in what I do and what I really like. And I chose this album as opposed to A Rainbow In Curved Air because I heard that both John Cale and Terry Riley hated it, and I think it’s a record that deserves love. ‘The Mirrors In The Great Hall of Versailles’ is a fantastic track and one which I just listen to over and over again. It’s a really beautiful record. For years I hated the song. There’s a song called ‘The Soul of Patrick Lee’ on it. But then I heard it somewhere and I thought it was quite good. But it’s a strange hybrid record, and you can see how Terry could be dissatisfied with hearing something that has repetitive riffs and drums playing underneath it, and how John would feel like it didn’t really accord with anything he was doing. Someone had obviously decided that they would make a good pairing because of their history. But they never made another record together which kind of tells you quite a lot. There hasn’t been a Church Of Anthrax Revisited. Also it’s a fantastic title. It’s very dystopian.
