Vintage Violence is John Cale’s first post-Velvet Underground album and was originally released in 1970. Cale's signature sound with the Velvets was purposefully rough and aurally challenging, but Vintage Violence is a startlingly user-friendly piece of mature, intelligent pop with a smooth, satin finish. The Welsh rocker shows a pop craftsman at work on ten tracks that reference everything from Country Rock to Beach Boys harmonies to The Band-style Americana and beyond.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Hello, There
2. Gideon's Bible
3. Adelaide
4. Big White Cloud
5. Cleo
6. Please

SIDE B
1. Charlemagne
2. Bring It On Up
3. Amsterdam
4. Ghost Story
5. Fairweather Friend

'MIXology' is a companion release to the aforementioned 'POPtical Illusion' and 2023’s 'MERCY', featuring previously unreleased songs and alternate versions taken from the albums’ sessions. Tracks 1-4 are from 'MERCY' and in line with the album’s collaborative spirit featuring guest appearances from Tony Allen and Tei Shi; tracks 5-7 are from 'POPtical Illusion'.

TRACK LISTING

1. Clap Clap
2. I Know You're Happy (feat Tei Shi) (Chill Mix)
3. Long Way Out Of Pain (feat Tony Allen)
4. 1000 Years
5. Invention Of Language
6. The Adventures Of SupaCane
7. Standing Next To You

John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of the Watergate hearings and the oil crisis, and Cale was at a crossroads. The white-hot rage of his Velvet Underground days was nearly spent; now he was living in Los Angeles, working for a record company and making music when time allowed. He needed to lay to rest some ghosts, but he couldn't do that without scaring up others. Paris 1919 was the result.

In this vivid, wide-ranging book, Mark Doyle hunts down the ghosts haunting Cale's most enduring solo album. There are the ghosts of New York – of the Velvets, Nico, and Warhol – that he smuggled into Los Angeles in his luggage. There is the ghost of Dylan Thomas, a fellow Welshman who haunts not just Paris 1919 but much of Cale's life and art. There are the ghosts of history, of a failed peace and the artists who sought the truth in dreams. And there are the ghosts of Christmas, surprising visitors who bring a nostalgic warmth and a touch of wintry dread. With erudition and wit, Doyle offers new ways to listen to an old album whose mysteries will never fully be resolved.

Following on quickly from Fear, and capitalising on that album's energy Slow Dazzle is another fiery release by Velvet Underground founder John Cale - This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1975 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

Released in March 1975, initially, the album offers a false sense of mellow security: "Mr Wilson", a tribute to Brian, the leader of Cale's beloved Beach Boys starts the on a much sweeter note than "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend", as does "Taking It All Away"; by "Dirty Ass Rock'n'Roll" Slow Dazzle is off to darker terrain, business as usual. Cale, however, cannot resist a pop song and a ballad – "Ski Patrol" is a great two-minute vignette, and "I'm Not The Loving Kind" is soul-baring.

The album's reputation, however, rests on two tracks – "Guts", a bald telling of Cale's wife's infidelity and his pitch-black cover of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel". 50 years later, these songs still pack a tremendous punch.

TRACK LISTING

Mr. Wilson
Taking It All Away
Dirty-Ass Rock 'N' Roll
Darling I Need You
Rollaroll
Heartbreak Hotel
Ski Patrol
I'm Not The Loving Kind
Guts
The Jeweller

Released in October 1974, Fear is an incredibly important in the 50+ year career of John Cale - This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1974 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

Fear marked Cale's return to recording in London after the best part of a decade in America. Signing to Island, he made fast friends with two key admirers, Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno, who assisted him in returning his music to the rawer sound of his earlier work, as opposed to the lush textures of his previous studio album, Paris 1919. The tense, clipped "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" harks back to the work of the Velvet Underground, as does the standout, "Gun", eight minutes of overdriven bleakness with Eno duelling with Cale's guitar solo on synthesisers. Much is rightly made of these tracks, but there is also the sweetness of the gospel of "Buffalo Ballet" and the Beach Boys homage "The Man Who Couldn't Afford To Orgy". The pretty, semi-autobiographical "Ship Of Fools" offers listeners an opportunity to hear Cale reference the South Wales city of Swansea, its seaside suburb, Mumbles and his home village of Garnant.

In its often-skeletal simplicity, the often triumphant Fear is an album that brought an angular aggression with it.

TRACK LISTING

Fear Is A Man's Best Friend
Buffalo Ballet
Barracuda
Emily
Ship Of Fools
Gun
The Man Who Couldn't Afford To Orgy
You Know More Than I Know
Momamma Scuba

Recorded quickly between John Cale producing Patti Smith's Horses and his going out on an Italian tour, Helen of Troy became Cale's third and final studio album for Island Records - This re-issue faithfully replicates the original 1975 Island Records UK release and is pressed onto high quality 180g vinyl.

Helen Of Troy is a raw, fascinating listen. The title track with its horns and spoken word is one of Cale's best: after the sweet bubblegum of "China Sea", the album gets increasingly stripped down – the acoustic guitar and piano of "Cable Hogue" and the punkish cover of The Modern Lovers' "Pablo Picasso" have long been favourites on the album. "Leaving It All Up To You" – in which Cale becomes increasingly disturbed – garnered controversy at the time and was actually removed from later pressings of the album because of its references to the Manson murders. Cale never lost his ability to shock. Taking its title from the opening line of Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line", "I Keep A Close Watch", a track Cale would record again several years later, with its Robert Kirby-arranged strings and horns, is the closest Cale has veered toward a power ballad.

It is a work of great beauty among all the jagged edges of Helen Of Troy.

John Cale was never very kind to his solo debut, ‘Vintage Violence’. When it was released in early 1970, Cale had been out of The Velvet Underground for less than two years. He wanted to prove he could be the songwriter, the person penning the words and melodies behind which a band could work. “I was masked on ‘Vintage Violence’,” he wrote much later. “You’re not really seeing the personality.”

Indeed, Cale’s personality as a polyglot seemingly interested in everything emerged more and more on his next two solo albums, his only two for Reprise: 1972’s bracing and exploratory classical sojourn, ‘The Academy in Peril’, and 1973’s masterclass in anxious but accessible songcraft, ‘Paris 1919’.

By reissuing both records in tandem affirms the artistic fearlessness Cale then fostered at the edge of 30, when all of music seemed like one inviting playpen.

Artist-sanctioned reissue, remastered from the original tapes.

TRACK LISTING

The Philosopher (Remastered)
Brahms (Remastered)
Legs Larry At Television Centre (Remastered)
The Academy In Peril (Remastered)
Intro (Remastered)
Days Of Steam (Remastered)
3 Orchestral Pieces: A) Faust b) The Balance C) Capt.
Morgans Lament (Remastered)
King Harry (Remastered)
John Milton (Remastered)
Temper *

* = CD Only Bonus Track (included With LP As A Digital download)

John Cale was never very kind to his solo debut, ‘Vintage Violence’. When it was released in early 1970, Cale had been out of The Velvet Underground for less than two years. He wanted to prove he could be the songwriter, the person penning the words and melodies behind which a band could work. “I was masked on ‘Vintage Violence’,” he wrote much later. “You’re not really seeing the personality.”

Indeed, Cale’s personality as a polyglot seemingly interested in everything emerged more and more on his next two solo albums, his only two for Reprise: 1972’s bracing and exploratory classical sojourn, ‘The Academy in Peril’, and 1973’s masterclass in anxious but accessible songcraft, ‘Paris 1919’.

By reissuing both records in tandem affirms the artistic fearlessness Cale then fostered at the edge of 30, when all of music seemed like one inviting playpen.

Remastered from the original tapes and includes previously unreleased outtakes.

Liner notes written by Grayson Haver Currin.

TRACK LISTING

Child's Christmas In Wales (Remastered)
Hanky Panky Nohow (Remastered)
The Endless Plain Of Fortune (Remastered)
Andalucia (Remastered)
Macbeth (Remastered)
Paris 1919 (Remastered)
Graham Greene (Remastered)
Half Past France (Remastered)
Antarctica Starts Here (Remastered)
I Must Not Sniff Cocaine (Remastered)
Hanky Panky Nohow (Drone Mix) (Remastered)
Child's Christmas In Wales (Rehearsal 1) (Remastered)
Half Past France (Intro Chat) (Remastered)
Macbeth (Take 11) (Remastered)
Hanky Panky Nohow (Guitar Mix) (Remastered)
Fever Dream 2024: You're a Ghost 

Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in 2023 album MERCY. He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness.

And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.

TRACK LISTING

1. God Made Me Do It (don’t Ask Me Again)
2. Davies And Wales
3. Calling You Out
4. Edge Of Reason
5. I’m Angry
6. How We See The Light
7. Company Commander
8. Setting Fires
9. Shark-Shark
10. Funkball The Brewster
11. All To The Good
12. Laughing In My Sleep
13. There Will Be No River

First time vinyl repress of this John Cale album, originally released on the Opal label in 1989, produced by Brian Eno.

“‘Words For The Dying’ has at its heart The Falklands Suite, Cale’s baroque if heartfelt response to the Anglo-Argentinian War, which finds him setting the poems of his beloved Dylan Thomas to music. When building songs around another’s words, the results often sound forced, but Cale does a magnificent job of compressing Thomas’s lyricism into neat melodic phrases, themselves just components of a vast harmonic mega-structure scored for the USSR’s Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gostelradio. A project that could easily have collapsed under the weight of its own ambition is instead a late masterpiece, thanks to Cale’s deep-seated compositional genius, and unobtrusive but resonant production from Brian Eno.” - Kiran Sande

TRACK LISTING

The Falkland Suite
Introduction
There Was A Saviour
Interlude I
On A Wedding
Anniversary
Interlude II
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That
Good Night

Songs Without Words. II
The Soul Of Carmen
Miranda

For nearly 60 years, or at least since he was a young Welshman who moved to New York and formed The Velvet Underground, Cale has been reinventing his music with dazzling and inspiring regularity. There was the bewitching chamber folk of Paris 1919 followed instantly by the gnarled rock of Fear, the provocative and spare song cycle Music for a New Society followed more than 30 years later by mighty and unabashed electronic updates. Once again, here is Cale, reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. His engrossing 12-track MERCY moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronics toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future.

On MERCY, Cale enlists some of music’s most curious young minds: Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, Actress. They’re only some of the astounding cast here, brilliant musicians who climb inside Cale’s consummate vision of the world and help him redecorate there. Cale turned 80 in March, and he’s watched as many peers have passed away, particularly during the last decade. MERCY is the continuation of a long career’s work with wonder. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; MERCY is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.

The writings and recordings that shaped MERCY piled up for years, as Cale watched society totter at the brink of dystopia. Trump and Brexit, Covid and climate change, civil rights and right-wing extremism—Cale let the bad news of the day filter into his lines, whether that meant contemplating the sovereignty and legal status of sea ice melting near the poles or the unhinged arming of Americans. Lessons from a life (still being) richly lived floated to the fore, too, nodded to on the previously released “NIGHT CRAWLING.” If we’re always regretting our past, aren’t we conscripting ourselves to permanent disappointment?

During “STORY OF BLOOD,” after the piano prelude gives way to a frame-rattling beat and synthesizers that feel like sunshine splashed across a snowfield, the voices of Cale and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering slide past one another, two phantoms trying to find a partner amid the modern din. “Swing your soul,” they both sing in aspiration. In the final verse, Cale remembers this existence is not just about himself. “I’m going back to get them, my friends in the morning. Bring them with me into the light.” The accompanying video by Emmy-winning director Jethro Waters is a mix of disturbing and serene featuring both Cale and Weyes Blood. Its deep tones and religious images emphasize the track’s dark, spiritual mood.

Cale elaborates: “I’d been listening to Weyes Blood’s latest record and remembered Natalie’s puritanical vocals. I thought if I could get her to come and sing with me on the ‘Swing your soul’ section, and a few other harmonies, it would be beautiful. What I got from her was something else! Once I understood the versatility in her voice, it was as if I’d written the song with her in mind all along. Her range and fearless approach to tonality was an unexpected surprise. There’s even a little passage in there where she’s a dead-ringer for Nico.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Mercy Feat. Laurel Halo
2. Marilyn Monroe’s Leg (Beauty Elsewhere) Feat. Actress
3. Noise Of You
4. Story Of Blood Feat. Weyes Blood
5. Time Stands Still Feat. Sylvan Esso
6. Moonstruck (Nico’s Song)
7. Everlasting Days Feat. Animal Collective
8. Night Crawling
9. Not The End Of The World
10. The Legal Status Of Ice Feat. Fat White Family
11. I Know You’re Happy Feat. Tei Shi
12. Out Your Window

Domino Records reissue John Cale’s classic live album ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’, featuring his revered interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ amongst many solo versions from his enduring catalogue and previously unreleased outtakes.

‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ was the first live John Cale album to feature him performing solo and ‘unplugged’ - before that term became a mid 1990s buzzword.

In contrast to the jaundiced punk truculence of ‘Sabotage/Live’ (1979) or ‘Even Cowgirls Get The Blues’ (1986), ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ gives us Cale at his most melodic and moving, a mellowed and certainly a soberer man in a Yamamoto jacket and a lopsided haircut running through a selection of his prettiest songs. It’s a Cale many love deeply, a man alone at a concert-hall Steinway revisiting the pop-rock of ‘Paris 1919’ and ‘A Child’s Christmas In Wales’, as wistful and whimsical as any 70s singer songwriter holding court at LA’s Troubadour club. It’s the Cale who disavowed the spiky nihilism and decadence of the Velvets, inspired instead by melodicism of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson (to whom he’d paid haunting homage on ‘Slow Dazzle’s brilliant Beach Boys pastiche ‘Mr. Wilson’). It’s the Cale who improbably took a staff job at Warner-Reprise in LA and - for an all-too-brief moment - became part of the Burbank producers’ mafia alongside Lenny Waronker and his laidback chums. (Lest we forget, 1973’s ‘Paris 1919’ featured members of Little Feat and The Crusaders among the backing musicians.)

Cale being Cale, ‘Fragments Of A Rainy Season’ isn’t all rueful tenderness. The deceptively jaunty ‘Darling I Need You’ is flippantly introduced as a song about “religious awakening in the southern part of the United States,” while Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is no less gothic in the solo version here than it is in the Grand Guignol horror show of the original on ‘Slow Dazzle’. ‘Guts’ is as close as Cale ever came to Lou Reed at his most withering.

It’s easy to forget that - years before Jeff Buckley and The X-Factor - he was the first artist to recognize the hymnal majesty of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, or that it was his original 1991 reading of the song that popped up on the soundtrack of ‘Shrek’.

TRACK LISTING

On A Wedding Anniversary
Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Cordoba
Buffalo Ballet
A Child’s Christmas In Wales
Darling I Need You
Guts
Ship Of Fools
Leaving It Up To You
The Ballad Of Cable Hogue
Chinese Envoy
Dying On The Vine
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend)
Heartbreak Hotel
Style It Takes
Paris 1919
(I Keep A) Close Watch
Thoughtless Kind
Hallelujah
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake)*
Amsterdam (Outtake) *
Broken Hearts (Outtake) *
I’m Waiting For The Man (Outtake) *
Heartbreak Hotel (Outtake - Strings) *
Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend) (Outtake - Strings) *
Paris 1919 (Outtake - Strings) *
Antarctica Starts Here (Outtake - Strings) *

* = Bonus Track (REWIGCD107X & REWIGLP107X [& REWIGLP107 As
Digital Download] Only)