Getting Back To Minimalism
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

For his latest album, “Black Acetate,” John Cale was inspired by an unlikely influence: rapper Snoop Dogg. “I was writing and recording last fall, and then I went out on tour,” Cale recounted. “That’s when Snoop Dogg and Pharrell put out ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot,’ and I was just blown away. It has a great sound, and there are only about five parts to it. I realized it was time for me to get simple again. Time to get back to minimalism.”
The result on “Black Acetate” (EMI) is several fascinating tracks like the soaring “Woman.” Opening with a sparse beat and Cale’s breathy intonations, the piece abruptly cuts to an anthemic, wall-of-guitar chorus. “I wanted to try something minimal against something big, try slamming them together,” Cale explained. That experiment is one of nearly 50 hybrid songs Cale generated while searching for the album’s sound.
“It was a very grim process, letting go of so many songs,” Cale said of his Darwinian editing method. “It was a matter of choosing the strongest pieces and then deciding which ones would be the most complicated and time-consuming to complete. If one song was going to take eight hours to finish, and another would only take one hour, the one that needed less work survived.”
Minimalism is nothing new for Cale, of course. In the 1960s, he pioneered the minimalist long drone sound as a member of La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music. Soon after, he joined the Velvet Underground, bringing avant-garde ideas to the realm of the 4/4 beat, and creating one of the most influential catalogs in rock history.
“I never want to repeat myself” said Cale, who turned 63 this year. “I don’t want to go back and do what I’ve done before. That’s why I worked so hard on this, why I wrote and recorded so much for this album.” Such passion for discovery is reflected in the title “Black Acetate,” which refers to the fragile slabs of vinyl produced for artist approval in the days before digital.
“The acetate represented the first time you’d hear the record, and you could only play it about three times before it was unusable,” said Cale. “I like that idea of hearing something for the first time, that rush of something new.”
Cale’s writing was fueled by his recent interest in funk, specifically the sharp, puncturing sound of the MPC drum machine. “It’s what you hear in Pharrell’s work and in lots of hip-hop now,” Cale explained. “As soon as you hear it, your head and your whole body start nodding.” Employing that tool, Cale created a sound far more raw and primal than that of his previous album, the layered, computer-dominated “Hobo Sapiens.”
The first single on “Black Acetate,” “Perfect,” is a feedback-laden rocker that evokes Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha” dipped in acid. The accompanying video is even more bracing, an eyeopening pastiche in which Cale’s guitar cord sucks the life out of everything it plugs into. Even Cale himself ends the video in a lifeless slump. It turns out he wasn’t just acting.
“I did that on almost no sleep, after a rush of work and a long plane trip to England,” Cale sighed. “It was a painstaking shoot, with stop-motion photography and things being painted by hand on the set and on me. They kept having to tell me to wake up. But I love the video; I think it captures the rawness and immediacy of the track.”
Cale is now fully recharged and back on the road, this time with a full ensemble, in contrast to the stacks of computer equipment he toted around on the “Hobo Sapiens” tour. “This is a really slamming rock band I have now,” Cale boasted.”It’s something people haven’t seen from me in a while. We’re playing songs from this album, and ‘Hobo Sapiens,’ and older songs too. I think there’s nothing this band can’t do.”
Saturday at St. Ann’s Warehouse (38 Water Street, Brooklyn, 718-254-8779).