Music for a New Society

ヴェルヴェット・アンダーグラウンドのオリジナル・メンバーとして活躍し、ソロやプロデューサー、映画音楽の制作など多岐にわたり活躍するジョン・ケイルが82年に発表した『ミュージック・フォー・ア・ニュー・ソサイエティー』をジョン自らが監修し完全リマスタリング&ボーナストラックを3曲(※未発表曲1曲!)追加収録し嬉しいリイシュー!
様々なアーティストやミュージシャンからも高く評価されているジョン・ケイル。アニマル・コレクティヴの新作『ペインティング・ウィズ』に参加し、新境地を開拓し続けている。

Uncut - "...This despairing, furious record - and its musical adventurousness - makes KID A sound like KIDS FROM FAME..." The Wire - "...One of the most desolate albums ever made..." NME - 9 - Excellent Plus - "...Does the word `masterpiece' mean anything to you?..."

The aural chaos and intense paranoia of John Cale's "comeback" albums Sabotage/Live and Honi Soit seemingly left him with very few places left to go, short of setting back-issues of Soldier of Fortune to music. 1982's Music for a New Society was, from a musical standpoint, a remarkable about-face, sounding calm, spare, and spectral where his last few albums had been all rant and rage; the arrangements were dominated by Cale's open, languid keyboard patterns, and there was far more aural "white space" in their framings than he had permitted himself since The Academy in Peril. But beyond the cool, reserved exteriors of Music for a New Society, one finds a handful of stories of terribly damaged lives; on close inspection, the ethereal opening cut "Taking Your Life in Your Hands" turns out to be the story of a mother gone on a killing spree, while "Sanities," "Thoughtless Kind," and "Damn Life" are full of dashed hopes and painful emotional betrayals. If the approach to the material is a good bit different than what most fans had been used to from Cale, the results were, if anything, among the most compelling music of his career; the open spaces of the arrangements are at once ambient and melodically compelling, and the songs have an emotional resonance that communicates on a deeper and more emotional level than the political hectoring of Sabotage or Honi Soit, intelligent as they may have been. Spare, understated, and perhaps a masterpiece. ~ Mark Deming|