Customer Reviews

Artificial Intelligence

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A musical artist's life work should never be summed-up in one album, and especially one song, but if I had to pick that one song, it is "Dying on the Vine".

For everyone who still has or remembers their mother, the taste of love gone wrong, and the sense of place askew, listen to Cale's weary voice singing lyrics for crying. "Chinese Takeaway" is as winsome as last year's history, and "Satellite Walk" is delightfully perverse. If Cale was not producing music in the 80s to suit the pandering critics, well, this was a good thing. Fans of John Cale's music should not avoid this album. Cale should be proud of the truth in this set of painful words and haunting melodies.

While not one of Cale's "masterpieces," this brooding work from the 80s has a wonderfully melancholy and even ominous feel, created by the sparse, electronic arrangements and jerky rhythmic texture. If you want bright pop songs with tight arrangements, forget it. Cale has never been good at making pop without quirks anyhow, and we wouldn't want it any other way. But if you are in the mood for music that is lyrically suggestive, sparse, with heaving rhythms and dark undertones like the background of a William Blake illuminated print, then check this out.

John Cale is a genius with an uneven track record. He has created as many masterpieces as flops but even the latter normally include one or two great songs.

Artificial Intelligence (1985) is not one of his better albums. Everytime The Dogs Bark is somewhat messy without a coherent melody. Dying On The Vine has more of a tune and poetic lyrics, whilst The Sleeper is a slow track with a jazzy feel that doesn't really go anywhere.

Cale's characteristic angry rock surfaces on Vigilante Lover, a song with some great imagery but unfortunately the lack of melody makes it quite forgettable. Chinese Takeaway is an atmospheric instrumental infused with some shouts and laughter and Song Of The Valley is a brooding ballad with interesting instrumentation.

The meat of the album is found in Fade Away Tomorrow, a driving rock song in the mould of that brilliant sequence of Dirty Ass Rock `n Roll/Darling I Need You/Roll A Roll on his Slow Dazzle album. It has a powerful hook and is embellished with beautiful female backing vocals. Black Rose with its swaying rhythms and whistling has its moments too.

The album concludes with the messy Satellite Walk, a jerky rock number without a discernable tune. The only tracks on Artificial Intelligence that stick in the mind are Fade Away Tomorrow and Black Rose. I recommend this album only to the most dedicated John Cale fans and I award it three stars because Cale is one of my favourite musicians. The real rating is probably closer to two or two and a half stars.

After Cale's romantic and melodic Caribbean Sunset, I was disappointed with Artificial Intelligence. The songs seemed unclear and the work of an artist in a state of transition. Some of the songs, like Chinese Takeaway and Dying On The Vine, have intriguing, haunting melodies, but other songs, like Everytime the Dogs Bark and Song of the Valley, seemed like works-in-progress: reflections of the artist's mind but not a finished song. The first couple of lines in Everytime The Dogs Bark kind of sum the album up for me: "If you want to be the heart of midnight, you've got to be either cynical or dead".

But after a few listenings, I started to appreciate the high-quality weirdness of the album. Satellite Walk is a catchy new-wave style song with a memorable keyboard riff. The Sleeper is mysterious and enigmatic, with an interesting lyric, and Vigilante Lover is a harder-edged song that works very well. Overall, an uneven effort, but worth buying, and better with repeated listenings (and with interesting lyrics co-written by Ratso Sloman).

This album is not as bad as other reviewers say.
It is much better than "Walking on Locusts", his other fairly weakish album.
Every song is OK in my book except "Chinese Takeaway", which sees Cale doodling away playing recognizable motifs to a backgound droney synth soundscape-almost like a soundcheck throwaway.
At one stage the intro to Beach Boy's "Wouldn't it be nice" start up and he cracks up.That really sums up the track.
The rest is pretty good if you are a diehard Cale fan. Sattelite Walk is a tad weak but
I can still listen to it ok.

A sub-par effort with a sterile canned sound quality which, I guess was the bane of a majority 80's music. "Dying on the Vine" caught my ear as a very cool song when it came out, but it seemed a tad too sparse.Later in the early 90's, I saw John Cale perform at a small club-with Chris Spedding!It was fantastic.They did "Dying" with Spedding laying down some killer Spanish flavored riffs. Sublime.The song was finally done justice.

Originally released on the Beggar's Banquet label, the music of this album indeed has much of the cold and futuristic feel of other BB artists like Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, or Gary Numan. Unfortunately, it lacks the pop sensibility and catchy melodies that make these artists so attractive and enjoyable. Despite the title, there's no evident concept behind this synth-driven, often tuneless album. I don't even find the lyrics interesting ("I love you (x4) I'm the sleeper", "Who put the fishes in the deep blue sea?"). The music mostly doesn't catch fire. Raising the tempo only for the radio-friendly "Fade away.." and "Satellite walk", the other tracks are rather soundscapes with static drum machines than pop songs. Two standout tracks here: The mighty, impressive ballad "Dying on.." and the edgy dance-rock of "Satellite walk", a minor hit in UK dance clubs. This album is not a complete failure, but for a musician who is generally considered as the father of independent rock music, it's a poor effort. My advice: Don't buy unless you're hardcore fan. I think "Paris 1919", "Wrong way up" (with Brian Eno), "Songs for Drella" (with Lou Reed) , or "Paris s'Eveille" are much better.

The professional review above says it all. Yes, "Dying on the Vine" is a significant Cale song, but you can find it in a much more listenable version on the live "Fragments of a Rainy Season" which trashes all the awful synthesizer arrangements and strips it down to Cale's gorgeous, untreated voice and piano.

"Chinese Takeaway" is an embarrsing instrumental that fails to engage the purported subject matter in any coherent way, and "Satellite Walk" is also a ridiculous mess of a song. The sound all the way through is thin and uninspired, and as with many Cale albums that are primarily performed on digital keyboard instruments (or whatever he uses) you often wonder why and how he came up with the sounds he chooses.

Why this record was ever reissued I can't imagine. It would better be left forgotten, much like an early 80's Cale show at a "Chuck E. Cheese" in which he was too drunk to tune his guitar properly.