Caribbean Sunset is the ninth studio album by John Cale

John Cale

John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....

, and was released in 1984. It features contributions from Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

 and an otherwise "young unknown" band. The album is notable for being the only album by John Cale to remain unreleased on compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 or digital format

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

. The cover photograph was by Risé Cale.

Track listing

1. "Hungry For Love" (Cale, Dave Young)
2. "Experiment Number 1" (Cale)
3. "Model Beirut Recital" (Cale, Dave Young)
4. "Caribbean Sunset" (Cale, Larry Sloman
   Larry Sloman
   Larry "Ratso" Sloman is a New York-based author best known for his collaboration with Howard Stern on the radio personality's two best-selling books, Private Parts and Miss America. He also appears in all of Kinky Friedman's mystery novels as the Dr. Watson to Kinky's Sherlock...
   
   )
5. "Praetorian Underground" (Cale, Dave Young)
6. "Magazines" (Cale, Dave Young)
7. "Where There's A Will" (Cale, Larry Sloman)
8. "The Hunt" (Cale, Dave Young)
9. "Villa Albani" (Cale)

Personnel

• John Cale - vocals, keyborads, guitar
• Brian Eno
  Brian Eno
  Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
  
   - A.M.S. pitch changer
• Andy Heermans - bass, vocals
• Dave Lichtenstein - drums, boobams
• Dave Young - guitar, vocals

Release

Caribbean Sunset was released on vinyl and cassette

Compact Cassette

The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...

 in 1984 by ZE Records

ZE Records

ZE Records was originally a New York-based record label, started in 1978 by Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban. It has been re-established by Esteban since 2003.-History:Michael Zilkha ZE Records (always written with two capital letters) was originally a New York-based record label, started in...

. It was reissued on vinyl by Mango Records in 1990. Both the ZE and Mango vinyl versions are now out of print.

Caribbean Sunset was slated to finally be issued on CD in 2001, with bonus tracks "She Never Took No For An Answer" and an instrumental version of "Villa Albani", but the release was scrapped at the last minute for unknown reasons. To date, the album remains unavailable on CD or MP3 though an unauthorised download was available for a brief period from Ze Records.

Reviews

Stewart Mason at AllMusic panned the album, calling it "something of a mess. The songs are among the poppiest of Cale's career, and one gets the sense that it's meant to be Cale's attempt at a straight-up pop album

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

, especially given the Jimmy Buffett

Jimmy Buffett

James William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...

-like title and cover photo."