Can - the Studio Albums

[Slim]

I thought I'd embark on another journey through the studio ouvre of some band or other, and - since I'd liked them since I was a teenager, but have never listened properly (or in some cases, at all) to some of their albums, I thought I'd do Can.

01: Monster Movie (August 1969)

I'd never listened to this album before, partly because it was recorded by a slightly different lineup than later records, and partly because it has a reputation of being "formative", and not in a good way. But I listened to it yesterday while out on a bike.

Very mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, it has a very experimental, avant garde feel that's genuinely exceptional for a 1960s recording. In places it's like post-punk, ten years before its time.

On the other hand - there are only four songs here, and disregarding the innovative style and attitude, none of them are any good. The last one, Yoo Doo Right is a 20-minute jam, edited down from a six hour recording. It's repetitive and interminable.

The lyrics throughout are stream-of-consciousness bollocks except for Mary Mary So Contrary which just takes its words from the nursery rhyme of the same name.

Outside my Door has a curiously dated, early '60s feel - almost like an early Who or Stones tune, except for the Hendrix-esque fuzz lead guitar and the anarchic vocal.

More of an experiment, a statement than a collection of music. Interestingly it was recorded in a very crude fashion onto two track tape. A mixing desk wasn't used, they settled for setting the levels carefully on their amps! And to be fair that does lend the whole album a certain immediate charm and character.

But I don't think I'll be revisiting this one.

[Thenop]

Oh my, this is going to be some work. I have never listened to Can before.

[Thenop]

So I figured, why wait? No time like the present. Notes as I typed them while listening:
A couple of years ago I discovered the Brown Acid series. A series of compilation albums by released through Riding Easy records, a label specializing in easy going rock, psychedelic, surf rock, you get the idea. They started a series of releases under the Brown Acid moniker upon unearthing (I really hate that word) songs, singles usually, released in the late 60's, early 70's that never found their way to the mainstream and became musical orphans. They do it properly, tracking down the rights holders etc. and paying them.
I hear in this first Can album a lot of that back. A very much experimenting, finding their way, let's see what happens, if we fuck up no one cares anyway attitude that I appreciate. That is something different than saying I like it. It's not where I am at musically but I do like some aspects of it.
Listening to it on headphones (via Tidal) feels a bit uneasy, it sounds like this is to be heard on a worn down tapedeck. It's not exactly audiophile in nature...to say the least.

I echo Slim's sentiments for the large part, there is a very urgent sound here. It feels like New Wave is knocking on the practice room door wanting to be let in. Very post punk, especially vocally.
Upon looking into the band itself I found the name Holger Czukay, I know him as a partner in two of David Sylvian's albums, Plight & Premonition and Flux and Mutability.

I think the first 3 songs are quite clear early beginnings but the 20 minute jam I like mainly because of the percussiveness. It is repetitive, I agree there. But the drums, they almost sound tribal at some point. This is a great drummer I hear, extremely musical,and I I am very inserted to hear him develop. 
Also: I understand this falls under the Krautrock moniker: a genre I know not a great deal about. I know names, yes, but I have never sat down and listened properly to the likes of Amon:Duul II etc. Hawkwind yes, I do hear some similarities there as well.
Very curious to see where this will end up.
 
Overall: not my album, but I do see how this could have been hugely influential. I can imagine Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction liking this for the basslines.

[Slim]

Although, without wanting to sound obnoxious, I don't normally listen to or sometimes even notice drums - I sort of think of them as being important but subliminal - I definitely did notice Jaki Liebezeit's drumming when I bought my Can compilation in 1976. There's a sort of cyclical, hypnotic drum machine thing going on that's really effective. Like the sound of machinery, or a train rolling over the joins in the rails.

Must be something in the German psyche because Kraftwerk had that same sort of robotic feel, as well.

[pxr5]

I love Can (mostly their more well known albums). Interesting to hear more of your thoughts both of you.

[Thenop]

I love Can (mostly their more well known albums). Interesting to hear more of your thoughts both of you.

Of course I'd like to hear your thoughts as well   

[Slim]

2. Tago Mago (February 1971)

I bought this as a CD in the late '90s, I think from the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street. Nonetheless I only listened to it a couple of times.

It's a bit more recognisable as the work of the band I became familiar with, recorded by what is arguably the "classic" lineup with Damo Suzuki on vocals. But it's mostly a lot less accessible than the next few records. More demanding. Hugely experimental, especially on what would have been the second of two LPs in the original double album set. Only the album closer, Bring Me Coffee or Tea sounds much like the same band that recorded Ege Bamyasa, Future Days and Soon Over Babaluma (my Holy Trinity of Can albums).

And it's long; 73 minutes. That more than anything is probably why it didn't stick.

It has a similar experimental / jam sort of feel, mostly, to Monster Movie but it's somehow more coherent and focused at the same time as being wilfully dense and impenetrable. More interesting. Artfully crafted. Very atmospheric. A definite step forward.

Some of this album reminds me of something from Amnesiac or Kid A, nearly three decades earlier.

Long album this, with two very long tunes (18+ and 17+ minutes) back to back. Both of them maintained my attention on this occasion. Halleluhwah has a focused intense feel underpinned by an insistent, cyclical drum rhythm.

Aumgn, the other one is really something else - like incidental music for a horror film with dissonant keyboards, violins performing distress calls, what sounds like a bowed double bass and groaning, echoing vocal sounds. Finally a bravura drum performance, building to a powerful, tribal crescendo. Tense. Dark. Inspired. Very difficult to categorise; whatever it is, this isn't rock music.

Peking O has that same other-wordly, eerie mood with atonal instrumentation and utterly manic, lunatic asylum vocals. But the last tune, the aforementioned Bring Me Coffee or Tea brings you down quite nicely with a dose of tranquility and calm.

Really a very good record, I should have given it more time. That said it's the sort of record you'd have to be in a particular mood for and it requires the sort of attention span that I'm not often capable of, these days.

[Nickslikk2112]

Here's a review of Tago Mago I did on Amazon:

Is your head full of Spaghetti?
It will be after listening to this.
Motorik. Mesmerik. Mushroomik. Tago Magoik. Oh Yeah.
Mine's a coffee thanks.
Don't listen and drive.

[Slim]

3: Ege Bamyasi (November 1972)

Again, I didn't own this album "back in the day". I bought it as a CD in the '90s. But it contributes no less than half (four) of the songs on the Opener compilation that I cherished as a lad. These are Sing Swan Song, Vitamin C, I'm So Green and Spoon.

I enjoy two of the other tunes (Pinch and especially One More Night), but underneath some very clever and elegant playing, they're pretty simple vamps. I think they're improvised. They both have that funky, hypnotic, rhythmic vibe in abundance. The other one (Soup) might kindly be described as "experimental" but it's mainly an anarchic, overlong jam. Sounds like one of the Monster Movie tunes. I'm not keen.

By contrast, the Opener tunes sound composed, prepared, arranged, inspired. Really very good. Of course they have a sentimental appeal to me that the other ones don't. And it's difficult to categorise them. Quirky? Yes. Funky? Certainly. Original? Distinctive? Undoubtedly. It's lazy merely to label them as Krautrock. But they're really very good.

[Slim]

4: Future Days (August 1973)

Mixed feelings about this one. Two tunes from this album (the title track and Moonshake) made it to Opener and I love both of them. The other two, not really.

The tune that gives this album its name and is the first track is, in classic Can tradition, for the most part a one chord vamp (there's a little bit of chordal variation later on). But it's just so elegant, so chilled, so graceful that its nine and a half minutes fly past like three.

Moonshake is peak Can, no question. A proper song; three minutes of catchy, irresistible, lightly funky quirk.

But the other two, while they have their artful moments, feel like unfocused jams. I think I might like Bel Air a lot if it was six or seven minutes long, but it's the whole of the second side, in the original album format. There's twenty minutes of it.

[Slim]

5. Soon Over Babaluma (November 1974)

Bought this in the '90s, not sure I ever listened to it.

Vocalist Damo Suzuki has left now, otherwise the band is the same. Karoli now handles vocal duties mostly.

The first two tracks - the brilliant Dizzy Dizzy and Come Sta, La Luna are on Opener. As is usually the case it's very hard to describe these - rhythmic, hypnotic, a bit jazzy. Certainly unique and a bit strange.

I think it's Irmin Schmidt performing the vocal on Come Sta - a very curious, highly effected, eerily detached spoken word performance.

There's nearly eight minutes of the next tune Splash and interestingly it starts off a lot like a spirited jazz jam from the 1950s, complete with histrionic trumpet - until the distorted lead guitar kicks in. In time-honoured Can tradition it's in essence a simple three chord vamp, but it's focused and interesting enough to keep your attention. Maybe a couple of minutes too long.

Same comments apply to Chain Reaction. It has interesting rhythmic touches but it's by no means what you'd call a song. Quite a lot of energy, relentless even. But I was bored long before the eleven minutes was up.

Quantum Physics is a sort of adjunct to Chain Reaction. Eight minutes of messing about. It tried my patience. Reminded me of Tangerine Dream actually. It would work nicely as incidental music - perhaps for a film about something sinister going on on the Moon - but as a piece of music to be listened to - no.

Definitely a game of two halves. If I'd owned this on vinyl, back in the days when we had to put up with that, I would only have played the second side once.

[Slim]

6. Landed (September 1975)

Bit of an enigma, this one. This was the most recent album at the time the Opener compilation was compiled but since they'd signed to a different label (Virgin) for this one, none of these tracks appear on it.

I'd never heard this album before today.

Virgin insisted that they record the album properly with a mixing desk and a proper 16 track console. Despite this, to my ears anyway, in places it doesn't sound nearly as good as the previous three. They produced it themselves, maybe that has something to do with it. 

The vocals, where present (Karoli mostly, but Czukay on the first tune) are much more prominent in the mix than is usually the case - much closer to the traditional notion of a lead vocal than the ethereal, almost subliminal voice textures on previous albums.

The opening tune, Full Moon on the Highway is an improbably ordinary dirge on the whole. Doesn't bode well. Half Past One is a bit more interesting, but not much. However the album takes off with Hunters and Collectors, a very accessible and pleasingly odd four minute piece. I liked it.

There's a bravura high tempo drum performance underpinning Vernal Equinox and it gallops along nicely. Some nice synth touches as well. But in essence it's a two chord vamp that lasts nearly nine minutes. I was quite impressed with the bass on this tune, though. Surprising, given that they got Rosko Gee in for four-string duties two albums later because Czukay wasn't considered good enough.

I really liked Red Hot Indians - quirky, fun and with a nice catchy, scratchy acoustic guitar motif. Could easily have found a place on Opener if they'd stayed with United Artists.

The final track is called Unfinished, and it's more than thirteen minutes long. Uh oh. Might kindly be described as a sound collage. It's like a milder (far less interesting) version of Aumgn from Tago Mago. It doesn't go anywhere.

So, a definite pattern has emerged. This is a band that never really comes up with enough ideas or proper songs for an album, so they make up the requisite 40 minutes or so with an artful jam or experimenting with their equipment. I have to except Tago Mago from that criticism though because although it seems to have been derived from the same formula, it's consistently inspired.

[Slim]

7: Flow Motion (October 1976)

This album has a poor reputation and I bought it only a couple of weeks ago. It's very easy to see why it went down like the proverbial lead balloon, even though it did spawn a single that made it into the UK charts. A plodding disco tune called I Want More opens the album. It could almost be a Chic tune except that it's not as interesting. It doesn't sparkle. It sounds like what it is, a rock band having a go at a lightweight dance number. I think it only has two chords. Very, very disposable.

Matters don't improve at all with the next tune Cascade, a reggae number consisting of a few boring diatonic chord changes and a spoken section. It's just crude. The zingy pedal steel guitar doesn't rescue it.

What's next? Surely not a three chord reggae plodder enduring nearly seven minutes? I'm afraid so. But matters improve slightly - maybe - with the next tune, which is just a single chord vamp with a bit of choppy soul / disco wah wah guitar on top and a vocal chant.

Eventually, we come to an artful little number with a nice, catchy rhythm and a nice spoken vocal similar to Come Sta, La Luna from Babaluma. It's not great but I quite liked it. Babylonian Pearl.

Smoke is a percussion number. It's just a repetitive jungle rhythm accompanied by some messing around in the studio. And finally - the title track. There's more than ten minutes of it. Yet again it's just a jam around a single chord, this time with a lazy skank guitar motif. It does have atmospheric keyboards and a purposeful slow beat. Would work as incidental music quite nicely, that's the best I can say really. It's not as bad as some of the other tunes.

And that's yer lot. Poor record.

[Slim]

8: Saw Delight (March 1977)

I well remember seeing ads for this in the music papers in 1977 and I'm not sure why I wasn't interested. Possibly because all my spare pennies were going on records by Rush, Yes, Zeppelin and others. Actually (though I digress) I don't think I even owned a bona-fide vinyl copy of a Rush record at this time, just a cassette copy of All The World's A Stage.

Holger Czukay has been deposed from bass duties but he's still in the band doing "experimental effects". Rosko Gee and Rebop Baah, formerly of Traffic, have been brought in on bass and percussion respectively.

Opens with what is really a rerun of Moonshake in essence, Don't Say No. I like it but honestly it's little more than Moonshake with a few new lyrics thrown on top.

Sunshine Day and Night has a bit of that African "world music" guitar over an insistent funky beat. Then there's a mellow, slightly atonal distored guitar solo. It's a nice sound but there's not much to it. It's yet another aimless jam, with a tribal feel.

Call Me is an interesting one .. built around an uptempo, driving, busy bass riff and the classic hypnotic drum sound, and as a composition it's very tenuous. It's something between a jam and a sound collage, but - Rosko contributes a nice vocal and it ends up being more than the sum of its parts. Focused. More of a sense of purpose than a jam. Not bad at all.

What would have been Side Two starts off with an ominously long tune called Animal Waves. Surprisingly, this held my attention for the entire 15 minutes. It rolls along very nicely. There's a real sense of motion, underpinned by the rattling percussion and Rosko's brilliant, jazzy, smooth but urgent bass.

And finally, a mellow little tune called Fly By Night which feels structured, composed and very coherent. Lovely.

This is for me a huge improvement on Flow Motion and I must say that on the whole it's a pretty good album. I really liked it. In particular, while I didn't think there was much wrong with Czukay's bass playing there's no doubt that Rosko is in a different league. He plays with a beautiful tone and feel, right in the pocket.

[Slim]

9: Out of Reach (July 1978)

Not sure I'd ever heard of this. It was never released on CD until 2014. Apparently it was disowned by the band for years. Holger Czukay did not participate in any capacity.

I believe the copy I downloaded has been transferred from vinyl. I can hear the surface noise. It sounds crap, like I'd replaced my Grado headphones with a Poundshop set.

Starts with a meandering, midly interesting instrumental piece that goes nowhere, Serpentine. Picks up a bit with the next tune, Pauper's Daughter and I (written by Rosko). Its not great but at least it's a song. Next up a boring, overlong jam tune, November, propped up by some energetic percussion. I feel like I heard it on the last album.

Next tune .. more of the same but (thankfully) two minutes shorter. But wait a minute .. what's this? Give Me No "Roses" is a bright, catchy uptempo soul tune with a hint of funk and a nice vocal from Rosko. It's a bit repetitive. It outstays its welcome by a minute or so. But I liked it a lot. A nice interlude from the studious jam wank.

Not sure what to make of the next number, Like Inobe God. It rolls along pleasantly with a sort of Calypso feel, but goes nowhere. And finally One More Day which is a couple of minutes of percussion over 1950s sci-fi incidental sound effects.

This album has a bad reputation and it's not undeserved. Received wisdom has it that Out of Reach is the worst Can album of all. But to my ears it's not nearly as bad as Flow Motion.