Can - 1976 - Flow Motion

Quality: 3.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 3.75 out of 5

Can made a very unfortunate slide into crappiness during the latter half of the 1970's. I picked up Flow Motion as it is supposed to be the best album from that period, but it's still not that great. I suppose I'd like it more if it came from some completely obscure krautrock group, but it's from the Can, dammit, and it should be better!

Anyway, for Holger Czukay's last voyage with the band as a full time bassist, Can decides to play around with dance and island rhythms. Honestly, if I want to hear some island rhythms, I'm probably not going to grab an album made by a bunch of Germans - just as I don't want to hear opera singers rap. Compared with the metronomic blast of Can's classic work, there's not much here to impress. I know bands need to move on and try new things, but they should hopefully do it successfully, as Can did on albums like Future Days. Here we're just taking a step down.

Anyway let's get to the good news. On opening track "I Want More," the band does a pretty good job of making an avant-pop single. It just doesn't sound much like Can. They pull a similar feat on side one closer "Babylonian Pearl." They should've handed these tracks over to David Bowie, who probably could have made them a perfect fit. In between we find the band playing around with island and even disco rhythms to various degrees of success. "Cascade Waltz"
has some fun sonic bursts courtesy of Irmin Schmidt and I do like the tribal disco of "...And More."

As I suppose was a Can tradition, they get more experimental on the next side. We get an ethnological forgery on the album with the completely tribal "Smoke." Finally, Can's edge makes an appearance and for me this is the best cut on the album. Then Can attempts an epic track with the closing title song. Unfortunately, they ride along a simple galloping groove for a full ten minutes and it's just not that interesting; I get bored after about two minutes of this. It's like something that would have been a short interlude on a better track like "Halleluwah."

So, there you have it. This is nowhere near Can's prime, but it includes one stellar Can track in the form of "Smoke," along with dabblings in avant-pop, island sounds, and disco. For me the disco works pretty well, the avant-pop is ok, and the island stuff tends to fall on it's face. I wouldn't venture here unless you've already heard Tago Mago 362 times.

Buy Me:
Can - 1976 - Flow Motion

Can - 1976 - Unlimited Edition

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

When folks talk about Can's essential albums, Unlimited Edition does not often make the list. It�'s admittedly an odds and sods collection and features tracks featuring vocalists Malcolm Mooney, Damo Suzuki, and the four-piece Can. And yes, there are definitely a few duff tracks. Regardless of these shortcomings and discontinuities, Unlimited Edition holds together surprisingly well (at least the first disc does) and is home to some of Can's best tracks, including arguably the very best Mooney tracks.

Can always kept the tape rolling at their Inner Space studio, so they had no problem coming up with prime stuff that may have simply not fit on their proper LPs. Let's go ahead and talk about the Mooney tracks first, which I feel are the highlights of this album. Mooney appears on four tracks: "Mother Upduff," "Fall Of Another Year," "Connection," and "Empress And The Ukraine Kid." In the Pitchfork Media review, they note that these tracks would make a kick-ass EP and I wholeheartedly agree with them. It's like hearing an alternate universe Can where they were just as good as the prime Suzuki years, but in which Mooney had never quit the band. It's a very different, more-rock oriented direction, but still provides a showcase for Can's metronomic signature and a bit of weird experimentation. I especially dig the extremely strange story and avant-jazz backing in "Mother Upduff." It sounds like Mooney's making it up as he goes along and I mean this as a compliment. Mooney's vocal seems to be pre-emptively channeling Jello Biafra on "Connection." If there's any downside with the Mooney sessions, it's the repetition. Can did this with Suzuki too, but they also more or less abandoned all sense of conventional rock with Suzuki. Still, when the riffs are as awesome as those in "Fall Of Another Year" and "Connection," I have no problem with a little repetition. As a side note, Mooney's vocal seems to be pre-emptively channeling Jello Biafra on "Connection."

Suzuki's tracks are also quite good here, but don't stand out as much. I do enjoy the strange chanting of "Doko E," but Can probably did end up with their best stuff on the proper albums when Suzuki was their vocalist.

The band does quite well on their own here. Opening track "Gomorrha" is awesome, with one of the best deployments of Can's recurring 'descending-riff' motif. It's certainly a standout for bassist Czukay.

Along with plenty of song snippets which are fun but were probably never fleshed out enough for a proper album, there are also five tracks from Can's ethnological forgeries series. Once again, these would not have fit on the bands classic albums (although later installment would show up on albums like Flow Motion), but it's very amusing to hear the band attempt world influences ranging from Turkey to Japan to Dixieland jazz.

I really love listening to this album. Although laden with one non-epic (I'm looking at you, 17-minute long "Cutaway") and some piecemeal one to two minute tracks, Unlimited Edition makes for a fine tour of Can at their often best. It's like a retrospective from an alternate dimension where Can put out something different that Tago Mago or Ege Bambasi.

Buy Me:
Can - 1976 - Unlimited Edition

Can - 1974 - Soon Over Babaluma

Quality: 3.75 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

People tend to see this album as either the end of Can's classic period or the beginning of their depressing plunge. I'm not sure if I ascribe to one of these views, but I am unwilling to put this one in the same ballpark as something like Future Days or Tago Mago. There's still enough here to be worthwhile, however, as Can brings the spacey glide or Future Days down to Earth or perhaps some alien planet.

Of course, the big change here is the absence of vocalist Damo Suzuki. Previous to this disc he ran off with a Jehovah's Witness and the band went on as a four-piece with Irmin Schmidt and Michael Karoli taking vocals. Neither of them are particularly strong singers, but they often sound strangely sort of like Suzuki. What's really different is that Can no longer has a catalyst for their sonic explorations. I feel that Mooney and especially Suzuki seemed to prod the band into the interstellar reaches. On "Dizzy Dizzy" and "Come Sta. La Luna" we find a much less experimental-sounding band. The quality of the tracks are still pretty good, but they're missing a bit of the old fire. Drummer Liebezeit in particular seems to have a lot less intensity on the first two tracks.

With the the third track, the almost Bitches Brew -like "Splash," Can steps up and delivers a track worthy of their legacy. Even Liebezeit delivers here with lots of awesome jazzy polyrhythms. One thing that is a personal qualm about this album and "Splash" is the violin-sounding keyboards that Schmidt employs throughout the album. It simply is not my favorite sound in this context. You might dig it.

Side two of the album is fortunately classic Can. "Chain Reaction" and "Quantum Physics" successfully the more experimental side of Can for what is pretty much the last time in their recording career. The band finally soars off of a bubbling rhythm for some spectacular ensemble jamming (I feel Can is one of only a few rock bands that deserves a license to jam) before settling into a somewhat goofy, galloping section with vocals. Then the band practically dissolves into "Quantum Physics." The band whisps away over the next eight minutes until nothing is left. It's the sound of peaceful disintegration.

If you've already got Can's classics, this is probably the next place to go. It's missing a real standout track like "Mushroom" or a great epic like "Mother Sky," but enough of Can's talent comes through to make this worth exploring. It probably was the last time that Can's experimental edge made the cut.

Buy Me:
Can - 1974 - Soon Over Babaluma

Can - 1973 - Future Days

Quality: 5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5

Future Days isn't much representative of Can's signature sound, but I'm willing to call it their best album. Here the band completely melds into a single, ego-less entity and conjures a sonic journey along the waves of the cosmic ocean. Can goes even more into the jazz end of the spectrum, finding inspiration particularly in Bitches' Brew-era Miles Davis. "Spray" almost sounds like it could be an outtake from that jazz-fusion masterpiece.

I've often heard Can cited as a major influence on electronic music. On Future Days, Holger Czukay attempts some early sampling on "Moonshake." Even more rudimentary is Can's approach to music. Earlier tracks like "Mother Sky" and "Halleluhwah" provides a repetitive and hypnotic pulse upon which layers of sound were plastered, much like modern electronica. It didn't hurt that Jaki Leibezeit probably keeps better time than a computer. Here Can gives us the flip side to those epic tracks with "Bel Air." Where the earlier tracks focused in polyrhythmic or propulsive robotic percussion, "Bel Air" simply glides upon the clouds for 20 minutes. It's the dreamy brother among Can's epic tracks. Along with Brian Eno and Manuel Gottsching's contemporary efforts, I feel like Future Days is one of the foundation blocks for ambient and chilll-out music.

On the poppier end of the spectrum we find the title track at a, uh, short nine minutes. Damo Suzuki's practically whispered melody continually haunts my mind and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt's slightly out of time churning synth threatens to warp reality. Later on side one we find "Moonshake," which might be my favorite single Can track. "Moonshake" comes about as close to pop as classic Can would get, Suzuki intoning another great melody over Czukay locked single-note bass line (could to "Bel Air" to hear him play something difficult on bass) and Leibezeit's robotic pulse. Karoli and Schmidt add the sunshine to the melody. The sampling in the middle section is innovative, but in an almost comical way. In my alternate universe this was a number one hit, and in the real world it often ends up on mix tapes that I put together for folks.

Future Days is a floating journey for the listener, showcasing an altered Can but one playing at their absolute fused best. It gets my highest recommendation.

Buy Me:
Can - 1973 - Future Days

Can - 1972 - Ege Bamyasi

Quality: 5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.5 out of 5

This seems to be Can's concept album about a can of okra; okra destined for soup I suppose. Really, the concept doesn't matter at all. What matters is that this is the second album at Can at their absolute best. This time out Can only went for a single album as opposed to the mammoth Tago Mago, so Ege Bamyasi is a lot more focused too.

Whereas the last album was in large part drummer Jaki Leibezeit's showcase, this one puts vocalist Damo Suzuki front and center. Often there are long stetches of Can's music where we don't necessarily hear Mr. Suzuki for long stretches, but he's definitely splattered liberally across this album. That's not to say you should listen for lyrics. Suzuki continues to sing in a mumbly mixture of English, Japanese, and gibberish, but it's all about the feeling and how he melds in with the rest of the band as basically another instrument.

The basic sound gets a little jazzier here. While still providing perfect time, Leibezeit loosens up and reveals his original status as a jazz drummer and Michael Karoli manages some languid, fluid lines on guitar. "Pinch" is a precursor to the lighter, spacier sound that Can would explore on their next album, while "Sing Swan Song" does a fine job of reshuffling elements of Can's earlier approach to a quieter sound.

Unlike the majority of krautrockers, Can has an uncanny ability to sound a little loose and funky. Leibezeit and bassist Holger Czukay are still at the top of their game as a rhythm section and the amazing breakbeats of "Pinch," "Vitamin C," and "I'm So Green" are just waiting for a modern hip-hop producer to sample. As an added plus, these songs are much more accessible than a lot of Can's music and makes Ege Bamyasi the closest thing to a pop album that Can would make in their prime (late period Can tries to get poppy to disasterous results).

And one track here actually did have a slight taste of pop success. The closing track "Spoon" actually charted as a single and was apparently added to the album in post production. It's a fine tune, but part of me wishes that "Vitamin C" or "I'm So Green" had even more success on the charts.

Instead of devoting an entire album to insane experimental noise, Can plunges it all into the ten minute "Soup." It's much better integrated into the album than somethng like Tago Mago's "Peking O" and doesn't overstay it's welcome, at least not for me.

If you're new to Can, I'd say that Ege Bamyasi is probably the best place to start. It's a great summation of where the band had been while laying the groundwork for the equally classic Future Days. This is quintessential Can. And just for the record, I totally dig the goofy cover art.

Buy Me:
Can - 1972 - Ege Bamyasi

Can - 1971 - Tago Mago

Quality: 4.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 5 out of 5

On Tago Mago we find the band at the start of their three album peak with Damo Suzuki. This is the band's first (and if we don't count the odds-and-sods Unlimited Edition, only) double album. The cover features what is actually a pretty smart visual pun for "blowin' your brains" out. It certainly works better that the crappy title puns the band would later use ("Saw Delight," "Flow Motion," blah!)

Tago Mago almost becomes an exception to the "double-album-that-could've-been-a-single" rule. There's a little bit too much experimentation on the second disc to make it, but it's usually interesting and the first disc is an absolute masterpiece.

The album opens with what is basically a three song suite of "Paperhouse," "Mushroom," and "Oh Yeah." While the band is uniformily strong, pretty much the entire first LP is a showcase for drummer Jaki Leibezeit. By this point he takes his place as one of the very best drummers in rock. The CD reissue liner notes speak of "Paperhouse" taking off and levitating, and for once this is not hyperbole. Leibezeit along with Karoli's perculating rhythm and some interstellar stabs from Schmidt's keys make the song really take off, glide above the ground, pick up speed, and slam into "Mushroom." The groove here is so infectious that the Flaming Lips would pretty much rip off the song wholesale twenty years later on their track "Take Meta Mars." Suzuki mumbles right through these songs glorious, stumbling gleefully through languages and gibberish and ranting about peeing off a bridge in Japanese (at least that how my wife translates it). By "Oh, Yeah," Damo gets the chance to emote backwards and does a damn successful job of it. It doesn't hurt that Holger Czukay and Leibzeit accompany him at their metronomic best as Karoli and Schmmidt provide aural window dressing.

"Halleluwah" takes up the entire second side at almost 19 minutes but never gets boring despite its epic length. Leibezeit manages about the most complicated beat that I imagine you could play in 4/4 time and the song still manages to be the funkiest track that anyone from Germany has ever produced. Our majestic moment her occurs when the beat briefly drops out, with the band shortly plunging back in at full lurch. "Halleluwah" might be a tiny notch below "Mother Sky" from Soundtracks, but being second to that track is still nothing to sneeze at.

The second LP of Tago Mago is a bit of a step down. There are lots of interesting ideas present but the band's modern compositional tendancies come to the fore and as good as these guys are, they're not Gyorgy Legiti or Steve Reich. "Aumgn" creates some soundscapes that would make for some great music to go along with Captain Kirk and Spock on the exploration of a new styrofoam planet, with lots of oscillated tones and Suzuki's delayed and reverbed mutterings before Leibzeit comes back in on the last few minutes to give another great demonstration of his drumming prowess. "Peking O" unfortunately drops Leibezeit's drumming, but Suzuki sounds creepier than hell and I love the moment where it sounds like he literally snaps and starts spewing forth high-speed gibberish. In fact the only thing here that resembles a song is the closing "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea," which is sort of like an after dinner mint.

Can's magnum opus may be a little impenetrable at times, but it's worth the effort. If you're new to the band, I'd spend some time with the more immediate first half before delving into the mysterious din of "Amugn" or "Peking O."

Buy Me:
Can - 1971 - Tago Mago

Can - 1970 - Soundtracks

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

Although this is Can's second LP release, they were adamant that this was not their second album. We can take the title Soundtracks seriously as keyboardist Irmin Schmidt had several buddies in the avant garde German film community and these tracks once adorned movies that now seem to have been lost to the mists of time. Therefore we'll look at Soundtracks as a compilation which is good as there's not much coherance here as an album. Like many compilations, there are a few duff songs present, but we also hear the first full flowering of Can's genius.

In fact, let's get straight to "Mother Sky," which is a 14 minute track of Can at their absolute best. Somehow it always seems much shorter when I listen to it. As a song, this one should get more that a 5 on the quality meter. The track starts as if in the middle of a full-out acid rock jam with Schmidt and guitarist Michael Karoli wailing away on their respective instruments. With a cymbal crash a few minutes in, the song suddenly collapses to the essence: the robotic rhythm of bassist Holger Czukay and Jaki Leibezeit. It's about as dramatic a moment as you'll find in rock music. From there, the band technically goes into a series of solos, although that's a misleading word to describe what they do. It's more of a layering of sound as there's no sense of ego from the musicians, but rather playing as one. This isn't to say that their playing isn't phenomenal as Leibezeit in particular seems to defy all reason polyrhythmically drumming while also maintaining the pulse of the song. It's even more amazing when you consider that Can recorded to two-track tape until 1975 (that means maybe one overdub), although they did some judicious editing of their jams.

The secret weapon here is Can's newly arrived singer, the Japanese ex-pat Damo Suzuki. He's not that impressive technically, mumbling his lyrics in a weird mix of English, Japanese, and gibberish, but he does seem to serve as a catalyst for the band. He somehow sings with no sense of ego, humanizing the rest of the band, yet allowing them to let the muse take them wherever it needs to. "Mother Sky" can rest on it's mechanisized groove because Suzuki gives the song heart. Can with Damo is several notches above Can without, despite the instrumentalists' skill and talent for ceaseless exploration.

Suzuki is also present on the tracks recorded for two of the three tracks the band recorded for a film called "Deadlock." They lead of the album and give supple hint to the majesty of Can Mark II. "Tango Whiskeyman" in particular has awesome rhythms that again show Leibezeit at his best. Suzuki is also present for a lesser but still enjoyable track called "Don't Turn The Light On, Leave Me Alone."

Suzuki replaced Malcolm Mooney after Mooney allegedly became stuck muttering "upstairs, downstairs" on stage ad infinitum. Two tracks here date from the Mooney era of the band. "Sould Desert" pales in comparison with everything else here with a lazy groove and Mooney singing on the more unlistenable end of the spectrum. Better is the jazzy "She Brings The Rain," although if Can continued pointless stylistic exercises like this I doubt they ever would have obtained the classic status they enjoy. If fact, they returned to this kind of exercise several years later when Suzuki departed, so I guess that's another example of Damo as Can's catalyst.

Soundtracks is a little too disjointed to be a great Can album, but the mere presence of the full "Mother Sky" makes it absolutely indispensible. If you want to know Can, then you need this.

Buy Me:
Can - 1970 - Soundtracks

The Can - 1969 - Monster Movie

Quality: 3.5 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

Monster Movie is Can's official debut album and the only one released in the 60's or 70's that completely features American vocalist Malcolm Mooney. Here, the Can sound is readily recognizable, although it's being used for entirely different means. After this Can would opt for a hypnotic space groove, but here they are still grounded in the acid rock psychedelia of the late 60's. Every prime period Can album has it's own identity, but Monster Movie stands out among even those.

Mooney's vocals are far better here than on the previous year's recordings. Even when going for a higher range like on "Mary, Mary So Contrary," and strange and charmingly off-key, but it no longer sounds like his throat is filled with nails and phlegm. Otherwise, he's amusingly ranting like on the great grooving opener "Father Cannot Yell" (because he hasn't been born yet! oh, I see!) or predicting 80's hardcore screaming like on the later part of "Outside My Door."

Actually there are only four songs present here, and I've already mentioned three of them. Side A of the original LP is slightly more song oriented and pretty strong. "Father Cannot Yell" for me is the first truly classic Can track. Side B is the notorious side-long epic that Can would later make a good name for. The 20-minute long "Yoo Doo Right" is pretty good and provides a showcase for Can's instrumental prowess, but it pales next to similarly lengthy tracks that they would produce in the next few years.

Plenty of Can trademarks are present here. Karoli's guitar tone and style appears here in full bloom, as is Holger Czukay minimal bass thump. Master drummer Jaki Leibezeit gets to show off his tribal yet metronomic beats on "Yoo Doo Right," although he would use them more effectively on later albums.

Monster Movie does mark the beginning of classic-period Can. Almost all the elements are in place here, only the purpose is missing. It's not the best album for a Can neophyte, but it's essential for fans. It's also the only place that they're listed as "The Can," and the superfluous article amuses me for some reason.

Buy Me:
The Can - 1969 - Monster Movie

Can - 1981 - Delay 1968

Quality: 3 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4 out of 5

This release actually documents the time leading up to Can's debut album, so I guess this is a proto-debut. At this point the German-based Can had not really fallen into their innerspace niche yet and featured American growler Malcolm Mooney on vocals. Delay 1968 features a very exploratory sound and tends to fall prey to conflicting goals within the band.

Can would eventually discover a cosmic groove based on repetition and lock-step rhythms, but at this point they were flirting with simple underground garage-psych inclinations. Not helping the matter was Mooney who seemed to be searching for the rock song that the rest of the band wasn't going to write.

Mooney had an avant-garde edge, but it tended towards more of a freak-beat sound. When going for a R&B sort of shouting, Mooney is quite effective and his strange spoken stories tend to work out ok. When he tries to sing, however, his voice sounds like sandpaper on gravel. His higher range is truly cringe-inducing.

I tend to compare Mooney to the similarly deranged sounding Wesley Willis. Of course, where Willis seemed to actually be unhinged, Mooney simply puts on a convincing act that does have some artistically inspired though behind it.

The opening "Butterfly" has all the elements of the Can groove, although it hasn't quite gelled into coherance yet. Mooney starts off strong but as the song barrels on, he doesn't seem sure how to continue and just keeps on ranting. Inspirationally, he falls behind with Can's epic groove and the song sounds at odds with itself. Fortunately on "Uphill," Can gives an early flash of their full power with and amazing lockstep beat and makes up for the fact that Mooney eventually sounds sort of lost (although the track ends rather abruptly; is my CD defective?).

On the other side of the coin, "Nineteenth Century Man" plays more towards the song end of the spectrum. It's like something from one of the stranger freakbeat compilations. "Thief" and "Man Named Joe" are ruined by Mooney's "sandpaper-on-gravel" voice and the rest of the band doesn't really manage to salvage what's left.

The closing "Little Star On Bethlehem" start off with a strange and amusing Mooney story before he returns to his higher register. I can deal with it here, but the groove still isn't special enough to make this a standout.

Your appreciation of this album will probably rely on your appreciation of Mooney. You may notice that I haven't said anything about the rest of the band. While many of the elements that would make Can spectacular are on show here, they haven't quite coalesed into a complete unit. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt seems particularly at a loss how to fit in here and drummer Jaki Liebezeit is impressive, but not the polyrhythmic robot that he would soon become. That said, guitarist Michael Karoli does manage in some awesome riffs and gets a little more space here than he would on later albums.

Buy Me:
Can - 1981 - Delay 1968