LANDED

Even though many people respect Can, they always say not to venture past Soon Over Babaluma. This is strange. I think it is a shame, for at the very least, it has prevented the world at large from discovering one track in particular: Vernal Equinox. At about half the length of other acknowledged Can classics (Halleluwah, Bel Air) Vernal is their more dense but equally potent cousin. And in terms of sheer Can energy, it is the undisputed king of their discography. Michael Karoli's amplifier sounds like it is on the verge of exploding as he rips the best solos of his career, and Jaki works his drumkit like a hyperactive computer. How can you go wrong? In addition to the remaining shorter songs (which are quirky and great), you also get "Unfinished" -- their most blissed out instrumental yet. Really. CAN FANS: by all means investigate this album, one of the essentials!

As the preceding ones were all on Spoon record, this one boasts a major change as well as being released on Virgin: the sound. This probably explains that as Virgin insisted on better sound engineering and what a difference it makes. Much clearer and more dynamic, the music gained everything from it. Too bad most fans tend to disregard this - solely because of the label change because the music and the studios are the same. THIS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS ANOTHER CLASSIC AND A SECOND PEAK AFTER TAGO AND EGE. However the following albums will not be quite this good and the sound will be more commercial (I don't know if the sales will be, though) and Holger Czukay will gradually be less involved with the band but will still produce the albums. For the rest I can only suggest you to read Mr. Corbet's excellent review as I wish I had the patience to describe every number such as he does.

For me this was a big improvment over the prevoius album "Soon Over Babaluma". And I highly recommend CAN fans get this one if they don't already own it, if only to hear the amazing "Vernal Equinox".

"Full Moon On The Highway" really has a 60's vibe in my opinion. The guitar is abrasive and that beat is relentless. "Half Past One" is slower paced with almost spoken vocals. Organ a minute in.The krautrock spirit is alive and well in this one. Some intricate guitar as well. "Hunters And Collectors" is probably the most controvrsial tune on here, but also the one that will stick in your head for days. It's interesting to say the least. Vocals are the focus, and for the first time I don't regret that Damo is gone.

"Vernal Equinox" is one of CAN's best songs ever. It's aggressive as drums and guitar dominate. Scorching guitar 1 1/2 minutes in. We get a spacey vibe though 3 1/2 minutes in. Guitar is back after 5 minutes ripping it up. "Red Hot Indians" begins with percussion as sax then vocals join in. More sax 3 1/2 minutes in. Percussion and guitar lead the rest of the way. "Unfinished" has a Post-Rock flavour to it. Lots of experimental sounds before it settles down 2 minutes in. It gets spacey and louder 5 1/2 minutes in. Guitar and piano rise out of the spacey atmosphere briefly 11 minutes in. This is a trip !

CAN's last great album in my opinion and a well deserved 4 stars.

Not bad.

Once again, we have an album of nice, slightly deranged Euro-tunes, driven along by Jaki Liebezeit's frenetic percussion tracks. And I must admit, I find guitarist Michael Karoli's solos much more pleasing to my ears than on most other Can albums.

There seems to be a consensus that "Vernal Equinox" and "Unfinished" are the best tracks on this album, but I keep going back to "Hunters And Collectors" as my favorite, probably for it's eeriness.

I can't help thinking, when listening to "Unfinished", that Can was the inspiration for David Bowie for the sound collage pieces on his Berlin albums. I like Can's results much better. Plus, you don't have to listen to Bowie's pop songs to get to them.

It wasn't till the end of the 80's that I discovered Can. Landed was one of the first albums I heard and it blew me away right from the start. The sound and rhythm on this album was not like anything I had ever heard from 70's bands. I was a big fan of Tuxedo Moon back then and I was amazed to hear that so much of their avant-garde sounds had already been done by a band this early in the 70's. Especially Half Past One must have been a huge source of inspiration.

There's quite a lot of stuff here that is really weird. Vernal Equinox and Red Hot Indians are experimental jazz you should reserve for moments when you're really relaxed and comfortable. Due to the demanding nature of the music they are certainly not recommended when you've got a concentration demanding task on your hands. By contrast, the openers Full Moon and Half Past One listen away easily (for Cans terms). Both catchy and direct. Unfinished is more abstract and absolutely stunning.

Easily 4 stars for this album that opened the Can for me.

"Stranded" is the 7th full-length studio album by German experimental/psychadelic rock act Can and the second album after the departure of lead vocalist Damo Suzuki. The album was released through Virgin Records in September 1975. While the last couple of releases very both reasonably strong it´s was hard not to notice the decline in quality compared to the early releases by the band and "Stranded" continues down the downward quality spiral.

Stylistically the music on "Stranded" is very similar to the music on "Soon Over Babaluma (1974)". It´s just a bit more easily accessible. "Stranded" is still characterized by the trademark repetitive beats and both "Vernal Equinox", and the 13:20 minutes long closing track "Unfinished", feature the usual psychadelic experiments, as do the other shorter tracks, albeit in smaller doses.

Can are still an exceptionally well playing band and that of course is one of the greatest assets on the album, when the songwriting isn´t as interesting as it used to be. The sound production isn´t as interesting as it could have been either and it actually sounds a bit cold to my ears. So all in all an album that leaves me a bit biased. Some parts are pretty great but it ultimately lacks the magic that the best albums by the band feature. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is deserved.

An apt title, given the journeys into space (Babaluma), another dimension (Future Days) and the most psychotic depths of the mind (Tago and Ege) that the previous albums took the listener on. This is the first Can album to sound, if not normal (which it really doesn't), then like they're trying to sound like something approaching "normal." Except for a big ugly mess at the end, and a surprisingly (for the better) heavy instrumental in the middle, these songs are all regular rock songs at their cores, and that's definitely a novelty for Can. Of course, that also means that the band loses much of its identity as the perpetual groundbreaking machine, churning out new genres and sounds for other bands to recombine into other forms later, and it definitely doesn't help that (with one exception) these "regular" songs aren't particularly interesting, but it's still kinda neat to hear Can breaking off into new (for them) directions.

"Vernal Equinox" is the aforementioned heavy instrumental, and it manages to rule immensely while taking a rather different route from the kinds of instrumental work the band had done before. Whereas Jaki and Holger are relatively subdued during the rest of the album (they no longer stand out as the most robotic rhythm machine in the world), here they get to sound like, I dunno, like the Deep Purple rhythm section in a particularly good performance of the jam section of "Space Trucking" (with the added bonus that Jaki gets to spend some time playing with his futuristic proto-electronic drum sounds). In other words, really fast, and really tight. Karoli and Schmidt, meanwhile, just go absolutely nuts on this track as foils towards one another, especially Karoli (this album may arguably be his peak with the band) who gets to abrasively shred like he had never been fully given the chance to before. The album, frankly, is worth picking up if only for this track.

The opening "Full Moon on the Highway" is also an all-out success, a song that would be a fine straight-ahead rocker with wonderful guitar work and a terse vocal delivery but that also has the voices in the chorus processed into oblivion and has neat effects in the low-pitched keys. Ever wonder what 60's hard-rock would sound like if done by Germans that looked as coldly decadent as the guys appear on the front cover? This is your answer, and the answer is creepily great!

The other numbers, unfortunately, aren't anywhere near as successful as those two. "Half Past One" can't help but bother the heck out of me in that Karoli doesn't seem to realize that speaking in near-constant pitch is not the same as singing, and this attempt at sounding "moody" (I guess) like the backing track just seems like total failure to me. "Hunters and Collectors" stands out to me in that Karoli sounds eerily like a German Syd Barrett at times, which makes this weird attempt at something resembling "poppiness" kinda enjoyable, but it would never be counted as a highlight for the band. "Red Hot Indians" is notable only for the strange presence of a saxophone, and the giant atonal sound mess that is "Unfinished" probably should have stayed unreleased (gee, I'm sure nobody has ever made that pun before). There are some moments here and there that more or less work, but as a whole, it comes off as a third-rate "Aumgn," and that's not a good thing.

All in all, while I'm not thrilled with much of the album, a *** seems about right because the two clearly good tracks are so wonderful, and the ones that aren't "Unfinished" are basically listenable. Regardless, don't sweat this if you can't find it easily.