MONSTER MOVIE

Unique, expressive and visionary, Can's debut album (credited to The Can on the animated album cover) is one of the truly fascinating rock releases of 1969, the sole early album by the band with original vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and one of the earliest examples of what the British media would go on to define as krautrock - in reality, a branch of experimental music with repetitive rhythms that might go on for a few minutes or for a good twenty-something or so, with various vocal, guitar-based experiments and effects playing over them, resulting in an indulgent, challenging and crafty amalgamation of psychedelic patterns and unusual soundscapes, always utilizing the traditional rock instrumentation, with the occasional use of more unorthodox instruments. It seems like 'Monster Movie' by Can is all about that delightful, frivolous and smirky experimentation, wherein the Hamburg-based band and its members come off as bold innovators, carrying the progressive spirit all throughout.

All four tracks appearing on the album have their distinctive characteristics, which all add up to the eclectic nature of 'Monster Movie', an album for which it would be more difficult to trace the influences of, rather than go on and understand how much of popular music has been influenced by it and by Can's trippy, expressive, and mechanically repetitive music. Opener 'Father Cannot Yell' is an accomplished krautrock staple, with its avant-garde psych-experiments and lightweight references to the Velvet Underground, as we see how Can would use tape experiments, improv and sound layering to create pieces of music that work in an almost-monolithic way. The use of reverb and various other guitar effects is prominent on the album, and the second track is a good example of that, with the elegiac tones of Michael Karoli's playing swaying in-between the sounds of the song. A more upbeat and shorter third piece 'Outside My Door' redirects the listener to the pomp of psychedelia, leading you towards the final, 20-minute-long closing track 'You Doo Right', the epitome of the entire album, a musical monolith of experimentation and tape editing, with wailing screams and stomping guitar flares, this is a gorgeous, startling and eerie piece of music that could have only appeared on a Can album. And with all this in mind, how could one oversee the gritty debut album of this rather unconventional German band, blending a variety of genres and techniques, and offering music that is nothing short of achingly compelling.

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