CAN

With the introduction of Damo Suzuki, it is very interesting to see how his strangulated, odd vocal delivery fits the jam-based, experimental music of Can, becoming increasingly more intricate and labyrinthian, and on this album this aspect of the band's sound is opposed to the significantly different vocal style of Mooney, which ultimately becomes limited for the musical scope of the krautrock innovators. As for the music on the album, we have an overall eclectic sound that explores different corners of the band's musical interests - opener 'Deadlock' is definitely dark and nostalgic, and the upfront guitars sweep around rendering the atmosphere of this song hefty and remorseful, while tracks like 'Tango Whiskyman' and 'Don't Turn the Light On' offer a more upbeat post-psychedelic sound, more similar to the music on 'Monster Movie'. 'Soul Desert' is groovy and repetitive and works rather finely, despite the irritative qualities of the vocals. Then there is the 'Mother Sky' suite from 1971's 'Deep End' movie, with its fifteen minutes of fusion energy, manic guitar playing, and hypnotic rhythm section, definitely one of the essential Can works. The final song on 'Soundtracks' features Mooney and his soulful delivery, on a song that is more downtempo than the rest of the record.

This entire album is strange but rather good in parts, which is why it has remained many Can fans' favorite (or guilty pleasure). The major highlight has to the be 'Mother Sky' piece, which echoes the excellent experimental ventures of the band's 1969 debut.

The first few minutes of this concert had been previously issued as part of the Can Live 1971-77 collection as Fizz, and Eins jumps in where that release left off. The band had well and truly hit their stride by this point in the proceedings and they explore the theme for 10 minutes before launching into Zwei, which is loosely based on Pinch from Ege Bamyesi (this and Vitamin C were regular fixtures in their setlist at this point, along with more recent material). Drei is a 10 minute instrumental version of Don't Say No from Saw Delight, and is a rather more aggressive take on things. Vier is an improvisation, before proceedings are brought to a close with Funf, a 25 minute hypnotic reading of Animal Waves.

This is the stronger of the two releases from the 1977 tour. It's a soundboard recording, and both Rosko Gee's and Holger Czukay's contributions are much more clearly audible than on Aston 1977. The extended versions of two pieces from Saw Delight are ample proof that Can could still deliver the goods on stage even if their studio albums had become rather hit and miss by this point, although they never recaptured the manic energy of the Damo Suzuki era. They were also leaning more into extended jams than spontaneous compositions at this point - it's hard to define where one approach ends and the other begins, and one isn't necessarily better than the other, but it's fair to say that the Godzillas had been tamed.

It looks like this is the last Can archival live release (for now), and it's not a bad point to finish on. Can's trademark hypnotic grooves are present and correct, and if Rosko Gee's bass is a little busier than Holger Czukay's, he and Jaki Liebezeit gelled into a supple and muscular rhythm section, laying down a solid foundation for Karoli and Schmidt to extemporise over, while Holger Czukay beamed in noises from another dimension. A solid 4 stars.

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.

Eins is a strong opener, just under 14 minutes of the trademark open ended musical exploration that Can did so well. It may not have the manic intensity of the free form freak outs that can be heard on earlier concert recordings, but Schmidt and Karoli weave fascinating patterns over an ever evolving groove laid down by Gee and Liebezeit and it demonstrates that Can could still conjure beguiling music out of thin air. Zwei is based on Vitamin C from Ege Bamyesi, beginning with Irmin Schmidt's keyboard arpeggio and exploring the theme from there. We stay with Ege Bamyesi for Drei, which uses Pinch as its jumping off point and which is where they really cut loose and let fly. It's also where Holger Czukay's contributions are most audible. Vier is a heavily deconstructed Dizzy Dizzy and brings proceedings to a satisfying conclusion.

Although they were touring Saw Delight at the time, this release leans heavily into Ege Bamyesi and Soon Over Babaluma in terms of both musical themes and overall feel. Rosko Gee's bass is busier than Holger Czukay's and both he and Czukay are relatively low in the mix most of the time. It's an interesting document of a frequently overlooked and under appreciated phase of Can's career, but is a solid rather than inspired addition to the archive live recordings.

Most Can fans maintain that it took Damo Suzuki to take the vocals to the right level, and I kind of agree, but it's really hard to argue with Malcolm Mooney's vocals either: his indistinct mumbling before he spouts out some understandable bits and pieces, and certainly his ability to be a lot more repetitive than his successor have a compelling quality. Listening to this, it makes sense that only a few months later, he would suffer a nervous breakdown on stage, being unable to stop singing "upstairs downstairs". He feels quite on the edge on this record too, and it's precisely this somewhat morbid aspect that adds an interesting dimension to this music.

4.0

On the face of it, this is not an obvious choice for a Can compilation. In their heyday they were famous for thirty minutes plus freakouts on stage and wildly experimental studio albums, neither of which are obvious contenders for chart toppers. They did, however, release a steady stream of singles throughout their career and even enjoyed some success; Spoon was a sizeable hit in Germany, and I Want More got into the UK top 30 and earned them a Top of the Pops appearance.

This collection covers all their studio albums from Soundtracks to Rite Time, with the exception of Out of Reach, and there are several non album tracks and a similar number of edited down versions of their more extended pieces. The editing was mainly done by Holger Czukay, who generally managed to distill the essence of a longer track onto one side of a 7" single. The collection kicks off with Malcolm Mooney's two lead vocals on Soundtracks and then heads into the Damo Suzuki era. There are two non album tracks here, Turtles Have Short Legs and Shikako Maru Ten, both enjoyable slices of eccentricity that would have slotted nicely into Unlimited Edition. Two Tago Mago tracks were used as b sides, including a drastically edited Halleluwah, and Future Days is similarly slimmed down. Then we're into the quartet era, with edited highlights from Soon Over Babaluma, Landed and Flow Motion; the pairing of I Want More / ...and More may not be to everybody's taste, but it works surprisingly well. Silent Night is the first bump in the road - Can's version of the classic German Christmas carol has not aged well, and it is followed by the full version of Cascade Waltz. We then briefly dip into the Rosco and Rebop line up with an edited version of Don't Say No and the non album b side Return, which is like a slightly funkier reboot of I Want More / ...and More. Can Can, the famous Offenbach tune, was performed by the three remaining founders Karoli, Schmidt and Liebezeit, and while it might have seemed like a good idea at the time it is the one total dud in this collection. In the 1980s Malcolm Mooney joined the core quartet for a one off reunion album, Rite Time, and Hoolah Hoolah was picked as the single. Both the single and the album were better than expected, even if they're not exactly vintage quality.

Four stars for this collection. It's the only single disc collection that covers every Can line up, and which traces their development almost from the beginning. It's also the only place to get all the non album tracks in one compilation; none can be considered essential, but aside from Silent Night they are all worth having for completists. The edited versions of longer tracks are sufficiently different from the originals to be of interest, although some are more successful than others. The sleeve notes warn that not all the original tapes were available. so the sound quality is a little inconsistent, but I didn't notice anything particularly jarring. If you're a Can newbie this is a good place to start; if you're an established fan it's pretty good to listen to while driving or exercising.

As usual the individual tracks are numbered, and all four last between six and a half and eight and a half minutes. Eins seems to start in mid flow - presumably the bootlegger forgot to press 'record' until the band had been playing for a couple of minutes - and the sound and feel very much point the way forward to Flow Motion. Zwei is a little more spacy and a little less funky, while Drei offers a somewhat deconstructed version of Dizzy Dizzy. Vier is the closest we get to the unfettered monster jams heard on previous concert recordings, with Karoli in particular cutting loose with some blistering axe work. There is then a brief announcement that the band will take a break. If there were any 20 minutes plus spontaneous compositions in the second set, either they weren't recorded or, for whatever reason, Irmin Schmidt and Mute have decided not to share them with us.

What we get on this album is a tighter, more focused iteration of Can; the interplay is dazzling, but in general the music feels more polished and less manic. The sound quality is excellent throughout, and it feels more like a budget official live album than a cleaned up bootleg; clearly, the recording technology available to bootleggers had improved in the mid to late 1970s. Vinyl aficionados will be pleased that it's an affordable single album pressed in blue; if you haven't got a turntable it's available as a reasonably priced download. It's a worthy addition to the ongoing series of live albums, and demonstrates that Can on stage still had the fire that was sometimes missing from their later releases, but it's distinctly non-essential.

Disc one kicks off with Eins, a 36 minute spontaneous composition in which Can conjure up a vinyl album's worth of music apparently out of thin air. At times familiar themes briefly emerge, but the piece builds up and maintains its own fevered momentum; Czukay and Liebezeit lay down an ever evolving, waxing and waning groove, Karoli's blues raga guitar floats serenely overhead, Schmidt adds washes of keyboard colour and Suzuki declaims in the language of the stone age. The behemoth finally comes to a halt after 36 minutes and then we get Zwei, which turns out to be a remarkably straight reading of One More Night. Can always included familiar pieces in between their lengthy improvisations (Spoon would usually surface at some point in the Suzuki era, and Dizzy Dizzy was regularly included post 1974), but they rarely stayed as close to the recorded version as this.

Disc two starts with Drei, which uses Spoon (a minor hit single in Germany and probably their best known song at the time) as the basis for a 16 minute extended jam, while Vier is another spontaneous composition, this time clocking in at a comparatively brief 15 minutes. Finally, Funf starts out as Vitamin C before morphing into a dazzling free form freak out that ends rather abruptly after slightly less than 14 minutes. According to the sleeve notes this is "...due to no adequate sound sources existing of the final notes of this show", although those 'final notes' may have gone on for another 10 or 15 minutes.

For your money you get an hour and a half's worth of Suzuki era Can at the top of their game. The sound quality is remarkable for a 1973 bootleg recording, most likely primarily from a C90 recording by the same bootlegger responsible for the Brighton and Stuttgart sets, and Renee Tinner has worked minor miracles in cleaning it up for release. Knock off half a star if you are after pristine sound quality (thankfully there is no audience noise during the songs) and round it up to five stars if you have been dreaming of a fill Suzuki era concert.

4. Bel air has this plus, there is some finally... of offering a 20-minute side to start; quite disconcerting because very quickly the improvisation sensation emerges like in a concert where no one wants to stop; sounds placed next to each other, a guitar in the distance letting the drums discuss, a slow derivation that will run aground on this country break with noises of bumblebees, animal cries. As much as they stood out from the TANGERINE DREAM that I like to mention, they were getting closer to the work of PINK FLOYD, who were going to stand out from it, its unique krautrock; during this time the break was transformed into a compulsive litany with the fusion of Jaki's metronomic drums and Michael's intoxicating guitar for a captivating adrenolytic rise; its precursor of space rock in which ORESUND SPACE COLLECTIVE would later plunge for example, continuing to jam in front of the sidereal eternity. The drums rumble like a feverish Nick MASON, the final dull, melted, latent, contemplative, seeming to want to be reborn. A very special trip from the time when musical progression was not scary.

Pleasantly surprised, much better than expected!! To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect from a late 80's Can album, but I can say for sure the artwork doesn't give the slightest hint to how much fun this album is, it's one you can feel they were surly having a good time laying down! There's no late 80's junk on here, this is a well constructed and played album.

The recording quality is good, clean with lots of space between the instruments, open and balanced, Holger Czukay's bass tone is lovely, Jaki Liebezeit's playing is fairly sparse and only occasionally are some sprinkles of prime Can rhythms drifting through, though he's an excellent player he plays these basic grooves with great feel! I'm a big fan of restrained guitar and there's loads of nice funk twinkled parts on here.

There's an immense control and discipline in the playing on the whole, minimalistic with everything in the mix sounding deliberate in it's usage, the players parts compliment each other greatly and no one steps on the others toes.

Definitely not an album to dismiss without giving a fair chance first!