KRAUTROCK

The first half is a sessions that was broadcast by John Peel on BBC Radio 1 in 1973, and although there are three distinct pieces it is indexed as a single track on my copy. The Lurcher is an otherwise unavailable 8 minute instrumental slice of early 70s Faust that meanders according to its own internal logic, starting with saxophone blowing over a lazy beat and slowly morphing and mutating until Krautrock kicks in at around the 8 minute mark. This isn't radically different to the version on Faust IV, although the individual instruments are more clearly audible. The BBC session closes with an alternate and slightly extended version of Stretch Out Time from The Faust Tapes.

The second half gathers together a few otherwise unavailable fragments from Faust's early years, along with a couple of pieces that had previously surfaced on Munic & Elsewhere, The Last LP Party 9 is very much of a piece with other Faust instrumentals of the era, while 360 is a tape collage Faust at their most experimental. Party 10 would have slotted nicely onto The Faust Tapes, and then we're into the the heavily treated drums and percussion of Party 1. This leads into We Are The Hallo Men, and then we get alternate versions of So Far and Meer.

The BBC Session is superb, and justifies owning this album on its own. Prospective buyers should be aware that the session was also issued as part of a bonus disc with some Faust IV reissues, although Bob Drake's remastering gives this much better sound quality. The remainder of the album is a kind of supplement to 71 Minutes Of... , and overall you get a pretty good overview of Faust's world in the early 1970s. If you see it at a bargain price it's not a bad introduction to Faust's early years, but you would be better starting with Faust and working forward from there. 3 stars.

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.

Full Hammond B3 Organ, flutes, winds, strong bass and drums.Some parts are pop music, but the best part it's a progressive kraut rock ,in vein of Cornucopia. The second album is better and we can listen echoes from Uriah Heep keyboards style.The vocal is in Germany idiom (both albuns),the voice is not so good, but all right.The pop parts are near of rock"n"roll with some organs.

If the music itself wasn't bad enough, the sound quality only makes things worse. And naming this "Disaster" could not have been more appropriate. And while I had a glimmer of hope during that very first spin with the opener. That glimmer vanished quickly as this played out for a painful 67 minutes. It's just gets annoying very quickly to hear all this banging and not much else.

This is one of those purchases that I really regret. I'm still kicking myself for not just being content with the one good record they did make in "Paradieswarts Duul" with a different lineup and three significant guests. Two from AMON DUUL II and Hansi from XOHL CARAVAN and later with EMBRYO and more.

Barely 2 stars for this one and a waste of time and money.

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.

4.0

The album misses any rocking attitude this is not a straightforward rocker. The first two tracks, which made up one side of the original LP each, are Ambient and Drone, partly with a thick carpet of percussion lying underneath. In particular the quality of the title track shines. Both bonus tracks are more in the direction of experimental electronic. The percussion is nearly completely missing here. Nevertheless they are an absolute enrichment of the original album. In total a very strong recording. 4.0