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Title: Can – Landed (1975) [2005 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Another erratic waxing features some great guitar and Babaluma-style grooves, but is unfocused on the whole.

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Title: Can – Soon Over Babaluma (1974) [2005 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

With Suzuki departed, vocal responsibilities were now split between Karoli and Schmidt. Wisely, neither try to clone Mooney or Suzuki, instead aiming for their own low-key way around things. The guitarist half speaks/half whispers his lines on the opening groover, “Dizzy Dizzy,” while on “Come Sta, La Luna” Schmidt uses a higher pitch that is mostly buried in the background. Czukay sounds like he’s throwing in some odd movie samples on that particular track, though perhaps it’s just heavy flanging on Schmidt’s vocals. Karoli’s guitar achieves near-flamenco levels on the song, an attractive development that matches up nicely with the slightly lighter and jazzier rhythms the band comes up with on tracks like “Splash.” Also, his violin work — uncredited on earlier releases — is a bit more prominent here. Musically, if things are a touch less intense on Babaluma, the sense of a band perfectly living in each other’s musical pocket and able to react on a dime hasn’t changed at all. “Chain Reaction,” the longest track on the album, shows that the combination of lengthy jam and slight relaxation actually can go together rather well. After an initial four minutes of quicker pulsing and rhythm (which sounds partly machine provided), things downshift into a slower vocal section before firing up again; Karoli’s blistering guitar work at this point is striking to behold. “Chain Reaction” bleeds into Babaluma’s final song, “Quantum Physics,” a more ominous piece with Czukay’s bass closer to the fore, shaded by Schmidt’s work and sometimes accompanied by Liebezeit. It makes for a nicely mysterious conclusion to the album.

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Title: Can – Future Days (1973) [2005 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

On Future Days, Can fully explored the ambient direction they had introduced into their sound on the previous year’s Ege Bamyasi, and in the process created a landmark in European electronic music. Where Ege Bamyasi had played fast and loose with elements of rock song structure, Future Days dispensed with these elements altogether, creating hazy, expansive soundscapes dominated by percolating rhythms and evocative layers of keys. Vocalist Damo Suzuki turns in his final and most inspired performance with the band. His singing, which takes the form here of a rhythmic, nonsensical murmur, is all minimal texture and shading. Apart from the delightfully concise single “Moonshake,” the album is comprised of just three long atmospheric pieces of music. The title track eases us into the sonic wash, while “Spray” is built around Suzuki’s eerie vocals, which weave in and out of the shimmering instrumental tracks. The closing “Bel Air” is a gloriously expansive piece of music that progresses almost imperceptibly, ending abruptly after exactly 20 minutes. Aptly titled, Future Days is fiercely progressive, calming, complex, intense, and beautiful all at once. It is one of Can’s most fully realized and lasting achievements.

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Title: Can – Ege Bamyasi (1972) [2004 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

The follow-up to Tago Mago is only lesser in terms of being shorter; otherwise the Can collective delivers its expected musical recombination act with the usual power and ability. Liebezeit, at once minimalist and utterly funky, provides another base of key beat action for everyone to go off on — from the buried, lengthy solos by Karoli on “Pinch” to the rhythm box/keyboard action on “Spoon.” The latter song, which closes the album, is particularly fine, its sound hinting at an influence on everything from early Ultravox songs like “Hiroshima Mon Amour” to the hollower rhythms on many of Gary Numan’s first efforts. Liebezeit and Czukay’s groove on “One More Night,” calling to mind a particularly cool nightclub at the end of the evening, shows that Stereolab didn’t just take the brain-melting crunch side of Can as inspiration. The longest track, “Soup,” lets the band take off on another one of its trademark lengthy rhythm explorations, though not without some tweaks to the expected sound. About four minutes in, nearly everything drops away, with Schmidt and Liebezeit doing the most prominent work; after that, it shifts into some wonderfully grating and crumbling keyboards combined with Suzuki’s strange pronouncements, before ending with a series of random interjections from all the members. Playfulness abounds as much as skill: Slide whistles trade off with Suzuki on “Pinch”; squiggly keyboards end “Vitamin C”; and rollicking guitar highlights “I’m So Green.” The underrated and equally intriguing sense of drift that the band brings to its recordings continues as always. “Sing Swan Song” is particularly fine, a gentle float with Schmidt’s keyboards and Czukay’s bass taking the fore to support Suzuki’s sing-song vocal.

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Title: Can – Tago Mago (1971) [2004 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

With the band in full artistic flower and Damo Suzuki’s sometimes moody, sometimes frenetic speak/sing/shrieking in full effect, Can released not merely one of the best Krautrock albums of all time, but one of the best albums ever, period. Tago Mago is that rarity of the early ’70s, a double album without a wasted note, ranging from sweetly gentle float to full-on monster grooves. “Paperhouse” starts things brilliantly, beginning with a low-key chime and beat, before amping up into a rumbling roll in the midsection, then calming down again before one last blast. Both “Mushroom” and “Oh Yeah,” the latter with Schmidt filling out the quicker pace with nicely spooky keyboards, continue the fine vibe. After that, though, come the huge highlights — three long examples of Can at its absolute best. “Halleluwah” — featuring the Liebezeit/Czukay rhythm section pounding out a monster trance/funk beat; Karoli’s and Schmidt’s always impressive fills and leads; and Suzuki’s slow-building ranting above everything — is 19 minutes of pure genius. The near-rhythmless flow of “Aumgn” is equally mind-blowing, with swaths of sound from all the members floating from speaker to speaker in an ever-evolving wash, leading up to a final jam. “Peking O” continues that same sort of feeling, but with a touch more focus, throwing in everything from Chinese-inspired melodies and jazzy piano breaks to cheap organ rhythm boxes and near babbling from Suzuki along the way. “Bring Me Coffee or Tea” wraps things up as a fine, fun little coda to a landmark record.

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Title: Can – Soundtracks (1970) [2004 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Malcolm Mooney passes the baton to Damo Suzuki for Soundtracks, a collection of film music featuring contributions from both vocalists. The dichotomy between the two singers is readily apparent: Suzuki’s odd, strangulated vocals fit far more comfortably into the group’s increasingly intricate and subtle sound, allowing for greater variation than Mooney’s stream-of-consciousness discourse.

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Title: Can – Monster Movie (1969) [2004 Remaster]
Genre: Rock
Format: SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Though Monster Movie was the first full-length album in what would become a sprawling and often genre-defining discography, Can were on a level well ahead of the curve even in their most formative days. Recorded and released in 1969, Monster Movie bears many of the trademarks that Can would explore as they went on, as well as elements that would set the scene for the burgeoning Krautrock movement. This would be the only album Can’s first singer Malcolm Mooney would sing the entirety of, as he was replaced by Damo Suzuki by the time of 1970’s Soundtracks, leaving the band after going through a highly unstable time. Mooney was known for his erratic ways, and some of that mania undoubtedly comes through here, with his caterwauling howls on the unexpectedly garage-influenced “Outside My Door” as well as the sung-spoken pseudo-poetry rants of album opener “Father Cannot Yell.” Riding a particularly Velvet Underground vibe, “Father Cannot Yell” sounds like post-punk before punk even existed. Irmin Schmidt’s brittle keyboard squalls and dissonant rhythms and Mooney’s buried recitations predated the Fall, Swell Maps, the noise scene, and generations of difficult sound by years and in some cases decades. Holger Czukay’s pensive basslines are also an already distinctive calling card of the band on this debut, providing a steadfast glue for the barrages of noisy tones, edits, and pulses the record offers from all angles. The 20-minute album closer “Yoo Doo Right” is an enormous highlight, cementing the locked-in hypnotic exploration Can would extrapolate on for the rest of their time and come to be known for. Mooney’s raspy vocals range from whispery incantations to throaty rock & roll shouts, building with the band into an almost mantra-level meditation as the song repeats its patterns and multi-layered grooves into what feels like infinity. Legend has it that the final side-long version of the song was edited down from a six-hour recording session focusing on that tune alone. Given the level of commitment to experimentation Can would go on to show, it’s not hard to believe they’d play one song for six hours to find its core, nor is it unfathomable that Monster Movie was the more accessible album they recorded after their first attempts were deemed too out there to be commercially released. Even in their earliest phases, Can were making their name by blowing away all expectations and notions that rock & roll had limits of any kind.

hraudio | allmusic | discogs

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