CAN レコード& CD

Review: Live in Aston 1977, the latest installment in Can's series of live album releases, offers a fresh perspective on the band's dynamic stage presence. Released via Mute and Future Days, this release provides a glimpse into a challenging period for Can, following the mixed reception their eighth studio album, Saw Delight, elicited. Despite any expectations of a decline in energy or creativity, the live performances captured on this album defy such notions. Instead, they showcase Can's enduring vitality and adaptability, reaffirming their reputation as a band capable of captivating audiences with their unpredictable live shows. Notably, Live in Aston 1977 marks the debut of bassist Rosko Gee (Traffic) within the Can Live series. His addition to the lineup injects a fresh energy into the band's sound, complementing the innovative contributions of Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli and Holger Czukay. Accompanied by a booklet, this release offers fans a deeper insight into Can's live performances during this period. It serves as a reminder of the band's relentless pursuit of sonic exploration and improvisation, making it a valuable addition to the Can discography for both longtime fans and newcomers alike.

Review: Live in Cuxhaven 1976 is the third release in Can's special series of live album reissues. It follows Can Live in Brighton 1975, which came out in December 2021. As with a good chunk of Can's latest releases documenting the bulk of their live appearances (which were inarguably their best performances, often outmatching their recorded material), the album consists of four instrumental pieces Eins, Zwei, Drei and Vier.

Review: Mute and Spoon Records continue in their CAN retrospective bout, following up the first two parts of the long-lost CAN live series ('Brighton' and 'Stuttgart' respectively) with further re-releases of their best known albums. Here, their sci-fi prog masterpiece 'Monster Movie' gets a blue vinyl rerub, doing best justice yet to the band's debut after Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt left their academic careers to start the band. The twenty minute peak state 'Yoo Doo Right' sounds particularly great here, thanks to the band members overseeing the album's most recent remaster in 2004. As ever with CAN, this album has an honest, intense and raw sound.

Review: Mute and Spoon Records continue in their CAN retrospective bout, following up the first two parts of the long-lost CAN live series ('Brighton' and 'Stuttgart' respectively) with further re-releases of their best known albums. 'Soundtracks' - their 1970 album in which every song was written with the intention of being included in various German films including Deadlock, Cream and Deep End - here gets a limited purple vinyl reissue. Functionally, though, the music could form a standalone conceptual CAN album in its own right. It's also full of the dramas that go hand in hand with your usual LP output; this album marks the point at which the original vocalist for the band, Malcolm Mooney, was replaced by Damo Suzuki.

Review: RECOMMENDED
You always feel like you've pushed through the other side of the mirror when it comes to CAN. A mysterious, groove-laden, funk-infused yet utterly lucid place where guitar hooks seem to come out of the walls, rhythmic hypnosis draws listeners ever-deeper into a place that, while perhaps not entirely theirs, is one which they helped build in the outer limits of late-1960s surrealist rock.

Laying the foundations for early progressive and krautrock with an avant-garde approach to songwriting, by the time this Stuttgart gig took place they had almost a decade of work to go at, and yet as the tracklist suggests the band always had improvisation at their core in a live setting. Concerts that would transport crowds far beyond the venue, into thick layers of melody, hooks and strange effects, every single recording of every show is a genuine moment in history never to be repeated again.

Review: For fans, this album contains the very essence of what made CAN such an iconic group. The band's blend of progressive rhythms and morphing, tantilizing melodies are all here in Delay 1968, which was recored in that year but not initially put out until 1981 (it was initially meant to be their debut album). Each tune comes laden with thrilling effects, tape edits, loops that makes every tune brim with vitality and a harsh, coarse texture. There is a real rawness to the whole thing that makes it a definitive garage-rock classic with some calling it a proto-CAN sound because of how they evolved in subsequent years.

Review: In the forty-two years since the release of Ege Bamyasi, no-one has done as much to blend the spheres of experimental rock music and the avant-garde than Can, whilst also maintaining a hip-shaking primal pulse and delivering a radiant wash of kaleidoscopic sound that defies classification. Ege Bamyasi still stands as one of their crowning achievements, and one whose spooky reverberations have made their presence felt throughout a mighty chunk of the rock and dance music of the decades that have followed. An otherworldly masterclass for the ages.