Back catalogue: Psych/Garage Rock

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: 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: 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.