It’s an awful nice feeling when people in the music industry treat me like I’m a legitimate journalist. Admittedly I can stretch the definition of the word thin. To the best of my knowledge Christgau or Bangs didn’t use their platforms to over-share about sexual escapades, pen creepy letters to large corporations, or interview their circle of friends. Those guys pretty much stuck to music. I, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with sharing food recipes that might get you laid. Making fun of other bloggers is practically one of the major recurring features of this website. So, yeah. The day I came home from work and found an advance copy of The Lost Tapes 3CD set in my mailbox was an exciting one.
A recent article in Mojo Magazine detailed the process of unearthing, compiling and releasing the “lost” Can tapes. When the band’s studio was sold to the German Rock ‘n Pop Museum, it was relocated from Weilerswist to Gronau. In the process of dismantling everything, a cache of master tapes were found that contained over thirty hours of music recorded by the group between the years 1968 and 1977. Both the Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki eras were covered. Original band member Irmin Schmidt, along with Jono Podmore, compiled The Lost Tapes, which will be released via Mute Records on June 18th.
The three-disc set contains a shade over three hours of music. Studio and live recordings are blended together; the shortest piece lasts just thirty-seven seconds and the longest — a live rendition “Spoon” off 1972’s Ege Bamyasi — is over sixteen minutes in length. It’s also one of the album’s highlights.
In fact, there’s a lot to like about this set of previously-unavailable Can recordings. It begins with the first track on the first disc, “Millionenspiel.” The motorik rhythm will no doubt be familiar to fans of the band. The song shares its name with a German TV movie from 1970 about a candidate in a game show who is hunted by three men. Was this piece of music used in the film? I don’t know, I wasn’t watching German TV shows in 1970. Elsewhere on disc one, the sixteen-minute “Graublau” offers some brilliant moments as well. The duo of bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit provide a steady, moving base upon which guitarist Michael Kroli and organist Schmidt can explore. It’s more propulsive than cosmic, but it’s edited brilliantly and sounds fantastic. Disc one’s penultimate track, “Oscura Primavera,” is another standout cut. What begins with simple, airy white noise eventually gives way to fun guitar/bass interplay. It’s one of the lightest pieces of music in the set, but it’s a welcome change from the longer, expansive soundscapes that pepper The Lost Tapes.
Disc two is where the set reaches its pinnacle. “True Story” is a Malcolm Mooney-era composition that warrants attention. Mooney suffered from paranoia and anxiety, and this might be one of the best encapsulations of his condition put to tape. After suffering a nervous breakdown he was advised by his psychiatrist to quit Can and return to America. He was replaced by Damo Suzuki, who eschewed Mooney’s ranting delivery for a more impressionistic, way-harder-to-decipher psychedelic melding of English and Japanese. After the brilliant live rendition of “Spoon” we are treated to “Dead Pigeon Suite,” which is definitely an Ege Bamyasi outtake, as the middle portion of the song is pretty much the entirety of “Vitamin C”. It’s incredible to hear the transition from unrecognizable bit of music to easily recognizable Can tune. For me, this is one of the two most important moments on “The Lost Tapes”. The other is “A Swan Is Born,” which has likely been culled from an extended jam on Ege Bamyasi’s “Sing Swan Song”. Damo is at his most understandable, the band is locked into a groove, and the result is quite remarkable.
The third disc in the set started to push the limits of my Can-dom (see what I did there? I made a pun on “fandom” using the name of the band because those two words rhyme!). “On the Way to Mother Sky” is likely culled from the same session that birthed “Mother Sky,” which appeared on Soundtracks. That’s cool. “Barnacles” is Can perhaps at their funkiest, and “Private Nocturnal” should clearly illustrate to fans of modern kosmiche music the forefathers responsible for inspiring them. On the downside, the twelve-minute “Networks of Foam” could have been edited down to a quarter of that length. The album’s final tracks, live versions of “Mushroom” and “One More Night” (here called “One More Saturday Night”) are a bit…I don’t know, I’d rather the last impression be a strong unreleased studio recording than a live one. There are plenty of unreleased Can boots that are great — and the one legitimate live release, Can DVD does a most-excellent job of showing Can at their best in a live setting.
As a testament to the absolute greatness of Can between the years of 1968 and 1973, you’re not going to find a better compilation of unreleased Can material anywhere. My little promo package doesn’t lay out which tracks are outtakes from which years, so it’ll be interesting to see how much material from Future Days, Soon Over Babaluma and Landed is included. To my ears — and I like to think when it comes to Can I have a pretty discerning ear — I couldn’t pick out too much. Post Landed…well… anything released after that just isn’t enjoyable. While Czukay, Karoli, Liebezeit and Schmidt were all still there, I think they lost me with the glam sound and the tenor sax. By the time Rosko Gee and Rebop Kwaku Baah joined the core for 1977’s World Music-inspired Saw Delight….yikes.
Oh, yeah! And if you live in Los Angeles you need to get your butt over to Amoeba tonight, because at 6pm Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore will be doing a DJ set. It’ll feature tracks from The Lost Tapes as well as some of their own favorite music. Plus you can hang out and talk to them and probably be a huge geek and try to get your original Ege Bamyasi insert poster signed. NERD ALERT.
For those of you in New York City, on April 17th Le Poisson Rouge will be hosting a special event called “The Music Of Can: An Evening Of Unreleased Music and Discussion by Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore.” No idea what that means, but it’ll be cool.
Can – Millionenspiel [MP3]
