d o m

Can's first album after the departure of vocalist-supreme Damo Suzuki finds them at the top of their game. For those unfamiliar with the band, it's almost impossible to imagine exactly what they sound like. Rhythm is at the heart of everything they do. In a way, Can anticipated the World Music boom of the 80s by succumbing to the polyrhythms and primal, heartbeat pulse of African and South American drumming styles. Of course, there is a fair amount of James Brown in the mix as well. Texturally, the band were masters. Here, keyboards color every track with a kind of rootless waterstroke. Earlier in their career, the band had ventured into psychedelicism and trippy washouts, but here they are focused geniuses. Karoli's guitar is one half Velvet Underground and the other half alien melody seeker. The first half of the album is comprised of short songs in various groove guises. While not quite reggae, there is plenty of skank to "Dizzy Dizzy". "Come sta..." makes use of the innerspace/outerlimits sound of Schmidt's piano and keyboards. You'd be hard pressed to find a more 'organic' keyboard album. "Splash" is basically a 7/8 jam that is a simultaneous testament to group improv and tape editing. It is my opinion that Can's absolute peak came with "Chain Reaction"/"Quantum Physics". For those curious, this is where techno started. But this is not just dance music. This is the work of masters. Primal, relentless kick drum pulse is colored by restless guitar and keys washes. "Chain Reaction" is what ambient music means to me, though it is oubtlessly not what you'll find in the New Age section of Blockbuster. Incredible. And just when you're being transported into another plane, the bottom drops out. "Quantum Physics" keeps up the meter, but tears away the rhythmic facade. What we're left with is the skeleton of music. Creeping toms, peeking bass, and the gentle tide of Irmin Schmidt's soundscapes. Everything Can had been hinting at comes together: impressionism via beat. The overall effect is something of an epiphany, or atleast a cleansing. The best music has the ability to transform the listenter, to fundamentally change how the listenter perceives his life and the world. For a brief moment in time, Can was a guide. review by Dominique Leone — 1-19-00 —

j o e

Singer Damo Suzuki floated off beyond the clouds with Can's previous album, Future Days, leaving the band down to the quartet of its core members. Their next album would show them returning to earthier sounds. The opening two tracks are my favorites on this album. Both "Dizzy Dizzy" and "Come Sta..." have those organic, sultry, instantly appealing world rhythms enhanced by Karoli and Schmidt, respectively, doing a decent job of covering Suzuki's softly mumbling vocal style. In particular, Michael Karoli really steps out into the foreground on Babaluma relative to previous albums, not just with his vocals, but also with his work on the violin showcased as a lead instrument during the jams found on "Dizzy Dizzy" and "Splash." "Chain Reaction" is comprised of two segments. The first, featuring more exploratory jamming played against a squared-off, pounding 4/4 rhythm, marks a striking antecedent to techno. I don't know if that's worthy of praise or censure, but at least played on regular drums and percussion rather than drum machines, it sounds a lot more natural and human here. The second, slower-paced segment isn't as interesting and drags the track down. "Chain Reaction" melds into "Quantum Physics," which also doesn't really stand out to me apart as a testament to the band's disciplined sensitivity to dynamics, with even the normally propulsive Liebezeit barely going above a whisper. While I liked Future Days more, this album still falls firmly within the classic sequence of the band's canon, and amply demonstrates why they were one of the strongest and most unique of the 70s German bands. review by Joe McGlinchey — 7-18-04 —

m a t t

Singer Damo Suzuki quit the group after the release of Future Days. Although his distinctive vocals were a significant part of Can's classic sound, Can was already moving away from a style that complemented them. Soon Over Babaluma continues Can's departure from their tougher, jamming style and towards a laid-back fusion of world music percussion with the spacious atmospheres of jazzy electronic keyboards, guitars and a violin (violin courtesty of guitarist Michael Karoli). Karoli also handled the vocals and the difference is not as tremendous as one might think. You can hear plenty of him right off the bat; the first two tracks, "Dizzy Dizzy" and "Come sta La Luna" are the two most vocally-oriented songs on the album. The aptly titled "Dizzy Dizzy" does what a lot of earlier Can songs had excelled at — establish a hypnotic bass and drum groove and build around it — but it does so in a new way for Can. A different kind of beat and the swirling violin add a vaguely Mediterranean, even Middle Eastern feel to Can's trademark repetition. Those same elements penetrate even further on "Come sta La Luna," although that song is more about the swaying melody than a repetitive groove. Those two songs are nice, but the album really starts for me with the third track, "Splash." It is a jazzy stew of hurtling guitar and violin improvisations set to one of Jaki Liebezeit's most dazzling drum patterns. "Chain Reaction," is another standout and I'll echo the comments made elsewhere about its foreshadowing of techno/house music: the pounding bass drum and brittle guitar textures recall music made much later than 1974. I don't think that "Quantum Physics" is quite as good these two tracks, but its spacey ambience is effective and it is a solid way to conclude the album. Soon Over Babaluma generally has the reputation of being the last of the "main sequence" Can albums. I would agree, although I do not think that Can's subsequent work is as inconsequential as many people treat it. At any rate, I think that a good deal of Soon Over Babaluma is excellent and I consider it a superlative release. review by Matt P. — 10-14-05 —