b o b

When the local Borders bookstore opened, I was surprised to find a bunch of Can CDs in their music section. I didn't know much about the band, but figured I should buy a couple albums while I had the chance. My first impression of Tago Mago: imagine drum lines so rock steady and repetitive that they become hypnotic, over which a Japanese vocalist mumbles, sings and screams indecipherable lyrics in accented English and the guitar and organ play psychedelic jams that sound halfway between the Doors and some of Zappa's weirder stuff. On paper, that doesn't sound too enticing, but somehow it works to create some interesting prog rock. As the album winds on, it moves from the jam/groove style further and further into psychedelic freak-out territory. By the time it gets to the seventeen minute "Aumgn", the disc has pretty much entered the realm that clears parties and makes people wonder about your sanity for listening to it. After that track and "Peking O", the music starts to drift back towards normal (or at least as close as this band gets to normal), with the closing "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" being almost catchy. Or maybe it just sounds that way after listening to the previous two tracks. This definitely isn't an album for everybody, but if you enjoy the more experimental edges of prog and can handle repetitive grooves and flat-out weirdness, you might want to give this disc a try. My only real complaint about this CD is that the sound quality is kind of crappy — tinny, scratchy sounding and slightly distorted during the loud parts. I'm not sure if it's supposed to sound that way, or if I just got a bad pressing. review by Bob Eichler — undated —

d o m

Double LP (single CD) effort from legendary German prog group. This album, their first with Japanese street-singer Damo Suzuki, sounds a little dated today, but nonetheless makes clear the bandīs strengths. Half of the album is made up of typical Can "songs": metronomic grooves, trance-like repetition of motives, impressionistic harmonic tendencies, extremely tight ensemble. The other half is sound experiments largely comprised of odd synthesizer-effects and way too much echo. Some of this album compares with early, experimental Pink Floyd, but Canīs drummer is a lot better (read: funkier). Be prepared to hook up the old Lava Lamp for this one. review by Dominique Leone — undated —

j o e

A monster double-album from Can, this is often cited as their greatest work. Side One is probably the best, with all the recognizable Can trademarks: Damo Suzuki's vocals, which shift from soft mumbles to aggressive outbursts without warning; Jaki Liebezeit's mantric drumming; Holger Czukay's production manipulations (e.g. the backwards vocals and opening sound effects on "Oh Yeah"). From there, the band loosens up, getting increasingly demented so that by side three, as Irmin Schmidt's slowed-down cries punctuate "Augmn," you are wondering just what the hell you are listening to. Luckily, the band ends on a comparatively more straightforward note with "Bring Me Coffee or Tea." Tago Mago is not the most succinct of Can albums, and I personally prefer the next two, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days, which are compositionally just as good and more refined. Still, if you want a pretty comprehensive idea of what the band at their strongest were capable of doing, this makes a good starting point, especially considering the bargain of a single CD price. review by Joe McGlinchey — undated —

a a r o n

When I was first asked to become a reviewer for Ground & Sky, I was told to focus on analytic reviews, rather than reviews that merely expressed love for a CD. Well, alright, I can do that, but before I get to that for Tago Mago, there's one thing I have to get off my chest. Tago Mago rocks. Hard. That's the highest recommendation to this CD. Yes, it defined Krautrock. Yes, it's the key inspiration (or one of them) for just about every alternative/indie band from A-Z. Yes, it points the way towards post-punk, post-rock, and electronic music. But, when it comes right down to it, the range of Tago Mago's influence is a sideshow to the sheer, awesome power of this beast. In a brave stab at being analytic, I'll discuss what makes Tago Mago such a sheer, awesome beast. First and foremost is the cohesion between the musicians. Can's songs grew out of improvisation and were perfected in the studio, and Tago Mago is the example of "perfected" in that context. Just listen to the second song on the CD, "Mushroom" (admittedly without guitar) to see this. With a dominant drum beat that will never leave your head, "Mushroom" quickly settles into a groove, around which Damo Suzuki babbles in one of his most impressive vocal displays (particularly the "I thought I'd get my despair" sections), Irmin Schmidt's synthesizers wail over the top, and Czukay's minimalist bass adds the finishing touch. Shifting between moody and rock-out-y, "Mushroom" is an excellent example of all Can was striving for with Tago Mago. If you noticed, I introduced "Mushroom" by first talking about the groove that holds it down, because that, in essence, is what Can is all about. All of the first half of CD ("Paperhouse" through "Halleluwah") is built around extended drum and bass grooves augmented with atmospheric synthesizers or keyboards, and Karoli's psychedelic, Velvet Underground-influenced guitar. On top of all of this is perhaps my favorite aspect of the Can sound: the inimitable vocals of Damo Suzuki. Shifting with ease from loud to soft to beautiful to ugly to whatever, Damo Suzuki is what turned an excellent band into a perfect band (for two CDs). And there I go again, sinking into the trap of heaping endless praise on Can. Honestly, though, when faced with an album with such a massive song as "Halleluwah," a seemingly endless drum groove that tosses everything into the mix and sees it come out making perfect sense. Or perhaps I was thinking about "Oh Yeah" instead, what with its intro that defines everything a bass/drum groove can and should be. The only place where it is possible to find fault with Tago Mago is in the first two songs of what was originally disc two, which, are admittedly, some of the weirder pieces of music floating around. "Aumgn" traverses the entire range of weird, from screechy violin to evil-yet-meditative vocal drones ("Aumgn" is a distortion of the meditative "om") to, finally, a six minute tribal drum solo enhanced by random sound effects. In other words, "Aumgn" is head music of the most intense variety. And, somehow, "Peking O" makes "Aumgn" look normal. With its drum machine from hell, Damo Suzuki's vocals with ADHD, and just generally insanity, "Peking O" is one incredible experience, even if it's not for everybody. I would not recommend Tago Mago to the newcomer to Can (I'd recommend the equally good and infinitely more accessible Ege Bamyasi), but, ultimately, it is their masterwork and an album everyone should hear before they die. You know what they say about life-changing experiences? Well, listening to Tago Mago was one for me. At the time, I was a simple prog-head, not open to other music. I tried and failed to get into avant-garde. I tried and failed to get into Zeuhl. I wouldn't even consider trying anything not prog. But once Tago Mago came through and blasted me off my feet, I found myself open to anything and everything so long as it sounds good. Not only that, music went from being a hobby to being a passion. That, as much as Tago Mago's pure awesomeness and far more than its influence, is the ultimate tribute to the power of this amazing CD. review by Aaron N. — 1-12-08 —

m a t t

Can's acclaimed third release, Tago Mago, is an album that I think of similarly as Neu!'s debut. Both are massively influential cornerstones of Krautrock, both have a lot of fantastic music, but both also have stretches of flat-out noise that I don't really like. But since "Tago Mago" is about 73 minutes long (it originally was released as a double LP), there is a whole album's worth of great stuff. With singer Damo Suzuki in the band, the pieces were in place for Can to make their greatest music. There's something eccentrically appealing about a barely-competent English-singing Japanese vocalist in a German avant-garde band, and the three full Can albums with Suzuki in the group are my favorites. They are also, in my opinion, some of the most forward-looking music made in the 1970s. When I first heard Tago Mago back in the mid 1990s, it was my initial exposure to the band. I was floored — I knew it was from 1971, but it sounded like it could have been made in 1996. Can provided a taste of what they would do on Tago Mago with their Soundtracks album, most notably with "Deadlock" and the long jam "Mother Sky." Can dispensed with Soundtracks' genre experiments on Tago Mago, though; possessed with one of the greatest non-R&B rhythm sections in all of rock, they simply did what they were best at: they established great metronomic grooves and rode them for all they were worth. If you don't already know what the music from this era of Can sounds like, at most songs' cores are drumming virtuoso Jaki Liebezeit's stiffly funky beats, which function as canvasses upon which the band deploys all of the perfectly complementary extras: the driving basslines, catchy guitar riffs, electronic drones, Suzuki's manic vocals and the tape manipulation. And at the center of Tago Mago is the titanic "Halleluhwah" — my pick as the band's finest moment on record — which I could begin to describe as James Brown meeting the Velvet Underground, but which has to be heard to be believed. I guess audiences just weren't ready for this kind of thing in 1971, as Can was about as obscure in the wake of Tago Mago as they were before it came out. As infectious and (dare I say?) danceable as the opening 38 minutes of this album is (as well as the last song, "Bring Me Coffee or Tea") this all comes to a quick halt with "Aumgn" (17:22) and "Peking O" (11:35), two long psychedelic pieces that show off the band's interest in studio experimentation. Cut-and-paste collages of textures and sounds (but rarely beats), these pieces can be interesting as the freak-outs that they are and certainly they're impressive from a technical standpoint. There are even times when I want to hear them, though this almost never coincides with my wanting to hear the rest of the album. But at its most abrasive and tuneless — like when somebody starts screaming gibberish over a drum machine in the middle of "Peking O" — I reach for the remote. review by Matt P. — 5-16-05 —