Can: Before Daze

Having no real peers musically can either render a band as some sort of towering, popular success or relegate it to a non-entity. Can isn’t really either, but a bit of both.

There were groups that attempted to work out some of the same musical concepts that the German based ensemble approached – thus the English speaking nations referring to whatever was going on over there as krautrock. But Can’s amalgam of minimalism, psychedelia, strangled poetry and free improv had no peers. Surely, Faust is thought of in the same breath – as well it should be. That group, though, seems to have stumbled upon its sound as opposed to subtly changing over time and arriving at a startling monument to creativity in the form of something like Tago Mago.

Can’s musical thesis, released in 1971, came after the group had already released two albums and switched front men. Shedding Malcom Mooney for Damo Suzuki wound up making the band what it was even as the singers didn’t have any direct input musically.

The stripped down funky slink that the band appropriated from either James Brown or some contemporary composer doesn’t matter. But the bounce and general thrust to its music on Tago Mago made Can instantly good for dancing or staring off into space.

The disc was void of viable single’s material, but that didn’t matter. Can, perhaps theoretically anchored by Holger Czukay on bass, had already reached its apex. But the two discs that preceded Tago Mago are just as important for different reasons as this better known effort.

Can’s debut in 1969 offered some of the group’s most pop oriented material. Of course that’s relative seeing as there was already a healthful dose of tripped out sounds pervading the entirety of the effort. But “Mary, Mary so Contrary” was one of the ensembles offerings that could have somehow been worked into a pop situation. Thankful, that’s not what happened to the dirgey, guitar centric workout. But as the group and Mooney’s time together drew to an end, some of its odder tendencies were dialed back for Soundtrack.

Perhaps only by virtue of shorter run times, the songs, here collected from appearances in various films, sport less of an abrasive feel. “Deadlock (Title Melody)” retains a preternatural feel as the organ drones on, but isn’t able to come off as startling as work turned in later by the group. And while the following track, “Don't Turn the Light on, Leave Me Alone,” aurally presages the group’s sonic proclivities in term of tone, it’s the twisted stomp of “Mother Sky” that points to the future. Few times in recorded music does a group begin a track with such fervor, but Can was able to do more than most other ensembles on a regular basis.

Ensuing work – even to that of Tago Mago – found Can spreading out further and further into ambient and electronic territory with Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Future Days (1973). And while those terms might be frightening to some, in the hands of a Suzki led ensemble it worked out for the best.