Saturday 26 September 2009

I Can see why you'd like this......

Can-Monster Movie-1969
Krautrock, experimental, progressive.


















Hallo, ich heisse jamscoopa und ich prezenten Can-Monster Movie. If you'll excuse me for ruining the german language I will present to you in chronological order (of release) the condensed discography of one of my favourite bands Can. I will start with the first proper Can album and the only one featuring the original singer Malcom Mooney.

From AMG:
Always at least three steps ahead of contemporary popular music, Can were the leading avant-garde rock group of the '70s. From their very beginning, their music didn't conform to any commonly held notions about rock & roll -- not even those of the countercultures. Inspired more by 20th century classical music than Chuck Berry, their closest contemporaries were Frank Zappa or possibly the Velvet Underground. Yet their music was more serious and inaccessible than either of those artists. Instead of recording tight pop songs or satire, Can experimented with noise, synthesizers, nontraditional music, cut-and-paste techniques, and, most importantly, electronic music; each album marked a significant step forward from the previous album, investigating new territories that other rock bands weren't interested in exploring.

This first album by Can, is fairly atypical of the sound they would evolve to and perfect in the trilogy of "Tago Mago", "Ege Bamyasi" and "Future Days". Malcom Mooney's voice adds something completely different than from his replacement Damo Suzuki, his bluesy, raw and broken voice tells of troubles which surface most on the stand out song "Yoo do Right".

"Yoo do Right" is a 20-minute monster, edited down from a 12-hour jam of terrifying proportions and beating its way through 8 minutes of white-hot guitar and keys that pulls your chest apart, drums clattering in circles and squares and obese rhomboid patterns about your head, before falling to the silent click of drumsticks and a boiled-to-nothing whisper and then lurching back to unending life, strafing and spinning and rending all in its path.

Monster Movie was released in 1969, and is Can's most rock-oriented album by a considerable margin. Its songs are raw and aggressive-- very much informed by The Velvet Underground's larval trance-rock-- and they mark Malcolm Mooney as nothing if not an inspired amateur. "Father Cannot Yell" leaps out of the gate with a hi-speed keyboard flutter and the snap of Jaki Liebezeit's snare. Although the band would later perfect a kind of ambient funk, here they were brawny (though precise), determined rockers to the hilt; five minutes into "Father Cannot Yell", the song climaxes with a blaze of bass, drums, and fuzzed-out guitar, and an entire legacy of minimalist rock (from Neu! to Comets On Fire) is predicted. Of course, the 20-minute "Yoo Doo Right" is the centerpiece, and gives the best indication of what Can would do afterward. The murky, primal atmosphere of drums that dominates the track never allows the listener to escape the band's propulsion; like much of Can's best music, "Yoo Doo Right" seduces me into hypnosis, and winds through a seemingly endless array of textures and variations. Monster Movie is an amazing debut, but would be Mooney's last. He suffered a nervous breakdown onstage and returned to America.

A great start to a great band, more to come.
jamscoopa

For more info:
Spoon
Pitchfork
Please buy this album from a good retailer or:
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US
Or please delete after 24 hours:
MnM 256kbps

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