Can
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Review by Kris Needs, ZigZag, July 1976
THIS IS ONE for hardened Can-atics, being basically a collection of snippets which haven't made it onto past Can albums. ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 1980
Can's first singer Malcolm Mooney talks about joining Can, the writing and recording process, gigging with Stockhausen, and the decline of his mental health and ultimate breakdown.
File format: mp3; file size: 56.1mb, interview length: 1h 01' 40" sound quality: ***
Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages Audio, Spring 1997
In order of their first replies, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay revisit the early days of Can: the first time they played together; how they shared everything; their homemade studios; how they met; drummer Jaki Liebezeit and the rituals of repetition; the group's social environment; the importance of original American frontman Malcolm Mooney, and meeting his successor Damo Suzuki; the latter's unforgettable first gig with the band. Oh, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats... (Please note that there are approximately 10 minutes of annoying tape hiss from about 29 minutes in to about 38 mins.)
File format: mp3; file size: 69.5mb, interview length: 1h 12' 26" sound quality: ***½
List of articles in the library
The Can: Monster Movie (United Artists)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 30 May 1970
THINGS ARE certainly beginning to happen in Germany. ...
Burnin' Red Ivanhoe, Can, Amon Düül et al: Is It Euro-Rock Next?
Overview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 13 June 1970
Richard Williams takes a Common Market-minded guess at a future trend in pop... ...
Can: Tago Mago (United Artists)
Review by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 29 January 1972
AS DUNCAN Fallowell says in his sleevenotes, Can could not be anything but German. ...
Interview by James Johnson, New Musical Express, 5 February 1972
OF ALL the heavy German bands Can are perhaps the most interesting and could prove the most influential. Next month they tour Britain and, judging ...
Overview by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 9 December 1972
TIME WAS WHEN a sudden loud crash around West Germany was probably just an other F-One-Eleven. These days it's more likely to be the local ...
Overview by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 16 December 1972
BOMB BLASTS AND THE BEAT: PART TWO OF IAN MACDONALD'S DEFINITIVE SURVEY OF GERMAN ROCK ...
Can: Communism, Anarchism, Nihilism
Interview by Martin Hayman, Sounds, 24 February 1973
CAN: A GROUP defined by their very lack of an image? A Few heavy theories have been batted to and fro about the formidable space-rock ...
Live Review by Martin Hayman, Sounds, 24 February 1973
CAN IS not a band which lends itself easily to review. At the Rainbow on Sunday night they drew a nearly capacity audience, which in ...
Live Review by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 24 February 1973
THE STAGE WAS filled with manic, shadowy figures: three guitarists, two drummers, two singers, and a saxophonist. Through the barrage of noise, one could distinguish ...
Can: Ege Bamyasi (United Artists UA LA 063-F)
Review by Howard Wuelfing, Zoo World, 13 September 1973
AH! FINALLY another platter full of stuff to sear the audial nerves clean of all the CS&N/America/Eagles slush that's been fed to them almost without ...
Can: Future Days (United Artists)
Review by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 26 January 1974
I'VE HAD MY paltry reservations about Can in the past, but their previous album, Ege Bamyasi, allayed most of them and this, the group's fourth ...
Can: Future Days (United Artists UAS 29505, £2.25)
Review by Ray Fox-Cumming, Disc, 16 February 1974
DESPITE THE title, which invites trouble, there's nothing futuristic about this album. It attempts nothing that hasn't already been done, often to death, before. Future ...
Interview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 16 February 1974
NICK KENT slinks unobtrusively into the back-room for something a little stronger ...
Review by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 14 September 1974
Can in Curio City ...
Can: They Have Ways Of Making You Listen…
Profile by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 9 November 1974
ONE NIGHT IN NOVEMBER 1969 the phone rang in Irmin Schmidt's Cologne home. Schmidt got out of bed to answer it and found himself talking ...
Can: Imagine 20 bulls and cows going up a hill...
Interview by Chris Salewicz, New Musical Express, 30 November 1974
...or learn guitar the avant garde way! MICHAEL KAROLI of Can, talking to CHRIS SALEWICZ ...
Can: Tales of the Supernatural
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 6 December 1975
I WAS SITTING in a standard hotel bedroom the other day, chewing the fat with a citizen by the name of Irmin Schmidt. ...
Review by Miles, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
CAPITOL RADIO are blitzing Can's top-40 commercial rock number 'I Want More' right now; it is typical that the band would choose to issue it ...
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 23 October 1976
"IRMIN Schmidt was transporting a washing machine down the stairs, and it fell on top of him." ...
Can: New Victoria Theatre, London
Live Review by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 11 December 1976
VIEWED IN isolation, Can's recent singles seem like some kind of sell-out. What, after all, is a "serious" German rock band, whose members include former ...
Live Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 11 December 1976
DOWN THE stairs and into the hall... and into a time warp. With the powerful aroma of smouldering illicit substances and the subdued, attentive audience, ...
Can: Free Trade Hall, Manchester
Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 18 December 1976
IN ONE OF the most glorious cases of mismatching ever seen on a British stage, Can are preceded tonight by an agonisingly kitsch comedy jug-band ...
Can: Saw Delight (Virgin V2079) **
Review by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 4 June 1977
SOMETIMES it's nice to get phone-calls, sometimes it isn't. Know what I mean? ...
Review by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 15 July 1978
Reach Out, We'll Be There (Ha, Ha – Fooled You) ...
Techno-Rock: Six Teutons And What Do You Get — A Programmed Sequencer And The Doppler Effect
Overview by Jeff Walker, Waxpaper, 15 September 1978
IN JAPAN, LOCAL bands copy both the look and sound of Western rockers – an imitative art form which thrives while the fans wait for ...
The Concise NME Guide To Electronic Music & Synthesised Sound
Guide by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 5 January 1980
"Progress in the physical and mechanical sciences determines a progress in art." — Carlos Chavez, 1957 ...
Holger Czukay: Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal
Interview by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 20 February 1982
AN AMBIENT tape is burring in the background. "I made a special cassette for a new kind of radio programme," explains Holger Czukay as we ...
Holger Czukay: Ode to normailty
Interview by Mick Sinclair, Sounds, 17 April 1982
Mick Sinclair in spontaneous discussion with HOLGER CZUKAY ...
A Trance In Tatters: Krautrock und Beyond
Review by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 27 November 1982
Can: Delay 1968 (Spoon); Holger Czukay: Canaxis (Spoon); Irmin Schmidt: Filmmusik Vol 2 (Spoon); Neu!: Black Forest Gateau (Cherry Red) ...
Malcolm R. Mooney: An Interview
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 1983
WITHOUT A DOUBT Germany's Can was one of the pioneering groups of what has become known today as EuroRock. Malcolm Mooney, a black American, was ...
Can: Art Terrorism! Sensory Derangement! Holistic Vomiting! Available Weekends…
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
CAN ALWAYS added to more than the sum of their experience and influences. When the group made the seminal Monster Movie in 1968, three of ...
Can: Automation For The People
Guide by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 1997
A DEEP DISTANT DETONATION ECHOED by an aftershock and a seething high-frequency fallout of fire and rain. Out of this drizzle rises a robotic one-bar ...
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, August 1997
A considerable portion of the German experimentalists’ output re-released on CD and limited issue vinyl: 24 albums spanning 1968-1994, including original issues, anthologies, compilations, and ...
Krautrock Revisited: Life After Can and Ash Ra Tempel
Essay by Richard Gehr, Spin, 20 July 1998
EVEN BEFORE KRAFTWERK'S great mid-'70s cars, trains, and airwaves trilogy, Krautrock was largely about getting away – especially from Germany itself. The band Can in ...
Irmin Schmidt: Confusion and Collaboration
Report and Interview by j. poet, Stereotype, 1999
THIRTY YEARS AGO a classically trained keyboard player and composer named Irmin Schmidt turned his back on the world of classical music and founded Can, ...
Hildegard Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann: Can Box: Book
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, February 1999
IN 1968 CAN walled themselves up in a Cologne studio and, give or take the odd defection, stayed there for the next nine years making ...
Can Box: Book By Hildegard Schmidt & Wolf Kampmann (Medium Music Books PBK £16.99)
Book Review by Biba Kopf, The Wire, March 1999
IN ITS COMPLETE form, Can Box will contain a live double CD and a video concert, alongside the generically named Book. Amazingly, the live recording ...
Can: Paladium, Cologne, Germany
Live Review by Don Watson, The Wire, May 1999
DURING THEIR heyday in the mid-70s, Can put great emphasis on the subjugation of the individual to the sound of the group. At their best ...
The Can Founders: Columbiahalle, Berlin
Live Review by Richard Cook, MOJO, May 1999
Running order: Holger Czukay/Michael Karoli's Sofortkontakt/Irmin Schmidt & Kumo/Jaki Liebezeit's Club Off Chaos ...
Undercurrents #7: Fables of the Deconstruction
Retrospective by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, July 1999
In the latest in our series uncovering the hidden wiring of 20th century music, Edwin Pouncey shows how rock 'n' roll's face was changed forever ...
Can Solo Projects: Barbican, London
Live Review by David Stubbs, New Musical Express, 30 October 1999
KRAUTROCKERS CAN'S influence on modem music has been more profound perhaps even than Kraftwerk's. Way back in 1973, with 'Moonshake' they were making prototype techno, ...
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 2002
DURING THE MONTH of October Damo Suzuki and band made a short tour of the US in support of the excellent new album Odyssey. They ...
Review and Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, March 2003
IT SPEAKS volumes for Can's protean, constantly-changing sound that fans, indeed the band members themselves, rarely agree which is their best album. ...
Damo Suzuki: The Accidental Anarchist
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, July 2004
Damo Suzuki is the legendary vocalist with German group Can, but he has been perfecting his unique mode of 'instant composition' all his life. Having ...
Can: Monster Movie/Tago Mago/Ege Bamyasi/Soundtracks
Review by Frances Morgan, Plan B, September 2004
MY MEMORIES aren't sepia-tinted; they're midnight-blue and smile-white, fleet-footed but with ash on my toes and holes in my tights where I kicked off my ...
Can: Monster Movie/Soundtracks/Tago Mago/Ege Bamyasi
Review by Mike Barnes, bbc.co.uk, Winter 2005
Can's forays into rock music were ego-free, expressionistic and pared down to the bone... ...
Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, May 2006
Among the great German bands of the '60s and '70s – kosmiche avatars Amon Düül and Ash Ra Tempel, motorik pioneer Neu!, synth wunderkind Tangerine ...
Retrospective and Interview by John Doran, Record Collector, January 2009
In the early 1970s a revolution in sound occurred that was as influential in its own way as the birth of rock'n'roll or reggae. John ...
Retrospective and Interview by Max Bell, Classic Rock, April 2011
SUMMER 1971. The five members of Can are huddled around a bottle of wine and a stereo suitcase Revox A77 tape recorder, listening to the ...
Can: Tago Mago – 40th Anniversary Edition
Review by Luke Turner, bbc.co.uk, November 2011
The blueprint for much of the leftfield music of the past 40 years. ...
Review by Wyndham Wallace, bbc.co.uk, June 2012
Can do: quintessential krautrock rescued from the archives. ...
Conny Plank: The Soundtrack Of Our Youth
Profile by David Stubbs, The Quietus, 13 February 2013
As Gronland release a four-disc box set of the music of Conny Plank, David Stubbs remembers the "midwife of Krautrock"... ...
Ulrich Adelt: Krautrock: German Music In The Seventies (University of Michigan Press)
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, April 2017
AS ULRICH ADELT points out in his introduction to this sweeping survey of German music, there have been relatively few books on krautrock, even fewer ...
Book Excerpt by Rob Young, 'All Gates Open: The Story of Can' (Faber), May 2018
ONE OF THE many resonances of Can's name is the canister housing reels of celluloid film, a precious container protecting that most flammable and crumply ...
see also Holger Czukay
see also Irmin Schmidt
see also Damo Suzuki
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