Can – Future Days/Landed/Soon Over Babaluma/Unlimited Edition (Mute)

For many readers who have never explored Can before, myself included, listening to these new remastered editions will be like meeting a long-lost relative. Someone from generations back who you’ve heard so much about but never actually met.

Their influence is massive. In Can’s case they represent the exact moment that the avant-garde and classical experimentalism head-butted the rock world. They formed in 1968 as a five piece, the most recognisable names being Holger Czukay and Jaki Leibzit. The two musical styles they brought with them – one a former student of Karlheinz Stockhaisen, the other an exponent of freeform jazz – set the tone for the band.

It’s a tone that has resonated for almost forty years. Mutant industrial, pop-progressive and electronic glitch-tech have all emerged from their ever-curious sound-lab. Which makes meeting these oddball relatives on CD for the first time all the more intriguing…

Future Days, the band’s fifth album, originally appeared in 1973 and came at moment of change. Vocalist Damo Suzuki was about to leave to become a Jehovah’s Witness and it was the start of the end for Can’s trademark two-track approach to recording. That’s one track for a live performance and one for overdubs, which gives this whole album an energy and vitality that’s lacking on their later work.

But then on the later work in question, their multi-track approach lead them for the first time into true ambient territory. Eno may have coined the term, but Can were recorded the first ever excursions into ambient music with Quantum Physics from Soon Over Babaluma (1974).

It doesn’t seem to have dated at all, which is more than can be said for the Bowie-like glam rock of Landed (1975). It has its moments, like the 13-minute rock-out and the sequel to Quantum Physics, Red Hot Indians, both of which sound delightfully alien, but the rest of it has aged terribly.

With Unlimited Edition (1976), Can were anything but glam. Here they started on a new path of prog-leaning, dark and dangerous avant-garde noodling. Back to their freeform roots and at its best on the funky shuffling of LH 7o2 and EFS No. 27 and EFS No. 7 which sound like the band are attempting to recreate Brion Gysin’s 1950’s Moroccan field recordings (Can did say EFS stood for Ethnological Forgery Series, after all).

These albums only scratch the surface of Can – there are scores of others in the catalogue and hundreds of hours of unreleased recordings. But they are still exactly like meeting long, lost that distant relative. At times inspiring, at others embarrassing. Some moments are bang up to date and timeless, then others make you realise just how geriatric they are. But for all their failings, they help you join up the dots and find out how you got to where you are today…