“A beautiful rose is standing at the corner.
She is living in and out of tune.”
In attempting to describe the sonic stylings of Can, the term “radio-friendly” is almost always incorrect. Forward-thinking, genre-hopping, smooth, talented, funky, noisy, avantgarde, groovy, primal… but not radio-friendly. Even at their most accessible they were operating outside of popular channels, especially during the Damo Suzuki era. However, in 1971, ‘Spoon’ brought the band unexpected mainstream recognition. What did the radio-listening public hear in the three minute oddity about hiding silverware that differentiated it from the rest of Can’s output? Maybe it’s the drum machine, novel at the time, that augments Jaki Liebezeit’s precise percussion. But I doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t have picked it out of a lineup. No, the key difference between ‘Spoon’ and Can’s other songs has little to do with the music itself. To wit, a 1971 German mini-series called Das Messer—considered popular for its time but by now long forgotten—featured ‘Spoon’ as its main theme. It was simply exposure that led to ‘Spoon’ becoming a top ten hit, which allowed the band to upgrade their recording studio from a 14th century castle to an abandoned cinema—both inspiring venues. (The song’s title was also adopted by Britt Daniel and Jim Eno upon formation of the band Spoon in the early ‘90s as a nod to Can’s influence.)
After the success of the single, the band’s label encouraged them to get into the studio and record additional material. In the converted cinema, which served as the band’s rehearsal and recording space as well as their living quarters, things didn’t unfold quite as smoothly as the finished product would indicate. Singer Damo Suzuki and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt regularly found themselves enmeshed in intense chess matches which hindered recording. Guitarist Michael Karoli almost died from a perforated ulcer after recording ‘Soup’. But the band’s tireless pioneer, Holger Czukay, was able to whittle down the band’s sessions and massage them into some real gems for their third proper album, Ege Bamyasi.
In another bit of cinematic cross pollination, ‘Vitamin C’—an attempted follow-up to ‘Spoon’ that also achieved commercial success—was used in an episode of the long-running German police procedural Tatort (directed, interestingly enough, by American provocateur Sam Fuller). It’s another vaguely commercial sounding funk-rocker, and one that has proven popular in the world of sampling due to Liebezeit’s tactical and tasteful drumming.
The rest of the album is a little bit more “typical” for Can, meaning it’s some kind of indescribable amalgamation of funk music, noise rock experimentation, lo-fi aesthetics and high production value, tempered by Czukay’s minimalist sensibilities. At times, it’s chaos; at others, the band manages to transcend the pandemonium and ride on some sublime wave atop it.
Where Tago Mago seemed packed full of disparate ideas, stitched together from snippets of extended jams, every spare aural nook and cranny filled with a bit of noodling, the grooves on Ege Bamyasi are more distinct, locking into hypnotic repetitious cycles that hammer a main theme. Karoli and Schmidt are more restrained here as well, which allows their improvisational sessions to develop into more natural, flowing pieces, instead of the short bursts of creativity that tended to tilt previous songs nearly off the rails. (Obviously I don’t hate that playing style either, based on my comments on Tago Mago.) Karoli’s guitar work in particular, I think, is noticeably more pleasant here than the previous album, but is often placed so low in the mix that it is hard to focus on it with Damo’s wailing and Jaki’s percussion steering the songs.
Suzuki’s vocals are much more prominent throughout but also less memorable. It’s still impossible to understand much of what he is saying (like, I can’t even tell how much of it is in English) but that’s not really the point. Reading some of the lyrics makes it clear that what he is saying literally does not matter—it is all about how his tone, ululations, and scat-like delivery mingle with the sounds produced by his bandmates. His voice is an instrument, not a conveyor of wisdom or lament.
The real treat here, though, just like on the previous album, is Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming. He never gets as hefty as he did on ‘Halleluwah’ but it is just as tasteful. At times, Liebezeit could sound like a machine himself, but even though they actually employ one here, the drummer manages to play within a thin range where his percussion sounds both natural and precise. He’s neither sloppy nor robotic, but always a little of both. He conjures up a smattering of complex and varied patterns that deceive the listener into thinking they are simple. The muzak-esque ‘One More Night’ is a perfect example of the exotic touch the drummer brings to the band’s sound, and also highlights just how in-sync these guys were with one another. Throughout the album, he is subtly brilliant, in ways that I am not particularly equipped to articulate. Polyrhythms abound, and it sounds like he does some tricky things with his kick drum. But I am much less interested in how technically challenging something is than in how good it sounds. And his drumming is a treat to the ears.
‘Soup’ is probably the “centerpiece” of the album—multiple sections, various sonic explorations, a musical breakdown in the middle. It’s cool, and some of the sections are fun, but it doesn’t do it for me as a whole. Tago Mago featured a duo of similar collage-inspired pieces that are hit-or-miss, and I’ll give ‘Soup’ a slight edge over those two. But while I can appreciate these types of songs, they clash too much with the stellar work elsewhere—the delicious bassline of ‘Vitamin C’, the downtempo beauty of ‘Sing Swan Song’ (heavily sampled by Kanye West on ‘Drunk and Hot Girls’), the sunshine pop/krautrock mash-up on ‘I’m So Green’—and disrupt the flow of the album to such a degree that their inclusion is not justified.
Ege Bamyasi (or Can in general) is so difficult to write about because the band doesn’t fit any mold. Even fifty years after their golden era, there are not many other acts that have even attempted to climb the mountains these guys were scaling, let alone made it to the top like they did. The album is such a strange brew of genre mish-mash that written breakdowns are bound to miss some critical element of what makes their sound so alluring. You can exhaust a list of buzzwords—organic, psychedelic, mystical, polyrhythmic, etc.—but that list will never adequately convey what listening to Can is like. So just listen to Can, I guess.
Favorite Tracks; One More Night; Vitamin C; Spoon.
Sources:
“Can’s Ege Bamyasi in 5 Minutes”. Pitchfork. 27 June 2017.