Cannibalism I is
a collection of tracks from seminal German band Can's work from 1969 to
1973.
Most of the songs
are from the bands supposed "golden" period, the one with vocalist Damo
Suzuki. Three tracks are featured from the band's first album which featured
vocalist Malcolm Mooney. One track only is from the post-Suzuki era.
The period with
Suzuki is generally looked upon as the band's richest moment. It is difficult
to understand why the work with Mooney is unjustly overlooked.
The tracks from
the début album are among the most intriguing and powerful on the
compilation.
In the experimental
world of Can I would venture to say that these three tracks are possibly
closer to the "rock" format than some of the others on the rest of the
compilation. However, faced with the complex sounds of Can, it is difficult
to classify and all affirmations sound like sweeping statements when faced
with the intricacies of the music itself.
How to give a general
idea of Can's music ? Experimental and avant-garde are the terms that immediately
spring to mind. At the same time, this is no crossover jazz-rock experiment.
At least a couple of the band members were schooled in music and at least
one of them was a pupil to the great German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
I don't happen to be a music theorist but you can hear the disharmonic
legacy of Stockhausen on Can albums, as you can on Soft
Machine's Third. Another aspect of the music is the force of repetition.
Repetitive bass lines, repetitive drumbeats and patterns. One of the band's
experimental sides was obviously to experiment with the repitition of the
tonally similar. The overall effect is a hypnotic one. The beats sound
both tribal and trancelike. The drummer, Jaki Liebezeit once declared that
all of the rhythms and patterns he played were "natural" ones. In fact
the drums, their patterns and their prominence is another distinctive quality
of the band. Often things are centred around the drums. You often feel
that the drums are the main instrument and the other instruments merely
highlight it. This is true on at least parts of the 18 minute "Halleluwah",
for example (although the track is considerably shorter on the compilation).
That's another aspect of some great and typical Can songs: their length.
For the hypnotic magic to work it's charm they experiment over periods
that range up to twenty minutes, perhaps more, often a whole side of the
original vinyl they were recorded on. It's this hypnotic magic that gets
to you and draws you in as you sit down to the impossible task of analysing
Can's songs. As you are drawn into the song you realise its complexity,
it's multiple variations, changing rhythms, tonalities and moods, vocals
and instruments moving in and out uncontrollably, taking the song this
way and that.
There's a band statement
that should add some light on the band. I can't recall the exact words
but it was something to the tune of technicity and technical prowess being
secondary factors, the main goal being to get the mood and feelings across,
to capture the power and creative voice of the spontaneous jamming and
interaction of the musicians. Yes, this was an important point. Capturing
the spontaneity of the group's interaction. On one album at least, as well
as the main sessions the group was recorded, unawares, in between the songs
and this is what gave some of the best material.
So ,to summarize
vulgarly, the Can sound, or the distinctive Can sound from the Suzuki period
can be brought down to the hypnotic repetitive drums and bass patterns
on which were blended the distorted voice of Suzuki, modulating itself
to it's environment, becoming a chant, a moan, a whisper or a percussive
instrument unto itself. Suzuki was once quoted as saying something along
the lines of him not being able to sing, not really knowing how so he made
his voice into another of the band's instruments. Another frequent characteristic
of Can from this period is the "melody" line provided by wild, seemingly
improvising electric guitars at various levels of distortion.
But back to the three
tracks from "Monster Movie", the band's début l.p. that featured
Afro-American vocalist Malcolm Mooney. Mooney quit the band after this
album (although another one exists, entitled "Delay 68", the first album
recorded but unreleased until the early eighties). Apparently Mooney quit
because of psychological disorders. I read somewhere that he was hearing
"voices in his head". The early music of the band is dark and intense,
sounding like experimental garage rock at times, the darkest, most psychotic
brand of garage rock.
These earlier songs
are probably Can at their most "rock", although the later ones "rock" in
different ways. Can is aesthetically rock, whatever. The disharmony and
distortion is voluntarily wild and pushes back the boundaries of the genre
but it's still rock. The pleasure of rock's distinctive chord progressions
and melodies is exploited but the whole thing goes further, is wilder and
more uncontained in format.
The 20 minute obsessive
"Yoo doo right" has a kind of bluesy feel to it. Something in the musical
structure, the obsessively repeated lyrics and the desperate simplicity
of these lyrics, something in the spontaneous elongated jamming. The song
weaves in and out of different moments and Mooney's tortured, tormented
voice adapts to these different moments, rising til it cracks, breaking
down to a whisper, shouting out desperately, breaking into a halting and
percussive instrument itself, glottal stops and all… Often, the song evolves
around the repetition of two notes on bass or on drums. Blast of organ
swing in and out of the song. And always the return of the leitmotiv, the
hypnotic drum pattern. There is something bluesy about this song. But the
darkest, most deep blues. Great care is provided not to let things, the
guitars for example, get too "flowery" which would break the song's mood.
Things are kept within a given aesthetic, things are voluntarily kept low,
within a restricted limit to stop them flying into something more light-hearted.
A repeated guitar
twang, the rumble of the bass, the hypnotic drum pattern, the cracked voice
pushed on endlessly, becoming repetitive like the instruments, repeating
percussive phrases like "Rock it tonight" or "you do right". The song is
apparently one of revelation with phrases such as "I was blind but now
I can see" and "You made a believer out of me". The band plays on the contrast
between the apparently hopeful lyrics and the dark and desperate identity
of the song. On the other hand this desperate, almost religious subtext
fits with the "bluesy" texture of the song. It's ironic that it was Mooney
singing lines such as "You made a believer out of me" since it was his
successor, Suzuki, who was to leave the band to marry a Jehovah's witness.
The opening track
on the compilation, "Father cannot yell" is equally obsessive. It is filled
with psychotic energy. Again it is both more sombre and faster than the
band's later material. There are a few almost punkish guitar chord changes
along with long wild guitar solos. Mooney's voice moves from a rapid shouting
to a guttural repetition of monosyllabic repetitive utterings echoing the
drums and bass lines.
"Outside your door"
could almost be a garage rock classic. It's much more than that, though.
You could describe it as an experimental reworking of the garage rock format,
but that would sound arty and pretentious. Quite the contrary. It's as
if Can take garage rock and turn it upside down to accentuate it's pugnacity.
It blends that repetitive bass and those driving Can drums into a fast
and psychotic "underground" piece. There are many codes of rock and garage
rock here. A repetitive mouth organ melody, a garagelike organ break, the
bluesy train theme "Can you hear the train whistle outside your door ?"
Again, it's a very dark piece, with lyrics such as "every colour is black"
providing almost a dark and twisted echo to something like the Stones'
"Paint it black". The Stones number may have seemed twisted and tortured
at the time but believe me, this Can number goes the whole hog ! At one
point there is an incredibly savage guitar "solo". A bit like if Jimi Hendrix
was being electrocuted while playing the solo to "Burning of the midnight
lamp". But things are so shaken and askew that this could only be an undead
Hendrix, a Hendrix returned as a zombie to play on the session with Can
(although he was still alive at the point of this recording).
If we're out to measure things in terms of "experimental" value, two tracks really stand out. "Soup" (from Ege Bamyasi, 1972) is a truly experimental noisescape along with buzzes, reversed vocals and pneumatic drill sounds. "Aumgn" from the seminal "Tago Mago" (1971) creates an almost mystical experience. The listener gets the impression he's listening to a twisted form of zen ceremony. A bizarre ambiance is created by the repetitive strumming of the same notes, the repetitive bass is there too, the background is a monotonous humming. At times these elements are overdubbed by wild psychedelic violins. At one point the humming breaks down to a repetitive chanting: a continuous "Aaaaaaaah" or perhaps even "Augmn". It maybe a mystical experience but it's a dark and looming one.
Basically, all of the songs on this 75 minute compilation have their own magic, from the wildness of the tracks described above to the almost sober qualities of a track like "She brings the rain".
I can only say one thing: buy it. It's a great cross section of what is probably Can's greatest work. Financially, you get more music for your money but I'm not going to stoop to that line of reasoning. Listening to it, you'll come to realise the debt of the whole alternative scene of today to the pioneering genius of can. Not just band's of the "noisy" tradition, equally those who sample, use electronics, create ambient soundscapes…
And if you don't
like it, you can always use it to piss off your neighbours. It's almost
ideal. It has those thick repetitive bass lines and pounding drums, it
has the distortion and disharmony. Let's face it, loads of people get pissed
off with disharmony, especially if they didn't choose to listen to it.
You could even alternate it with Soft Machine's "Third",
Hawkwind's
"Masters of the Universe" or even one of Stockhausen's many works.