11: Can - Soundtracks

Soundtracks was the second Can album but was made up of contributions to various film soundtracks and combines Mooney and Suzuki so it's not really an album as such but they got away with it. I bought this in about 96 - probably after Tago Mago and probably with a view to hearing Mother Sky. The CD booklet is sparse and just has some pictures of Can "in action" in the middle: One of them mucking about on the beach, chatting outside a country house, Damo wailing, and doing an art installation. Very nice.

Musically it's a bit of a mixed bag but you could probably replace the work mixed with "a bit shit" but then this is a comparative shitness - it's just a bit too varied and incoherent to be appreciated in any way apart from varied and incoherent.

For me, the opener (Deadlock) is pretty bad - all wailing guitars and moaning. Tango Whiskeyman works better but is something of a novelty piece with good drumming. The revisitation of Deadlock is frankly quite annoying and could have been left off. Then a couple of really good contrasting tracks. Don't Turn The Light On, Leave Me Alone is fantastic and subtle but I always think Mooney should have sung it - I imagine that's how he felt at the time. Then Soul Desert which Mooney does sing on but close your eyes and it could be Suzuki. The glory of Can is in full effect on both, and them being around the 3 minute mark it avoids the meandering problems that bother me about them sometimes. At their best they sound like they do on Soul Desert: Other worldly but with vague routes within things you know about. There's a story about a guy auditioning for a new Funk band and being asked to play the bassline from a James Brown track - most people would improvise around the simple structure but he just played it non stop for 30 minutes or so. That to me is the essence of Can, no fear over finding a riff and repeating it for a very long period of time.

Which brings us to Mother Sky, almost the corner stone of the record (see also the live version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyKKahQoDY where it emphasises the wig out element of the track to a largely bored audience). It is magnificent in every way, a 15 minute non-stop fury through the mind. It starts off as it means to go on with a heavy bass line and twinkly guitar. Then at about the 3 minute mark there's a huge crash and clink and it shifts to the drums and bass. One of the few times when aat 15 minutes it feels a little short. Cope writes in KRS how he imagined it was used really well in the film (Deep End). This reminds me of an interview with Quentin Tarantino who lamented the use of soundtracks in films - citing that he knew of Kung Fu films that used the theme from Shaft better than it was used in Shaft. Well, having watched Deep End this week, I can confirm that it is used in a largely incidental fashion. Stick it over the car chase in Bullit or something and you've got a chicken dinner. It all breaks down after about 7 minutes then gets back into it.

Then it ends with She Brings The Rain which is a bit throwaway, with not much to say for itself. It's a bit of a weird one - Mother Sky is so awesome that nothing else can quite match it's level and there's enough nonsense on the album that reinforces that. It would seem that on the original sleeve it says that Soundtracks is the second album but not album no. 2. That's a pretty incredible thing to write in the sleeve notes and leaves us all in fearful anticipation of the mighty record to come...

10: The Can - Monster Movie

"All has been forgotten and the plastic turns to rotten rays and smells". I find Can fairly problematic: clearly they are brilliant, musicians at the peak of their powers who gel together and create incredible music. But to me there are two Cans: The wig out ones, and the reflective ones and I think I much prefer the former over the latter. There's something a little too perfect about them sometimes - that the world in which they live is so dense and so difficult to pick apart. Like sometimes you need the flaws to grab onto.


But anyway - this is Monster Movie, their first official album. Originally released on a super small pressing, then picked up by United Artists and released under the name "The Can" rather than Can. The wig out tracks are outstanding, the reflective ones interesting but I don't know if I'd go any further than that.


Father Cannot Yell is pretty heavy, psychedelic and defining of the sound - the bass and guitar being particularly Can. Mooney is clearly on the edge of something but it's difficult to say what. Mary, Mary So Contrary is the nursery rhyme with added feedback and squeals - much too on the reflective side of things. Outside My Door is the standout one for me - Like a heavy psych tune but with full on treble and clarity. There's a clarity in the sound that plays against Mooney bawling that "Any Colour is Bad" - the harmonica roots them in the US sound that is cited as an influence. The crescendo is fierce and Mooney ends up screaming the title over and over. 


The final track is the krautrock standard side long affair. It weaves through the elements introduced over the past three tracks. Its great but never really goes anywhere incredible - like they don't yet have the stamina to travel over 20 minutes - essentially going nowhere of particular interest after the first 5 minutes or so. Mooney says the title over and over and they go off on a drum based odyssey.


I guess the length is a predictor of their strengths to come but, on the basis of Outside My Door, I can't believe I never picked this one up until now. Not sure it's my favourite Can album (by default that's Tago Mago, but with some caveats) but it's pretty awesome all told.

09: Ash Ra Tempel - Join Inn

Two things. First a confession - after moaning about seven up it finally arrived and you know what? It's not that bad. The "right-hand lover" parts still grate and my opinion that it's way better without the vocals than with still stand. But it's a good record and the cover art and story warrant further attention than I gave it.

Secondly to move to the ninth entry on the list - this is by far the best Ash Ra Tempel album on there. I don't recall buying it but my ever reliable database tells me that it was bought for me, presumably by my parents, for Christmas 1998. This would have been about the time of the Traummaschine radio show and so it figures that my Ash Ra Tempel detectors were firing all guns blazing at the time. The cover is pretty crappy - Hartmut, Manuel and Rosi sitting in a line, with a (presumably) laughing Klaus Schulze poorly drafted in at the bottom. Klaus also comes off badly on the back cover, appearing to do his best Les Dawson impression.

Like the first album this is a two track affair - in a similar mold too. The first is Freak 'n' Roll and actually gets close to being a heavy psychedelic freak out sort of affair. All noodly guitar and fairly urgent drumming. It does well to hold it together over the 20 minutes but does it well does.

The second side is similar to the Traummaschine - ambient with bass and bowed guitar. The thing that wins it is the pictured Rosi who (according to Cope) intones the story of the meeting of Cosmic Couriers and Timothy Leary. God knows if this is true as even if you could speak the language you can barely hear a word she says. Either way it succeeds and the synth additions work and everything swirls around being quite nice in general.

Anyway - thus endeth the Ash Ra Tempel-athon. If you were pushed I would say get this, Seven Up and then Schwingungen, then if you care get a copy of the first one. This is enjoyable but not really my cup of tea, but unfortunately we have to revisit this lot when we get the Cosmic Couriers section...

08: Ash Ra Tempel / Timothy Leary - 7 Up

What to say about this curio? Never bought it at the time, tried to buy it for this blog but it never showed up. Decided to download it as well (perhaps the CD will turn up next week some time) and hence I've listened to it all the previous week.

7 Up was the bottle of drink spiked by Leary that lead to the recordings that make up the record. Cope indicates that it's composed of different tracks, but the copy I have has two tracks: Time and Space. This is yer actual psychedelic record - i.e. a record made by people taking drugs. Unfortunately this is a somewhat tedious classification as it turns out that it's far more interesting to listen to records of people pretending that they're on drugs than it is to listen to people who are actually on drugs.

This isn't a terrible record, but in the context of the preceding might of Ash Ra Tempel, then the contemplative beauty of Schwingungen, this seems a little crude. This is probably the influence of the Leary mob whose humour stretches to the "right hand lover" track on the first side of the record. It all becomes psychedelia in terms of too free form jamming and hilarious in jokes. The cover's beautiful though and there's another one with Leary at the controls which isn't as good but still pretty good.

Like a good trip it lacks direction and never reaches that point where you think that it's really locked into something awesome. The second side fares better, mainly on account of the lack of vocals and lack of too much larking about. Is it better than Traummaschine though? Not nearly close unfortunately and it's all a bit too Kaiser ish to really recommend. Though I imagine this record will be relived upon reaching the Cosmic Jokers section...

07: Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen

Like life, Schwingungen is an indication that things have changed. No more the fierceness of artwork but now a more contemplative scene of two lovers watching the sun rise. No more the fevered two side long tracks but a more than ample four (though the CD joins the final two tracks together). No more the unrelenting drive for raw noise, but a more thoughtful and hippy like affair.

I bought this CD in 2004, seemingly from ebay during one of those "I must own all the krautrocksampler CDs" drives that I appear to have lived through multiple times in my life. I think I listened to it once, thought it was okay and put it back on the shelves. According to the database, I last listened to this in 2004.

It's much less of a beast than the prior record but somehow it's superior. Look at Your Sun (6 minutes) is laid back and relatively mellow, Flowers Must Die is heavy and driving. Unlike the previous record this has vocals all over it - John L. declaring in the latter that he wants to be adored. Don't we all.

The last track (Schwingungen: Suche & Liebe) is more like a cross between Amon Duul 2 and Traummaschine from the previous record. It starts off all ambient and melancholic and then goes off into a spacey far out bass heavy thing which is actually pretty good.

Not much to say about this one - it's pretty far out which is good but it's somewhat unrewarding. Despite all the promise it never goes bonkers like Ash Ra Tempel and turns out to be somewhat of a letdown. But a letdown in krautrock terms.

06: Ash Ra Tempel - Ash Ra Tempel

The first Ash Ra Tempel record I bought. Purchased from the legendary Revolver records in Bristol - this is a vinyl reissue on Spalex. So you don't get the lovely fold out  sleeve of the original, but the folded out parts are recreated in a CD booklet. I can recall buying this, going down from Revolver to wait for the bus back to Wrington, inspecting the record only to see the message about the booklet on the back. Mine did not have a booklet. So I ran back to Revolver, asked for my booklet, got the booklet, and ran back to the bus station. I don't think I made it so had to endure the 2 hour wait for the next bus, with only the meagre 8 page booklet for company. The booklet has no text beyond that which is on the record.

Anyway - this is the first Ash Ra Tempel LP, them being a trio of Hartmut Enke, Manuel Gotsching and Klaus Schulze. Bass, Guitar and Drums. Two tracks - Amboss at 20 minutes and Traummaschine at 25 minutes. Quite hard to pin down - Amboss is all haze and guitar and heavy drumming. Fairly relentless and non-stop once it gets going and it genuinely sounds like nothing else on earth, like Heavy Metal gone all thinking. About 17 minutes it all breaks down and goes axe crazy before the drums come back in and it goes mental again. All ends on feedback and a crash of the drums.

When I did a student radio show, I named the show "Traummaschine"which is pretty much as close to ambient as Ash Ra got - all bowed strings and cymbals. It's fairly laid back for a 25 minute songs and there's bits of hammered guitar and more haze in there.

Cope describes it as one of the greatest rock n roll records ever made and I'm not sure that's true. It's way way out there and totally unique but not something I find myself returning to that often. Though I'll never get rid of it.

05: Amon Duul 2 - Wolf City

I think this was my first krautrock record purchase, pulled from a weirdo record shop in Weston Super Mare which I seemed to have a periodic relationship with. My copy is on the venerable Base records straight out of the bootlegging heart of Italy and it came in one of those classic thick plastic sleeves which were all over certain record shops and still are.

This continues the path started in Carnival in Babylon towards a more traditional and less far out sound. Nonetheless it, like CIB, is a really good record and Renate sings a lot. And Peter doesn't sing as much - Renate on this sounds way better than Carnival in Babylon, one of those rare moments where the germanic twinge in her voice really works. Loads of great contrast and violin frenzies. I remember buying it and not quite knowing what to expect from it and not even knowing what it was when it was over. Cope nails it by saying that this is the first AD2 record of real songs - it's just a solid collection.

Surrounded by The Stars is beautiful and Renate has never sounded better. Green Bubble Raincoated Man is a bit of a mouthful and I have no idea what it's all about but it has this amazing wig out section near the end with loads of fuzz and drums. Cope goes all guns for Jail House Frog but I find it a bit stupid - too much Peter singing. Once the vocals disappear then it gets a bit better.

The title track on the flip is heavy with lots of organ effects and whirring noises. But again with the crappy vocals. Then there's a track which sounds like a bongo version of raincoated man, with some of the time noodling added over the top. It's pleasant but meanders a bit too much. Deutsch Nepal is stupid: all bravado and pointless talking. Then it all ends with an outtake from the end of Labyrinth but fortunately it's the good labyrinth and you don't have to see what Bowie's packing.  Then it all goes stupid of course and turns into T-Rex.

So that's the end of the Amon Duul 2 train. I like Carnival in Babylon best, Yeti is fantastic but can be a struggle, this is fun but ultimately forgettable. I like Amon Duul 2.