Nonetheless, there are two main slabs of musical material: the recordings before, with or after Malcolm Mooney (CD 1 and CD2 until the fifth track ”â Mooney left the group at the close of 1969) and the recordings with and after the departure of Damo Suzuki in September 1973 to become a Jehovah’s Witness. Like keeping to the natural flow of a narrative.” Brimming with unconventional music created with conventional instruments, The Lost Tapes is nothing less than an alternative history of one of the greatest bands of the rock epoch.Īs Irmin Schmidt explains in the liner notes, in typical Can fashion the running of The Lost Tapes neither follows recognisable categories (such as soundtracks, studio jams, live recordings) or a sequential arrangement but followed his “feelings for the music. Revealing formerly unheard pieces, their superlative quality film music and invigorating live performances, The Lost Tapes is incandescent music produced by the classic Can line up of Holger Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitars, Jaki Liebezeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, and on most tracks, vocals from Malcolm Mooney or Damo Suzuki. This is all crucial, vintage Can, retrieved from the motherlode and vigilantly appraised, evaluated and classified to warrant that The Lost Tapes withstands comparisons with their pre-eminent work. Thankfully, The Lost Tapes does not contain any poorly recorded gigs, studio rough sketches or mediocre demos.
What they found was years of archived material, not outtakes, but tracks which had been shelved for a variety of reasons ”â soundtracks to films that were never released and tracks that did not fit onto the final versions of albums due to restrictions of space in the vinyl era.Ī most scrupulous approach to quality control differentiates The Lost Tapes from less significant anthologies containing previously un-issued compositions by other groups.
CAN THE LOST TAPES FREE
With barely intelligibly marked labels, no one was sure what the tapes contained until Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore started to go meticulously through over 30 hours of music, recorded at Wellerswist/’Inner Space’ (formerly a cinema) and the their legendary castle retreat, Schloss Norvenich (the owner of which, an art collector, let the band use the studio free of charge). Whilst dismantling the studio, master tapes (not included in the sale) were found and stored in the Spoon archive. When the celebrated Can studio in Weilerswist was sold to the German Rock N Pop Museum in 2007, they acquired the whole thing, including apparently the army mattresses that covered the walls for sound protection, and transferred it to Gronau. The Lost Tapes have been assembled by Can founder member and keyboard player Irmin Schmidt and Mute records overlord Daniel Miller, compiled by Irmin Schmidt and his musical collaborator of recent years Jono Podmore, and edited by Jono Podmore. Can, surely one of the most daring, innovative and influential bands of the past 45 years (PiL, The Fall, The Happy Mondays and Sonic Youth would readily concur), release their Lost Tapes via Mute (in a limited edition 3CD 10” box with a 28-page booklet, eventually to be released on vinyl) on 18 June 2012.Ĭan ”âThe Lost Tapes is an incredible cornucopia of music, recorded at the band’s peak between 19, which stands equal to their very greatest albums, such as Monster Movies (1969), Tago Mago (1971, see the previous Louder Than War review of the 40th Anniversary edition by your correspondent), Ege Bamyasi (1972) or Future Days (1973). The Lost Tapes is a veritable treasure trove box set of unreleased studio tracks, soundtrack compositions and live material by the Cologne-based “Krautrock” group Can. Or should that read The Big Frankfurter? Either way, in the annals of the archaeology of ”Ërock’ music this really is a landmark event akin to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Turin shroud or Joan Collin’s birth certificate.
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