Can: The Lost Tapes

Can: The Lost Tapes

2012

Mute/Spoon Records

Format I Own  it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  Disc 1: Millionenspiel  2. Waiting for the Streetcar  3. Evening All Day  4. Deadly Doris  5. Graublau  6. When Darkness Comes  7. Blind Mirror Surf  8. Oscura Primavera  9. Bubble Rap

Disc 2:  1. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Whore  2. True Story  3. The Agreement  4. Midnight Sky  5. Desert  6. Spoon (Live)  7. Dead Pigeon Suite  8. Abra Cada Braxas  9. A Swan Is Born  10. The Loop

Disc 3: 1. Godzilla Fragment  2. On the Way to Mother Sky  3. Midnight Men  4. Networks of Foam  5.Messer, Scissors, Fork and Light  6. Barnacles  7. E.F.S. 108  8. Private Nocturnal  9. Alice  10. Mushroom (Live)  11.One More Saturday Night (Live)



Holy sheesh...Remember last week when I said you could dedicate an entire night listening to "Tago Mago?"



Well, you could easily blow an entire weekend on "The Lost Tapes." This is a 3 disc, 3 and a half hour selection of material that had been left in a studio cupboard somewhere and has just been recently unearthed and put together by  Irmin Schmidt (Can's keyboardist)...

Whittled down from over 30 hours of music, we get a treasure-trove of unreleased songs, soundtrack material, and live recordings...Some totally new songs, but a good chunk of the material shows the evolution of Can classics...

For example, "Dead Pigeon Suite" is an extended soundtrack piece, but you'll probably recognize it as the basis for "Vitamin C."  It's fun to hear too, because you finally understand that the bundle of flutey mellotron sounds at the end of "Vitamin C," that once seemed like an inspired afterthought,  were once a vital part of the song...More of a parallel reality version, than your standard "demo."

 I've never had the chance to check out too much live Can music, outside of the odd youtube video, so all the live material here is was pretty welcome......

In a live performance setting their songs sometimes only bore a passing similarity to their studio counterparts...For a good example of this check out the version of "Mushroom" included here...More of a slow, droning meltdown than the tight and punchy version on "Tago Mago."  I also found it amusing, reading the liner notes, that the band referred to their noise jams as "Godzillas." For some reason early Can always reminded me of Godzilla...Towering, unpredictable, messy, exciting...Too bad they never did a soundtrack to a Godzilla movie...I could totally picture Godzilla battling Hedorah with some Can playing in the background...

I love the manner in which they edited all the various soundtrack work into suites...It's much more in line with the Can aesthetic than "Unlimited Edition's" various snippets...I can't see any Can fan not flipping over this...The band has stated that any further outtakes would be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I don't know, man...I say "scrape away!"  Let's hope there's another dusty box of tapes lying in some forgotten closet somewhere...

 Let's check out "Millionenspiel"  by Can...Enjoy...