Released: 01/04/22
Following the release last year of two Can live albums that captured seminal gigs by the German experimentalists – Live in Stuttgart 1975, and Live in Brighton 1975, respectively – Mute and Spoon Records are reissuing a limited-edition run of 1969 debut album Monster Movie on blue vinyl, and 1970 LP Soundtracks, a compilation of songs the band had composed for different movies before they started work on their second album, Tago Mago.
Although inspired by, variously, Hendrix, Beefheart, and The Velvet Underground, the sound Can came up with for the seminal Monster Movie was a version of jam-band psychedelia like nothing before. Featuring four tracks, including the remarkable 20-minute-plus ‘Yoo Doo Right’, Monster Movie was the only studio album by Can to feature American singer Malcolm Mooney. Other fun facts: it was recorded in a castle near Cologne, which, alas, is not something you hear very often these days.
Reissued on clear purple vinyl, Soundtracks covers a period of creativity during which the band said goodbye to Mooney, who features on ‘Soul Desert’ and ‘She Brings The Rain’, and hello to his replacement, the Japanese singer Damo Suzuki. (Fun fact: ‘Don't Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone’ features Suzuki's first recorded Can performance.) While still evocative of the improvisatory psych jams of earlier recordings, Soundtracks also laid the foundations for Can’s more electronic and experimental work, such as Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi – essentially the first post-rock albums, years before the name had been invented.