Showing posts with label Can. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Can. Show all posts

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Can - Ege Bamyasi (1972)

My previous Can post attracted a comment from flippikat suggesting that it might a nice idea to put together an expanded edition of the band's fourth studio album 'Ege Bamyasi', using tracks from the same year which could be found on their 'Lost Tapes' album. The original album contains the single 'Spoon', which charted in the Top 10 in Germany, largely because of its use as the theme of a German TV thriller mini-series called 'Das Messer' (The Knife). With the single being added to the album at the last minute as the band were short of material and had a deadline looming, it helped to make 'Ege Bamyasi' one of Can's most popular releases, and over the years its reputation has grown, with it now being considered their artistic high-point as well. It was a good idea, so I dug out my copies of both albums, selected the 'Lost Tapes' tracks from 1972 and set about slotting them into the original album. After a bit of mixing and matching I'd come up with a track listing that seemed to work, so I started thinking about a cover for it. While googling 'Can', I came across a post by flippikat on the Steve Hoffman site where they'd actually put together a possible track listing for an expanded 'Ege Bamyasi', and not surprisingly it was very close to mine. We'd even both omitted one track, 'Evening All Day', in my case because I considered it a bit dull compared to the other tracks, and in flippikat's case I believe it was so that they could compile it into four vinyl sides of around eighteen minutes each. Whatever our reasons, we agreed on the final song selection, so I decided to use flippikat's sequencing for the final album. I think it works well, as some tracks in the final quarter use themes from the original album, calling back to earlier pieces as a sort of reprise. I did find a cover for it from the excellent Behance Gallery site, which has cartoon versions of a large selection of classic album sleeves (do check it out), and so here is a double-album version of one of the classic Krautrock albums of the early 70's.



Track listing

01 Pinch
02 Messer, Scissors, Fork & Light
03 Sing Swan Song
04 Vitamin C
05 Spoon
06 One More Night
07 Bubble Rap
08 Soup
09 I'm so Green
10 A Swan is Born 
11 Dead Pigeon Suite


Can - Soup (1973)

I don't tend to post live albums on the site, leaving that to others who concentrate on live bootlegs, but I'm posting this one as it's an important recording and there doesn't seem to be a definitive version of it out there, with some just having two tracks, and others with varying song titles. The band's gig at Edinburgh's Empire Theatre on 25th August 1973 was the last with vocalist Damo Suzuki, and so was a significant concert for the band. Luckily it was recorded in very good quality, and the most authoritative notes I found suggest that some of it might have come from Holger Czukay's own recording, which he made of most of the band's live performances. There is also an audience recording, noticeably different as you can hear audience talk and applause, and the best quality version looks to be a skillfully edited combination of the two sources. Both agree that the first song is 'Soup', but the second track has a couple of titles, either 'Bel Air' or 'Stone Strike', but I tend to favour the former as you can clearly hear this in the lyrics. The third track is 'Hakucho No Uto (Swan No Song)', but while the final two pieces are from the concert, they have vocals over-dubbed on them by Michiko Nakao. It appears that Nakao was Brian Eno's partner from 1971-1974, and she struck up a relationship with Can as a result of Eno's friendship with them. Holger Czukay invited her to the Wellerwist Studio in August 1975 to overdub some studio recordings, and she also added her vocals to these two songs. Unfortunately the un-dubbed versions don't seem to exist, so this is the best that we will get. I've made a few edits and crossfades to make the recording flow smoothly, and so hopefully this is the definitive version of one of the most important documents of the band's career. I first found this on the Ace Bootlegs site, where he'd made a clever cover for it, and so I've adapted his idea for mine, which has come out really well.    



Track listing 

01 Soup
02 Bel Air
03 Hakucho No Uta (Swan No Song)
04 Hot Day in Koeln
05 I'm Your Doll