Tago Mago  Album: Monster Movie Album: Soundtracks Album: Tago
Mago Album: Ege Bamyasi Label: Mute  A prescient band said to
have influenced pretty much everything that happened musically
since the '70s, Can embodies the sound of krautrock as it's most
often assimilated and idealized. The group pulled together in
Cologne, Germany in 1968, around a core of hippie rockers who
eyed machines with something less than suspicion, found freedom
in precision, and sounded more in thrall to the future than to
their own zeitgeist. On the surface, early Can sounds like a lot
of rock bands of the era: It jams through long songs cut with
acid-rock guitar, raw vocals, and psychedelic blasts of noise.
Underneath, though, Can focused on details—and most crucially,
ways to integrate them as more than just ornament.  Monster
Movie, the 1969 debut included in Mute's reissue of the first
four classic Can albums, shows the band in good working order
from the start. Before leaving the group after a mental
breakdown, original frontma