The Thousands

The Beatles bought glamour, pomp, and rock n’ roll chivalry to the musical landscape. No later than a year after Paul McCartney and co split their ways CAN introduced severe paranoia, rhythmic meditation, and intricately reassembled studio outtakes via their landmark record Tago Mago.

If you do the math this makes the album 40 years old, which usually means that it would have been thrown out to wolves lurking in the cultural wastelands long ago. In the instance of Tago Mago it’s turned 40 years young – in the form of a deluxe reissue.

Recorded at Schloss Nörvenich, a castle near Cologne, Tago Mago represents the throbbing core of CAN’s sound: stretched out soundscapes littered with vocalist Kenji Suzuki’s howls, the trademark rhythm of drummer Jaki Leibizeit, Holger Cuzukay’s ‘mong’ tape edits, and the crunchy, bluesy guitar of Michael Karoli.

Karl Stockhausen had undoubtedly left his mark on Holger Czukay (who was also the principal audio engineer) with heavy tape echo abounding throughout Tago Mago, particularly on the schizoid ‘Peking O’, which meanders from spoken word to really strange mechanized bossa nova. Other highlights include the cushy, hallucinogenic ‘Bring Me Coffee or Tea’ and the dark overtones of ‘Mushroom’.

I’ll get on my knees and beg: if there’s one album you should listen to this year (if you haven’t already) CAN’s Tago Mago is it. During ‘the decade that style forgot’, CAN produced a musical proposition that is as influential and spritely as ever.