Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Can
Future Days
(United Artists, 1973; Reissued/remastered on Mute, 2007)
Switch off your mind, relax and paddle motorikally downstream with Can's ambient meisterwerk from 1973.
One of the highlights of the BBC4's brilliant Krautdoc (apart from how fabulous Michael Rother still looks) was the brief interview with Jaki Liebezeit in which Can's most dignified member reveals that his much-copied drumming technique developed after an encounter with "some freak" who advised him to play it "more monotonous". Which he did of course, and never to greater effect than on this most tranquil career-high, an album that would be singer Damo Suzuki's last with the band and on which, fittingly, he surrenders centre stage to Jaki's propulsive, heart-of-the-machine rhythms. While I've never really considered having a 'favourite drummer' (any more than I have a favourite kettle) if it came to it, mine would be Jaki. Bubbling through the bossa figures of the opening title track Future Days ebbs and flows from a central pulse. Future Days and Spray burble jazzily along for a combined 18 minutes that seem not a second too long. Moonshake (one of history's great song titles - surely it must be an actual lunar phenomenon?) is Can hitting the sunniest groove on what is possibly their least avant-garde album (on which Jaki gives great gourd too). Side two (and it is a proper second side, never the same on CD - and again, I say that as someone who is about as interested in audiophile snobbery as I am in the latest EU legislation on ballast water...) is Bel Air. Twenty minutes of blissful ambience sculpted, no doubt, from hours of improv experimentation. And it's wonderful, by turns peaceful and unsettling and features the final opportunity to hear Damo make his exotic bird noise vocal sounds. Dear BBC, please can we have that doc on DVD and at least an hour longer? Thank you.
Jenny Bulley
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 25/11/2009
Further Listening
Can - Ege Bamyasi (Mute, 1972)
Harmonia - Musik Von Harmonia (Brain, 1974)
Faust - Faust IV (Virgin, 1974)
Previous Disc of the day
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Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
6:00 AM GMT 18/03/2010
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The Pop Group - Y
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6:00 AM GMT 11/03/2010
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