Tago Mago [Double CD]

This must be my sixth attempt to write a review of Tago Mago, Can's third album, which is far and away the most difficult album to write about that I have ever encountered. It's dense and confounding. It profoundly challenges the concept of music. It is the closest one can come to a sound recording of the mental processes of dementia. And it is utter, utter genius.
If Amazon would let me, I would give Tago Mago eleven stars. Never mind the fact that it's not the most accessible of Can's albums (that would be Soundtracks), or the most disciplined (see Ege Bamyasi.) I can't even say with conviction that it's their best work. But what I do know for certain is that Can's reputation for musical radicalism, avant-garde experiments, and free sound structure, is almost entirely based on Tago Mago, on which the German boys take rock music from its bases in Britain and America and launch it to Neptune.
Tago Mago is so daring, imaginative, and downright schizophrenic that it makes everything else that Can ever did seem tame and safe by comparison. It's often seen as a deliberate concept album about the path from sanity to absolute madness; I don't know how deliberate the concept was, but it certainly works. You can hear order and stability be dissected, exploded, and rebuilt completely.
The proceedings start off with "Paperhouse," a hypnotic song in a slow, bluesy groove that builds to a frenetic, almost desperate shout of sound, drums pounding with tremendous insistence, electronics offering bloopy bleeps here and there, and guitar and bass trying to maintain some sense of melody to keep the whole thing from deteriorating into mad chaos. After seven and a half minutes it dissolves into "Mushroom," a funky midtempo that is fairly consistent. It's mostly drums, with the other instruments accentuating the rhythm in patches, and Damo wailing his nonsense with what is, for him, a great deal of restraint. This is rhythmic minimalism in its most radical form, and it's counteracted by "Oh Yeah", another seven-and-a-half-minute epic that sounds this time like a 60s garage rock song gone completely haywire. The band return to the pounding drums and the insistent bass, moving at a running pace with stinging guitar riffs soloing all over the place, the keyboards moving from electronic ambience to white noise at the drop of a hat, and Damo talks without saying anything, often literally: he blabbers syllables that might be Japanese, might be made up on the spot. This is where things really start to teeter at the edge of comprehensibility.

However, the real heart of Tago Mago is in the three long songs that make up sides two, three, and most of four on the original 2-record release. Side 2 is comprised of the 18 minute, 32 second "Halleluwah," a jam that is equal parts psychedelic jam, beat poetry, funk groove, and avant-garde jazz. As always, every piece of sound works together perfectly, this time with a ranting violin floating around in the mix. Damo raves, yells, wails and sputters as usual; occasional fragments of comprehensibility rise to the surface, but the dominating lyrical idea is, and I quote, "Ha-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-lu-WAH! Ha-le-le-le-le-le-le-lu-WAH!"

And then there's "Aumgn." Hard to describe. Take, if you will, the most terrifying piece of music that you've ever heard. Then subtract any discernible patterns or rules. That's "Aumgn." It's silence with frequent interruption: strange atmospheric sounds, random drum licks, a creepy guitar motif, and muffled screamings while a guttural voice moans, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN." It's the hardest piece of the album to digest, and the probably the key to the whole thing: everything that came before it is Tago Mago's rising action, and "Aumgn" the sound of all preconceived notions of music exploding, is the climax.

That brings us to side 4: "Peking O" is the falling action, the moment wherein Can picks up the pieces of their dismantled music. It actually sounds as if they are sorting through aural debris, broken shards of sound and arrangements, and trying to identify and fit entirely disjointed bits of noise together. At one point Suzuki simply stops and screams a lightning-fast round of babble, which morphs into some kind of cosmic scat as the bass, drums, guitars, and weird noise start up in separate spheres and slowly coalesce back together into the rhythmic matrix that Can does so well. It's a perfect way to move to the final track, "Bring Me Coffee Or Tea," the resolution to the passage that Can (and we along with them) have taken. Back to melody, back to coherence in one of the most beautiful ballads that Can has ever done. The drums and bass pulse very gently together, with some light organ, tiny snatches of white noise, and delicate guitar layered along with it. The vocals are surprisingly mournful and expressive, and the whole package is simply gorgeous and actually approachable--by Can's standards anyway. The progression of ideas is breathtaking, and brilliant.

What I have just described is an ambitious, complex work, more so than anything else that Can ever attempted. As such it is very likely their masterpiece, but at the same time can be a very awkward place to start. If you've never listened to Can, you will either be absolutely astounded by the accomplishment of Tago Mago, or absolutely repelled by the weirdness of it. I would therefore recommend it, but with major reservations: such things take some serious getting used to. But no matter where else you go with Can, there is no question that Tago Mago is the one place that you absolutely MUST come back to.

It pains me to give any Can release a single solitary star- especially for one of their best albums- but I'm going to have to concur with W. Thomas Phillip's review: this edition of Tago Mago is a huge let down.

I should emphasise that this is one of my all-time favourite albums. I wasn't concerned that CD1 featured the 2004 remaster- it sounds incredible, and any newer release could have run the risk of being brickwalled to death. As I suspect could be said for many long-term fans, the main draw with this reissue was the new bonus live disc.

Unfortunately, it sounds perfectly horrible- muddy, hissy, and, unbelievably, running at the incorrect speed.

To add insult to injury, this concert has been (quite literally) freely available on bootlegs for many years in much better quality. What could have been a great opportunity for Can fans old and new to experience this incredible band in all their live glory has been completely ruined by this shoddy presentation.

If you've never owned this record before, you are in for a mind-blowing experience. Please do yourself a favour however, and do not buy this edition. Aside from the nice Mini Vinyl gatefold artwork contained within the UK cover, there is no reason to own this.

Instead, any first time listeners should order the previous CD version, or the 2004 SACD hybrid. Long-term fans who already own the record would be well advised to give this a miss. Hardcore fans will likely already have the live recording in better quality. Fingers crossed that the forthcoming Lost Tapes will be a more fitting archival excursion.

'Tago Mago' advanced on the climes established by 'Delay 1968','Monster Movie' & 'Soundtracks' and remains part of a trilogy of classics when Can were fronted by Damo Suzuki (the others being 'Ege Bamyasi' & 'Future Days'). It's an epic double-album that opens and closes on similar sounding tracks, between veering off into avant-garde directions which get stranger as the record progresses.

'Paperhouse' builds and builds from a funky-jazzy groove (that would become more apparent on 'Ege Bamyasi'), prior to shifting to the paranoid 'Mushroom', which would be covered by The Jesus & Mary Chain and sounds not unlike recent Primal Scream, where Damo hollers "I gotta keep my distance!" (or is it "I gotta keep my despair"? - it sounds like both...). 'Oh Yeah' builds on the strange-electronic-inflected grooves previously found on records by Can & precursors like The Beatles & The White Noise, again feeling like an odd groove with backwards-looped vocals that disorient (Can voyaging to inner space...). This peaks with the epic 'Halleluwah', which is thoroughly hypnotic, stretching a simple-groove over & over & predicting things like Happy Mondays ('Hallelujah') & The Stone Roses ('Fools Gold 9.53').

'Aumgn' is more out there, a minimal electronic based piece that some find unlistenable- it sounds somewhere between Stockhausen and Japan's 'Ghosts' and would fit on a compilation between 'The Visitations' & 'Beachy Head.' Things get odder with 'Peking-O', which starts off with sinister ambient electronics, then a vocal "driving..." that reminds me of both Ian Curtis & Jim Morrison, before shifting into loops and babble that some may find hilarious. 'Peking-O' is total avant-meltdown that sounds like chaos - so it makes sense that things calm and seem to come back to circular norm with 'Bring Me Coffee or Tea.'

'Tago Mago' remains one of those difficult albums frequently considered a classic, alongside such joys as 'Trout Mask Replica', 'Electric Ladyland', 'Rock Bottom', 'Star Sailor' & 'Hex Enduction Hour.' This album and Can would also influence (or could be argued to influence)many acts afterwards - PIL, The Fall, Stereolab, Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Julian Cope, Happy Mondays, Tortoise, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, The Stone Roses, Joy Division/New Order, David Bowie, Death in Vegas, Primal Scream, (late period) Talk Talk, Spacemen 3, Suicide, Laurie Anderson etc. 'Tago Mago' is a record that rewards, and sounds better in this version than the prior Spoon-release, and one I come back to - though 'Ege Bamyasi' is probably a better introduction to the unfamiliar...