Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If anyone can, Can can, 23 Oct 2007
Can simply baffle and entrance. If you decide that they're not for you, then you'll never understand why a surprisingly large number of musos describe them as the greatest product of late 20th Century music.
Soon Over Babaluma won't clarify your decision either way, though Dizzy Dizzy is one one of their most accessible tracks. It's a piece of dub reggae with blues violin, which merely leaves one wondering how anyone could contemplate playing dub reggae without a blues violin. The other obvious stand-out track is Splash - effectively a furious work-out by the band's two stand-out musicians: Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit. Karoli plays a seven-minute, screeching, distorted guitar and violin solo while Liebezeit concocts a jazz rhythm behind it that grows in skill and complexity till it becomes simply breathtaking.
On the strength of these two tracks alone I would recommend Soon Over Babaluma, but there is more. True, I could happily go quite a long time before hearing 'Come Sta, La Luna' again, while 'Quantum Physics' (which closes the album) doesn't stand up on its own but only works as a coda to the rest of the piece. However, 'Chain Reaction', the centrepiece of side two, is a beautiful venture into the disco rhythms that were starting to make themselves felt at the time, and is only let down by its vocal (a criticism I will heretically make of most Can albums, regardless of whether it's Karoli, Schmidt, Suzuki or Mooney singing). If you're going to have a pregnant 4-minute intro, your first lines need to better than "Elephant... dominating..." Karoli briefly manages to sample a Doors guitar solo as well (Love Her Madly, if you must know).
If, like me, you can enjoy Can simply for the shallow pleasure of listening to Jaki Liebezeit's wonderful drumming, then waste no more time and put this CD in your shopping basket right now. If you're curious about this near-legendary band, then this isn't a bad place to start (better than the baffling Ege Bamyasi recommended by some reviewers). And, if you're interested in 70s prog rock, then this makes an interesting partner to King Crimson's Red, recorded at the same time and cited by some as "the last prog album". Both are somewhat minimalist, stripped-down works of focused, jazz-tinged, adventurous music - hardly prototype punk rock, but aeons away from Tales from Topographic Oceans.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
underrated_can, 14 Mar 2006
This was the first album after the departure of Damo Suzuki. Michael Karoli takes over the lead vocal duties as well as adding violin, both of which sit very comfortably within the classic Can sound. Jaki Liebezeit's metronomic drum grooves hold the whole album together in the same way as their previous work - so there is much here to enjoy for the Can fan. It is an album that is often overlooked in favour of "Future Days" or "Tago Mago", however this is still a very credible album, and one of my personal favourites. I also feel that it is a better album than its follow up "Landed". If I could give this a four-and-a-half rating I certainly would. This particular reissue also comes in the CD cases that are slightly rounded on the corners - which is a nice design idea and still fit into a normal racking or storage system.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
My Favourite Can Album., 26 April 2008
Chain Reaction was problably the track that set me up for a lifetime of loving psycheldelic music. Some people consider heavy rock to be the most heavy music, but I think underground psycheldelic rock bands like Can (and Hawkwind at that time) leave plain rock bands such as Nirvana and the Killers for dead. Can were just far too heavy for most people. The recording sounds a little tame nowadays, but Chain Reaction and Dizzy Dizzy have been my biggest influence with the music I make. Today I am into bands like Broadcast, Electrelane, and Magnetic Fields plus dance bands like James Holden who carry the mantle (for me anyway) for underground experimenatal rock.
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