eMusic Review 0
Crude keyboard electronics, circular bass guitar riffage, nervous one-chord guitar drones, steady non-syncopated drumming, and stream-of-consciousness poetry signifying everything and nothing: The first few seconds of Can’s debut album present a laundry list of Krautrock signifiers. But what’s amazing on this 1969 disc is hearing the band essentially inventing a genre. Having been exposed to the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol’s Factory art bunker on a trip to Manhattan the year before, keyboardist and classical composer Irmin Schmidt leads his band to take on rock with the radicalness of the contemporary avant-garde.
Like bassist Holger Czukay, Schmidt was a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the 20th century’s most theoretical and controversial composers. Guitarist Michael Karoli studied under Czukay. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit had previously played free jazz. American ex-pat sculptor Malcolm Mooney struggled with mental illness. Monster Movie is larger than the sum of this unlikely combination; it’s essentially brutal, psychedelicized garage rock, but fueled by ideas, chops, and chemistry that far exceed the stoner norm.
Its four tracks contain only a suggestion of melody. Instead, there’s propulsion, and the anxiousness that came with making it up as they went along. Where their contemporaries pursued harmoniousness in collective… read more »
