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GERMAN PRESS EXTRACTS ROLLING STONE , Mai 1997 (von Michael Ruff) "Can were our clarion call, our initition to our future" - Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) "When I worked on the pieces I nearly always found the original better than what I had done." - Brian Eno 13 Studio-Alben brachte die Kölner Gruppe Can von 1969 bis 1978 heraus, doch der Einfluß dieser Werke strahlt bis in die jüngste Gegenwart. Auch wenn Can in der damaligen Szene zu den populärsten deutschen Bands gehörten und beim Wiederhören somit Erinnerungen wie Haschkrümelsuchen im Flokati unausweichlich sind, klingen ihre Platten noch heute so frisch und so visionär wie immer schon. Neben Kraftwerk waren sie die unbestritten wichtigsten Vertreter innovativer Musik aus dem Deutschland jener Epoche, hatten internationale Erfolge und werden von Musikern der unterschiedlichsten Richtungen und Geburtsdaten immer wieder als ein wichtiger Einfluß zitiert, Für die heutige Musiklandschaft gilt: Selten zuvor haben sich Can irgendwo so heimisch gefühlt wie in der Welt der elektronischen Percussion und Breakbeats."Gerade im DJ- und Techno-Bereich gibt es so einige Sachen, die ich richtig gut finde. Can bedeutete immer höchste Disziplin, im Gegensatz zu überflüssigen Soli und musikalischer Geschwätzigkeit. WestBam (dessen Can-Remixe von .....And More" sind die erste Auskoppelung von "SACRILEGE") hat im Merve-Verlag ein Buch herausgebracht, in dem ich unsere damalige Haltung wiederfinde. Für ihn ist ein Rave einfach Kunst. Die Idee aus Spontaneität eine offene Form zu schaffen, die niemals zum Ende kommt, entspricht unserem damaligen Ansatz." Es wäre verführerisch,wie im Falle Kraftwerk von einem spezifisch deutschen Sound zu reden oder gar das Krautrock-Revival ins Spiel zu bringen. Doch mit beidem haben CAN sehr wenig gemein. Ihre Nähe zur heutigen Techno-Szene liegt darin begründet, daß bei ihnen immer der Rhythmus das Wichtigste war und dieser Rhythmus war alles andere als deutsch. Ihre bekanntesten Sänger waren ein schwarzer Amerikaner und ein Japaner. Ihr Sound war international, dennoch paßten sie nie in das anglo-amerikanische Pop-Format, welches die meisten deutschen Bands nur wenig später wieder eingeholt hat. Bevor Irmin Schmidt zur Rockmusik kam, arbeitete er als ausgebildeter (und preisgekrönter) Dirigent und Pianist und jahrelang im Bereich der Klassischen Avantgarde. Eine denkbar große Umstellung, urplötzlich von einem Rockpublikum umjubelt zu werden. "Es ist so gekommen, weil ich die jubelnden Leute wichtig finde und auch zusammenarbeiten wollte mit Leuten, die jubeln und feiern. Also hab ich diese Band gegründet, denn bei Cage und Stockhausen ist es mit dem Jubeln nicht weit her. Jaki hatte die gesamte Jazz-Geschichte durchspielt, Holger war noch neumusikalischer als ich, und Michael Karoli war zehn Jahre jünger und brachte die Beat-Einflüsse mit, die uns völlig neu waren. Ich habe ja die Stones erst begriffen, nachdem ich Hendrix und Zappa gehört hatte. Dann besuchte uns Malcolm Mooney eines Tages im Studio und fing spontan an zu singen. Das war dann der Zündfunke. Plötzlich waren wir eine Rockband". Rockband ja, doch eine vergleichbare wurde nie mehr gefunden. Uhrwerkartig verzahnte, hypnotisierende Rhythmen, dieser gummiartige Klang vom Baß (Holger Czukay spielte of mit Nylonhandschuhen) die minimalistischen Orgel-Stakkati und dieses psychedelische Gitarrenflirren bildeten eine Mischung, die bis heute einzigartig geblieben ist und den Can-Sound zeitlos macht. Als Damo Suzuki, der vorher unter anderem in München bei dem Musical "Hair" mitgewirkt hatte, 1970 als neuer Sänger einstieg, hoben Can in gänzlich neue Klang-Sphären ab und produzierten solche Meilensteine wie die Alben "Tago Mago" und "Ege Bamyasi". "Das Besondere an Can war diese Innenspannung. Wir waren grundverschiedene Musiker mit den unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven und haben uns oft gestritten. Denn bei all der Spontaneität waren wir auch immer Perfektionisten. Nur in einer Sache waren wir uns immer einig: Wir waren auf der Suche nach den magischen Momenten, wo alles zusammenpaßt und die Musik sich sozusagen selber spielt. Glaubt man den Zeitzeugen, so gab es genug solcher Momente, und nicht wenige wurden sogar auf Tonträgern konserviert. MUSIKEXPRESS vom 10. Okt. 1997 CAN THE CAN "Ohne zu wissen, was wir eigentlich machen wollten" (O-Ton Irmin Schmidt) startete am 19. Juli 1968 "die vielversprechendste Band der Welt"(New Musical Express). Knapp 30 Jahre später gilt dieses seltene Lob einer englischen Musikzeitschrift für eine kontinentaleuropäische Band im vollen Umfang. Der Einfluß von Can auf nachfolgende Musikergernerationen ist mindestens ebenso wichtig wie der von den Beatles, Rolling Stones, Velvet Unterground oder Jimi Hendrix. Mit dem kompromißlosen Klassiker TAGO MAGO, der 1970 zwischen abstrakten Tagträumen ("Aumgn") und klaustrophobischen Alpträumen ("Mushroom") zum musikalischen Abenteuerspielplatz mutierte, tönten Can treffend und hypnotisch als Speerspitze der Neuen Deutschen Avantgarde. Die Transformation nach Shangri-La, ins Land der ewigen Jugend, vollzog sich mit EGE BAMYASI. Seit seinem Release 1972 hat der siebenteilige Songzyklus nichts an Spontanität, Originalität und Farbe verloren. Doch erst für den symphonisch geratenen Nachfolger FUTURE DAYS vergaben selbst die verwöhnten britischen Kritiker Höchstnoten. Die mit Rosko Gee und Reebop Kwaku Baah eingespielten Alben SAW DELIGHT und CAN sind weitere Beweise für die ungebrochene visionäre Kraft der Band. RITE TIME liegt qualitativ etwa auf gleicher Wellenlänge wie das allererste, jedoch erst 1981 versffentlichte Can-Meisterwerk DELAY 1968. Die Sampler CANNIBALISM II und III fassen mit allerlei raren Obskuritäten die späten Gruppen- und Solo-Jahre zusammen. Als Einstieg in die wundersame Welt von Can empfehlen sich zwei Doppel-CDs: ANTHOLOGY kompiliert 25 Jahre Bandhistorie. Und das '97er Remixalbum SACRILEGE mit Can-Apologeten wie Sonic Youth, The Orb, Air Liquide oder Brian Eno klingt witzigerweise keine Spur frischer als die Originale. KÖLNER STADTREVEUE 6/97 von Christoph Twickel Daß etwas anderes als Rock'n'Roll dabei herauskommt, wenn zwei Kompositionsschüler des Neutöners Stockhausen wie Irmin Schmidt und Holger Czukay eine Band gründen, daß der studierte Blick auf Pop repetitiver Musik einen ganz anderen Groove erzeugt, genau das ist jedoch das Kapital, welches weit über das nun bald zwei Jahre andauernde Krautrock-Revival in England hinaus Can's einzigartigen Status begründet. Einstürzende Neubauten, Devo, Crass, Joy Division, Talking Heads..., aus welchen Gründen auch immer sich Bands mit Attributen des Maschinenhaften schmückten, die Gruppe Can hatte mit seriellen Beats, unbeirrten Oktavsprüngen im Baß und stehendem Gitarrenfuzz ein Faß aufgemacht. "A drumbeat 24 hours a day" sang Malcolm Mooney irgendwo auf dem 20-minütigen Original, das 1969 aus zwei exzessiven Livesessions auf Schloß Nörvenich zusammengeschnitten wurde. Als hätte er damals schon den Master Of Ceremony für das Groove-Kontinuum geben wollen, das 27 Jahre später mit der elektronischen Clubmusik Realität geworden ist. D D P - A D N Berlin - 25. 6. 1997 von Michael Glebke Die deutsche Rockband CAN hat Musikgeschichte geschrieben. In den zehn Jahren ihres eigentlichen Bestehens von 1968 bis 1978 erweiterte die Formation die Grenzen der Musik. Das Quintett experimentierte mit neuen Sounds, entwickelte neue Klänge und wurde so schnell zur Avantgarde der elektronischen Musik. In den frühen 80er Jahren diente die Musik von "CAN" englischen "New Wave"-bands wie "Joy Division", "Ultravox" und "New Order" als Vorbild. Jetzt haben sich die musikalischen Enkel dem Werk der Band angenommen und unter dem Titel "Sacrilege" ein Remix-Doppel-Album produziert. Der Tagesspiegel - Berlin , 22.6.97 von Wolf Kampmann Was wird einst übrig bleiben von der deutschen Kunst zwischen dem letzten Weltkrieg und dem Jahrtausendende ? Böll vielleicht, Beuys, Fassbinder und noch ein, zwei andere. Und auf jeden Fall Can. Wie keine Band außer ihr vermochten die Kölner Langzeit-Einfluß auf Generationen von Rockmusikern, die größtenteils nicht einmal aus Deutschland kommen, zu nehmen. Jetzt mehr als zehn Jahre nach der Aufnahme zur letzten gemeinsamen Platte, kehrt Can über Umwege zu Can zurück. Im Vorfeld des dreißigjährigen Bandjubiläums haben Jaki Liebezeit, Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt und Michael Karoli sich von Bands, Projekten und Künstlern remixen lassen, deren Ästhetik auf die eine oder andere Weise in Zusammenhang mit Can steht: Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, The Orb, A Guy Called Gerald, Air Liquide, Westbam, Bruce Gilbert und noch ein paar andere. Die Originale sind teilweise so stark verfremdet, daß man sie kaum mehr wiedererkennt. Doch darauf kommt es ohnehin nicht an. Begriffe wie Original oder Kopie verlieren angesichts der Unbefangenheit, mit der die ursprünglichen Tracks aufgemischt wurden, ihr Bedeutung. "Spätestens seit unserem Album "Tago Mago" von 1970, also lange vor den Anfängen der Sample-Technik", erinnert sich Bassist Holger Czukay, "begannen wir im Sinne dieser Medien zu denken" Can müssen sich nicht ins Verhältnis zu ihrer eigenen Vergangenheit setzen. Sie waren immer Überwinder ihrer selbst. "Sacrilege" markiert exakt den Punkt, an den Can selbst gelangt ist. Die mannigfaltigen Drum&Bass-, Ambient-, Techno- und Art- Rock-Remixe sind trotz ihrer Verschiedenartigkeit aus einem Guß, verraten einen musikalischen Willen, der in einzigartiger Weise in eine andere Zeit transponiert wurde. "Sacrilege" ist daher ein waschechtes CAN-Album, kein Tribut an die Band. Vielleicht ist die Doppel-CD in sich sogar von einem kontinuierlicheren Fluß gezeichnet als alle regulären Albem der Gruppe. Jeder Remixer scheint an den Gedanken anzuschließen, den sein Vorgänger gerade nicht zu Ende formulieren konnte. Den zwei CDs haftet das Flair der Unendlichkeit an. Man kann noch so sehr in die Tiefe gehen und stößt doch immer wieder auf neuen Sphären.Es ist Musik, die einfach da ist, ohne Anfang und Ende. Eine mystische Verquickung von Archaik und Futurismus. Can, dafür steht "Sacrilege" als Beweis, ist immer eine Entdeckung wert. Auch heute. Die Stücke der Band geben selbst dreißig Jahre nach ihrer Entstehung noch genug her, um den Nachgeborenen als Inspirationsquelle zur Entwicklung einer eigenen Klangsprache zu dienen. Dadurch, daß sie remixt wurden, sind sie nicht weniger CAN als zuvor. Sie sind lediglich ein bißchen mehr Allgemeingut.

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FRENCH PRESS EXTRACTS MAGIC! May-June / 97 (by Joseph Ghosn) "Une partie fort substantielle des articles ou essais traitant de Can commence ainsi: 'Peu de groupes ont eu une influence aussi grande que ...' Cette affirmation, devenue aujourd'hui lieu commun, n'a cependant jamais semblé aussi pertinente." GUITARE & CLAVIERS June / 1997 (by Frédéric Lecomte) "De 1967 à 1979 Can a incarné une musique riche, aventureuse, avant-gardiste, complexe et inventive, s'inscrivant dans la mouvance de groupes tels Soft Machine, King Crimson ou encore Van Der Graaf Generator. Mais, à la différence de ces progressistes anglais, les Allemands de Can ont exercé et exercent toujours une influence considérable sur les groupes indus, post-grunge, thrash, jungle ou encore trip-hop." LES INROCKUPTIBLES 4.6.97 (by Christophe Conte) "A 50 ans bien tassés de moyenne d'âge, le second groupe allemand le plus influent des seventies - après la Bande à Baader - peut en effet contempler à l'oeil nu les points d'impact de ses déflagrations. De Brian Eno à Tortoise, de l'historien du krautrock Julian Cope à Moonshake - qui doit son nom à l'un des titres de l'album Future Days - , de Public Image aux Happy Mondays - dont le Hallellujah fait à l'évidence écho au Halleluhwah de Tago mago - jusqu'à Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, The Fall ou The Orb, Can est à peu près partout lorsque le rock s'automutile, fait imploser sa mythologie, ses coutumes poussiéreuses, pour reconstruire sur du neuf. Can a donc inventé le post-rock alors que le rock en était encore à s'inventer lui-même." LES INROCKUPTIBLES 11.6.97 (by Thierry Jousse) "Can, le groupe allemand le plus influent du monde..." LIBERATION 27.5.97 (by BARBARIAN, London) "Formé en 1968 à Cologne par deux ex-étudiants de Stockhausen (Schmidt et Czukay), le groupe, durant ses dix années d'existence, a indéniablement contribué à façonner le paysage musical actuel. En mêlant avant-garde et rock music, en répétant jusqu'à seize heures par jour afin de parfaitement se connecter les uns aux autres, ils ont su créer une entité capable de la pire dureté mais aussi de sensibilité." VIBRATIONS May-June / 97 (by Michel Masserey) "Près de 20 ans après la séparation du groupe en 1978, la musique de Can est plus que jamais actuelle. Toute une frange de compositeurs tant rock, world que techno considèrent le groupe allemand comme le père de leurs expérimentations musicales." ROCK & FOLK June / 97 (by Alain Orlandini) "Impossible de faire plus déjanté que Can. Les sceptiques, pour s'en convaincre, pourront acquérir Monster Movie et écouter en boucle You Doo Right , les deux oreilles collées aux enceintes. Car ce titre c'est d'emblée, là, dans la pièce, toute la punkitude des Clash, Ramones et autres Sex Pistols avec (mais oui!) un zeste de langueur céleste et océane chère à ces trip-hoppers d'avant l'heure qu'étaient Tangerine et Van Der Graaf. Can, il faut le dire, inventait le punk avec quelque neuf ans d'avance, tout en dessinant avec une égale ferveur avant-gardiste les grandes lignes de ce qu'on appellerait par la suite ambient. "

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AMERICAN PRESS EXTRACTS BILLBOARD 25.1.97 (by Chris Morris) "Can's formidable reputation is based on a stunning series of early albums made with American vocalist Malcolm Mooney ("Monster Movie" 1968) and Japanese singer Damo Suzuki ("Tago Mago" 1971, "Ege Bamyasi" 1972, "Future Days"1973). The band dissolved in the late '70s after recording more than a dozen albums and releasing several compilations but regrouped briefly with Mooney in 1989 for the reunion album "Rite Time"." "Can's fusion of classical rigor and rock experimentalism influenced such diverse latter-day artists as Public Image Ltd., Talking Heads, Einstürzende Neubauten, Pete Shelley, Brian Eno, and Sonic Youth." THE BOSTON PHOENIX 1.8.97 (by Damon Krukowski) "Can albums were magical events, inseparable from the specific conditions under which they were made. Brian Eno acknowledges as much in a letter of apology to the band that forms part of the CD's liner notes: 'In your recordings, more than most other people's, you captured the spirit of a time and place and a certain type of musical community, an attitude to playing, a philosophy. That's what we all liked about you: it wasn't just music. I kept thinking that whatever one does to those recordings now (in my mind, anyway) threatens that and turns it into something that is 'just more music''." ROLLING STONE 12.6.97 (by Ira Robbins) "Even in the wild whorl of kraut rock - as Germany's progressive psychedelia of the late '60s and '70s was known - Can stood apart. As older academics steeped in neoclassical, free jazz and electronics, they came at rock from the outside; with a healthy disregard for convention, Can played rock music as if it were a fascinating toy to be taken apart, fiddled with and then cleverly reassembled to new specifications." TORONTO 15.5.97 (by Jason Anderson) "On their best albums - Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days and Soon Over Babaluma - they made rock seem a like a limitless place."

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COMMENTARIES BY ROB YOUNG Rob Young is a music writer and has been Deputy Editor of The Wire magazine since 1994. He has written about many areas of contemporary music including Krautrock and new German Electronica, avant rock, Techno, free improvisation, musique concrete, and more. He also DJs as The Wire Sound System, and co-hosts the monthly club Scratch in London.  Spoon  004  Monster Movie A legless robot hovers above a mountain range: is the gizmo it holds gonna spray or destroy?  And what exactly does it have to do with Monster Movie, by 'The Can', as they're still called on the sleeve?  It took just four tracks to introduce the band to the wider world on this official debut: three barbed songs more or less unfathomable, Mooney driving himself crazy as a tiger after its own tail (on 'Mary, Mary So Contrary', note how, as on Delay 68's 'Little Star Of Bethlehem', he leads familiar, innocent lyrics into terrible, terrible danger); then the album's monster itself, 'Yoo Doo Right'.  What more to say about this epic?  Repeatedly covered, never bettered, with a drum and bass riff that begins like a squadron of mechanical deities manoeuvring through a ravine, and then over 20 minutes gets extruded and fractalised into an ever-shifting array of shapes, byways, blind alleys and wide-open roads of rhythm.  Mooney sounds transfixed by a divine revelation only he can see: 'Once I was blind, now I see: You made a BELIEVER OUTTA ME!!!' The final surprise is that it stops at all.  Spoon 005 Soundtracks 'Soundtracks' is destined to remain eternally sought after for the quarter-hour surge of 'Mother Sky'; but don't forget also the great Malcolm performance of 'Soul Desert' on which he audibly spits his lungs out; and arguably the most conventional song Can ever wrote: what would Fred Astaire have made of 'She Brings The Rain', a swing lullaby that brings out the crooner in Malcolm. Spoon 006/7   Tago Mago    Seven tracks, seven endurance tests involving both discipline and punishment. Can finally hit their stride with this 1971 release. They abandoned themselves to circling grooves and repetitive chaos, locking into a world where chaos and horror span round at 33 revs per minute... Every one of 'Tago Mago's jumping-off points leads to a deep end, but some patches offer less brackish waters than others. The opening trilogy of 'Paperhouse's hydra-necked guitars, or 'Mushroom's twirling drum pattern and rising-falling vocal, do nothing to prepare you for the expanded delights of the ensuing sides. 'Halleluhwah' is built around THE classic Can motorik rhythm-throb : one of their greatest recorded 18 minutes. While contemporary Krautrockers were indulging in their own Electronic Meditations, Can provided their own "Aumgn" but Irmin Schmidt's intonation causes it to sound like they were tumbling into the throat of the Beast. One of the best albums all round, but tread warily.  Spoon 008   Ege Bamyasi   The cover featured the first visual 'can' joke, but the irony was apparently confined to their artwork. 'Ege Bamyasi' is one of the most consistently satisfying Can records, perhaps because in retrospect it feels a good deal healthier than 'Tago Mago's feverishly buzzing swamps. Healthy, as in an invalid suddenly developing a ravenous, restoring appetite: the group are moving into lusher territory in which images of fertility, greenery, effervescence abound (check the titles: ''Vitamin C', ''Soup', 'Spoon', 'I'm So Green'). 'Pinch' is tight and funky, learning to use the organ and guitar to float instead of as extra weight. And on 'Sing Swan Song', Can proved they could still play the waltz like it was the last.   Spoon 009   Future Days    Can's vision of things to come was less future-schock than phuture-caresse. Here and on 'Soon Over Babaluma', Can had found a never to be repeated levity combined with agility that made their music impeccably weightless. The title track's metronomic mantra-groove floats light as foam, kissed with gentle percussion while abrasive keyboards and glittering guitar sand the surface down; at the coda Czukay attempts an early crack at beatmatching with a double-speed segment of the original tape. 'Spray' is barely there at all: an eddying Liebezeit riff augmented with logdrums tracing the Kinshasa-Kšln connection, celebrating motion with minimal loss of energy as it travels. Damo has to wait all of five minutes before he gets to sing: in Can, singers had to obey the law of form. 'Bel Air' is 20 minutes of proto-Ambient featuring Teo Macero-style editing of disparate sections: despite the occasional loss of focus, Jaki''s threshing chopper blade drumming brings the machine safely down to the horizon line.  Spoon 010   Soon Over Babaluma   Tracks such as ''Splash'' and ''Quantum Physics' link ''Babaluma'  to the gravity defiance of 'Future Days'; yet on other tracks the group threw an unlikely assortment of silver-sprayed folk instruments such as gypsy violin and mandolin into the mix space. ''Come Sta, La Luna'' is a ballad sung by a Spanish troubadour to the moon. This would prove to be a crucial fulcrum point for Can development: after this they seemed to move away from this kind of ethereality, as the eclecticism hinted at here became more explicit. Marvel at the sheer vertigo induced by ''Chain Reaction'': what else do you expect from a record whose sleeve featured a landscape photographed from an orbiting satellite?    Spoon  012  Delay 1968  The real Dead Sea Scrolls of the Can story, even though you had to wait 12 tantalising years to hear them.  Delay 1968 collects the best of the first primitive recs made at Schloss Norvenich: jangling abrasively, gangling pervasively, it's Gothic garage punk observed through ominously flapping curtains.  'Nineteen [sic] Century Man' is the most conventionally structured, but the opener 'Butterfly' pans out over eight minutes into a hefting gliding riff, powered by trademark Liebezeit steamhammer hi-hat and Czukay basspulse: the rough sonic diamonds that the group would spend the following years shining until transparent.  'Thief' is one of the saddest songs Can, or anyone, ever wrote: Malcolm Mooney pleading for his life in front of an unseen cosmic court, his voice crumbling as he realises nobody's listening.    Spoon 021   Cannibalism 2   The only reason anyone would want to buy this mid-period sampler would be the three bits of unfinished business from the Cannery: two Suzuki specials from, I would guess, 'ago Mago'/'Future Days' era including the brilliantly stoopid 'Turtles Have Short Legs', and a final Mooney intonation, 'Melting Away' ; one and half minutes of King Crimsonesque floundering thatÕs one of the few things to sound dated. 23 tracks listed on the sleeve, 22 on the disc.   Spoon 023/24   Unlimited Edition    More than just the studio sweepings from Inner Space between 1968-75, '(Un)limited Edition' collects a handful of the group's miniature 'EFS' ethno-forgeries, as well as outtakes and extra songs previously missing, presumed dead. Can's shimmer through   Gomorrha, the trademarked descending chord motif aped by The Fall on 1986's 'I Am Damo Suzuki'  displays the massive variability they could achieve with a familiar dish. The set is dominated by the 18 minute 'Cutaway', an early counterpart to ''Bel Air' spliced together in 1969 from odd jams, snatches of studio backchat and what sounds like a contact-miked blowtorch. 'Transcentral Express', presumably an outtake from the 'Landed' sessions, and titled to attract Kraftwerk fans, is a beautiful duet between bouzouki and Sequential synth: Basic Channel on retsina.   Spoon 025    Landed    The first Can record I bought , and only because none of the others were in print at the time. Not the best starting point, and by their own admission beginning to suffer through techno-overload (Inner Space had by this time taken delivery of a 16 track mixing desk). 'Full Moon On The Highway' is a driving song in both senses; only Micky's blanker-than-Frank vocal and the parched production stop it from roaming up there with Steppenwolf. Plenty of spatial play across the multitrack spectrum, with both a relentless forward drive and rich strata of vertical layers in the mix. 'Hunters And Collectors', with cod-Lou Reed lyric, exemplifies this, while also tolling the end of the 'classic' Can unison, one-take sound (overdubs are all out of sync). The first seven minutes of ''Unfinished' is a Niagara guitar deluge, with feedback play and scraping electronic noise occasionally interrupted by percussion petals. Strange, but for all the surface busy-ness, the overall effect remains distinctly colourless.   Spoon 026   Flow Motion  The only fact Can fans will agree on about the next three albums in the sequence is that they don't even come close to the magical, royal flush that came before. But that doesn't mean that they should be dismissed out of hand. While one hates to sound a killjoy, the whimsical Hawaiian guitars of 'Cascade Waltz' and laidback boogie of 'Laugh Till You Cry, Live Till You Die'' convey the impression that they were having too much, well, fun. But the album's "hit" , the bubbling, discombobulated disco of 'I Want More' and its two minute steamy reprise, are up there with the group's best. Here, the hedonistic imperatives of the dancefloor are taken to an insidious, insistent extreme by all four voices chanting in ritualistic unison. This schizophrenic collection is rounded out by "Smoke", one of the better ethno-forgeries (number 59!), and the lengthy, zipped up skank of the title track.  Spoon 027   Saw Delight    'Don't Say No' is a straight rip-off of 'Moonshake' from 'Future Days', minus the finesse and with filed teeth. Sunny, hi-life guitar loops prettify 'Sunshine Day And Night'; Holger's radio steps to stage front as a more than occasional vocalist. Not wanting to denigrate the work of new recruits, Traffic's Rosko Gee and Reebop, whose bass playing and rippling percussion spur Jaki on to some terrifically solid grooves, but when Rosko takes vocals on ''Call Me' I feel like a house I lived in all my life has been invaded by strangers. 'Animal Waves' forms the strongest continuum with earlier epics: striving for the hover-flow of 'Soon Over Babaluma', they can't quite make the flesh heavier than air.  Spoon 028   Can  Now they were (down to) five: propping up the hole vacated by Holger was clearly demanding labour. With him seemed to depart also the veil that concealed the magical operation of the group: on 'All Gates Open'', Micky raps words that are practically a Can manifesto: ''Now is there any way for you to say where the music ends and where the man begins?'' One song is no more than a 'Sunday Jam'. The 'Can Can' is the unwanted comedian at the wake. Even 'Saw Delight' has its peaks and troughs; 'Can' just sounds like the heart's no longer in it. Mixed at Hansa in Berlin, where only the previous year an upstart Bowie, hand in glove with Eno (fresh from networking with Cluster), had stolen a little of Krautrock's fire by recording 'Low' and 'Heroes'.   Spoon 029   Rite Time   As a Can epitaph (all members declare it will be the last), it's not a bad last rite, although it's initially disorienting to hear Malcolm Mooney croaking along in the multitracked sheen of digital enregisterment. If shorter songs like 'Hoolah Hoolah' and 'Movin'' Right Along' sounded somewhat clipped and husky, the expansive sprawl of 'Like A New Child' and 'On The Beautiful Side Of A Romance' more than compensate. Although the studio time in Nice must have been infinitely more relaxed than those first bursts at the end of the 60s, MooneyÕs cracked vocal chords haven't healed any, and he's lost none of the bruised innocence of the original utterances. The valedictory extra track included on the Spoon CD could be carved on Can's headstone: 'In The Distance Lies The Future''.     Can Solo Edition   Spoon 022   Cannibalism 3   Boiled down to a couple of selections from each solo album, this compilation of post-Can music is more concentrated stock than the whole albums: it's as much as many listeners will want.     Spoon 015   Holger Czukay/Rolf Dammers : Canaxis  "Boat-Woman-Song": what you see is what you get on this 1968 DIY tape composition. Tapes coil around each other, interleaving and interacting in a way that's been described as proto-sampling. Although the process and execution is closer to the more ramshackle exploits of the musique concrete pioneers, the uncredited Vietnamese singers of the first track and chanting Muslim priests of the second conjure an emotional intensity rarely matched by more academic electronic studies. The CD reissue holds an added curiosity: a short, crackling burst of supper jazz from a 1960 Czukay radio transmission called "Mellow Out".   Spoon 016>   Michael Karoli & Polly Eltes : Deluge (The Complete Version)   Seeds of things to come: track 6, 'Home Truths' features a young Kai Althoff on drums, who now extends the Can legacy in his whacked-out Cologne group Workshop. 'Deluge's title misleads:  throughout, Karoli plays the role of harmonious blacksmith, beating difficult material into a usable shape on the anvil of songform. Half dub-drenched primary-colour pop floating on the voice of Ms Eltes; half drunken mess: 'Deluge' is better than a period piece but no forgotten treasure either.     Spoon 017   Jaki Liebezeit Band :  Nowhere   To get a fix of Jaki's drumming, I'm prepared to accept almost any old mouldy vine leaves it might be wrapped in. Luckily, there's not so much to pick through to get to the meat of this 1984 album , unless you count the voice of American Sheldon Ancel, which tries to be a little too studiedly ;weird; for these ears (sorry Sheldon, but you;;re no Malcolm Mooney). In some of the arpeggiating synths of Helmut Zerlett, it;;s possible to hear the patterns that Liebezeit has gone on to work around in his 90s live electronica trio Club Off Chaos. The eccentricities of Holger;s mix shine here too: like Lee Perry, he;;s messing with spatial perspectives and shuffling the entire 16 track pack occasionally, causing intermittent bursts of severe aural disorientation.   Spoon 035    Holger Czukay : Movies  If anything frustrated Holger the most over the final few Can records, it must have been the move away from a totally studio-edited, proto-virtual sound, and into straight, real-time jamming. With 'Movies', he provides the counterweight to that tendency with four tracks that can''t be placed in any kind of realistic location: like a film, the construction process is long (two years in the making), complex and in the service of an entirely artificial reality. The early drum pattern in 'Oh Lord Give Us Your Money'' must be an outtake or recycled tape from 'Landed's ''Full Moon On The Highway'', used as a point of departure, not as a song-in-itself. On "Persian Love", in a succession of bewitching eldritch voices and shrieks, Czukay self-portrays himself as alchemist, warlock, studio sage. ''Hollywood Symphony'' uses a highly conscious, artful soundbite drop-in technique to create a mini operetta, obliquely satirizing West Coast obsession with externality.   Spoon 036   Holger Czukay : On The Way To The Peak Of Normal   Heard in the age of digital ebb and flow, 'Peak Of Normal' sounds clunkier than it probably did when it appeared in 1981. 'Ode To Perfume' and ''Fragrance'' were replies to Eno''s Satie-derived concepts of music as a waft of ''Neroli''; Holger''s tinctures are dripped in with the appealing clumsiness of a mad professor: French horn interrupts with the tartness of a dose of smelling salts. Following Stockhausen's dictum about such recognisable elements as metal, wood, skin and piano sounds and noises acting as familiar traffic signs in a strange sound world, the whole record is a beautifully poised fusion of electronics and instruments, with Jaki's familiar metronome ticking away the timing throughout (although Holger battles his way through the drums on ''Two Bass Shuffle''). An undervalued, clairvoyant collection that could have been made any time in the last quarter of the century.   Spoon 037-38   Irmin Schmidt : Musk At Dusk   Irmin's first 1987 solo effort is short and bittersweet; flavoured with a soupcon of Gallic/Mediterranean essence absorbed from his home in the Provence landscape. (Can never sang a lyric in German, but 'Alcool'' contains three lines of French.) The backbone is provided yet again by the incomplete Can trio of Schmidt, Karoli and Liebezeit; Trilok Gurtu adds subtle percussion on 'The Great Escape's out-of-body experience. The sleeve's Athena-poster graphic of giraffe-legs in black stilettoes makes you think you''re in for a full on 80s Robert Palmer nightmare; but Duncan Fallowell''s lyrics subvert such Copacabana cravings on ''Villa Wunderbar'', where the girls are pretty but have no pity, the boys are witty but are sometimes shitty, and it'''s thoroughly depressing to know theyÕre all successing.   Spoon CD 032-34   Irmin Schmidt - Anthology: Soundtracks 1978-93   As textual backdrops to Can's fiery improvisations, Irmin's contributions were often the last element to be detected in the tumult. These film scores bring his work into sharp focus, as he manipulates a wide platform of moods: cathedral majesty, violent bloodspill, goofy gaming, disconcerting melodiousness. Despite a host of guest musicians, the economy of means predominates: 'Rote Erde', the most conventional piece here, is still closer to Eno's 'Apollo' than 'Betty Blue'. Disc 2 contains quirky pop songs in the mould of John Cale; but it's the third CD where the best material is gathered: the music effects a sea change into a more absorbing, nameless form of atmospherics. 'City Of Magic's tribal drumming flickers across a a freeform trumpet treated with what sounds suspiciously like the Czukay dictaphone. Best of all is 'Man On Fire', with Jaki Liebezeit accompanying a spectral string quartet - Bartok with a dopebeat.

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COMMENTARIES BY DUNCAN FALLOWELL Spoon 004  Monster Movie  The opening seconds of 'Father Cannot Yell' augur great excitement - the music crashes into its pace - this is rock music both wild and sophisticated - then halfway through, that moment when Malcolm Mooney starts syncopating his voice against the pounding onrush - ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha - he's starting up half a dozen stops beyond where James Brown got off (remember this is still the 60's - my God, the 60's were so potent and original!) - and the whole thing levitates in a manner which sends shivers down the spine.  Is this rock music?  It is extraordinary.  'Yoo Doo Right' is 100 feet deep and 20 minutes long and is likewise one of the most amazing animals to find itself put under the label of 'rock'.  The inevitability of its unfolding, with continuous development and without loss of tension, always changing and never changing, surely make it the apogee of the extended rock tracks of that period - certainly nothing ever put out by the more famous acid bands (Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead etc) comes anywhere near it in sheer visceral power.  and this album was only the beginning of a great musical adventure - deep breath before moving on...  Spoon 005  Soundtracks  'Soul Desert', which was unfortunately left off my compilation Cannibalism 1, and was not included on Anthology,  is only available here.  A slow thudding shuffle gels perfectly with Malcolm Mooney's cosmic punk despair delivered in a not quite atonal, not quite sprechgesang voice - no beat vocalist before or since ever got as far out as this and came back.  There is a lovely switch - minor to major - from Karoli's skin-tight guitar near the end - light after burning darkness.  This track defines absolutely the aggressive strangeness of Can's first incarnation.  'Mother Sky' is a witchy flying ride by moonlight and introduces new Japanese vocalist Damon Suzuki whose more slippery, feathered touch will increasingly lift Can's music away from the white-eyed carnivorous angst of Mooney and into a more aerial realm.  Spoon 006/7  Tago Mago  'Mushroom' is one of can's eeriest creations - quite why i'm not sure.  It seems recorded 'elsewhere'.  The piece is constructed from elements - drum, voice, keyboard etc - which have little in common with each other yet which cohere to an intense degree.  It is followed by an explosion, nuclear rain, and the impatient 'Oh Yeah' in which what are really rather jolly musical ideas are disturbed by the anxious drumming - the piece eventually throws itself away in a huff.  'Halleluwah' is can's least spacey epic, 'augm' its most spacey (Tago Mago was issued as a double album).  The band's recordings contain quite a number of these 17 to 20 minute pieces, designed to fill one whole side of vinyl.  These epics are careless of time which means that they are also careless of space - they give one more room physically, intellectually, emotionally: liberation is one of the noblest features of can's art.  I shall not mention any more of the pieces.  I do not wish to enclose an album which is so large and open.    Spoon 008  Ege Bamyasi  Concise and easy going after Tago Mago - indeed this is one of Can's most elegant albums, the-dansant in the outer galaxies, cool under silver palm trees - until a quarter of the way into 'Soup' the group contract some nasty virus and find themselves attacked by a rabid dinosaur which springs from the keyboard and tears a huge bloody chunk out of the afternoon - rarely has such a ferocious beast been caught on tape - Suzuki, already in a groggy sweat, tries to talk to it, with only partial success - the strain is too much, Suzuki flips into a seizure and vaporises - after which there is recovery and a return to health (that is, balanced vitality) on 'I'm So Green" and 'Spoon', a shoulder-lift for mutant schoolchildren.  Spoon 009  Future Days  A beautiful title which the blue of the cover complements perfectly and Damon's vocal on the title track is one of his most poignant - the idea of 'Future Days' is very poignant too, as anyone listening to it more than 20 years after its release will discover.  'Spray': foreplay with no orgasm.  'Moonshake': Can at their neatest, delightful without being cute.  'Bel Air': one of many Can tracks to which I gave the title - the title fits well the overall mood of the album but is misleading insofar as it overlooks the struggle on this track.  Nonetheless this still seems a very complete album, all blue, eternal future and I love it the way you love a member of your family - with ease, with irritability (I  am listening to it now with a cold caught at a party on the border of England and Wales where I met a man called Tim who was a remarkable mixture of fury and love but all the fury came from love - so if there is fury on this album it is not hostile but of that kind  but  I think there is no fury here the only Can album without fury), with comfort rather than precise attention.  This record dissolves the division between sky and earth, dreaming and waking, all in a single soft blue continuum.  Heaven is probably like this.  If you want fire, go to hell.  Spoon 010  Soon Over Babaluma  'Dizzy Dizzy' is a haunting cameo of depression and the end of an affair.  'Come sta, la Luna' (no question mark) is not Fellini but Bunuel.  'Splash' is Barry Manilow wrestling with Frankenstein at the Copacabana - I'm afraid Frankenstein wins. 'Chain Reaction' is not the number sung by Diana Ross. 'Quantum Physics' is actually, I don't know what it is, but once you stop waiting for something to happen it has a very calming effect.  Footnote: with this album Can ended their first and classic period (with United Artists).  My uncertainty over the last track may be related to the awful ambivalence of 'good-bye'.  Spoon 012  Delay 1968  Never felt happy listening to this album - something acrid and uncomfortable about it like a cheesegrater working over one's fingertips, powerful yet crippled like a sick bodybuilder.  No, I disagree with that.  This is loose strangeness - I'm liking it more and more.  No - I disagree - not strange so much as strangely familiar - and slightly out of focus - an alcohol album.  No' I disagree . . . No - I don't disagree.  This is a marvelous, alcoholic album.  It now makes me happy.  Who's grown up, the album or me?  Or has one just regressed to the primal drug?  Spoon 023/24  Unlimited Edition  It is long and not a collection of tracks - better to think of it as a tapestry, a garden of earthly horrors and delights, a fantastic soundworld of symbols and rhythms, a musical labyrinth - once upon a time, in a jewelled pit, there lived a lazy python who dreamed of motor cars. . .  Spoon 025  Landed  The first of the Virgin albums and, as the title implies, it marks Can's coming down to earth a little, a move towards the commercial, the fading of Czukay and the increasing pop influence of Karoli, and the band's eventual disintegration.  Charming trackmaking - then out of this zooms the exceptional - the freeform 'Unfinished' with its East European ache and cinematic menace - Tarkovsky coming after television.  Freeform, yes - Can are one of its great practitioners.  It is good to re-enter this spaciousness of freeform.  Creativity in all the arts, in common with much else, has become so tight since then, so targeted. Now everything must have a slot.  Long live the unslottable!  'Unfinished' is only unfinished in the sense that the balalaika-like melodic phrasing against glowing arpeggios in the early part of the track is so spellbinding that one would love to hear it used in a more extensive way - it is a disappointment that after its initial appearance it never returns.  Spoon 026  Flow Motion  Begins with Can's only international pop hit, the cute 'I Want More'.  Success is so simple - when it happens.  It didn't happen like this again and in consequence Can retained their mystique.  The rest of the album is cuteness versus mystique - cuteness winning on 'Cascade Waltz', 'Laugh till you Cry, Babylonian Pearl.  Mystique wins on the last two tracks.  'Smoke' is a rail journey over level plains, a dry run for 'Rapido de Noir'. 'Flow Motion' is one of Can's 'Pacific Ocean' pieces, this time built on Karoli's love affair with reggae.  The whole album is a bit like watching a dragon trying to fuck a poodle.  Oh, the seductive, corrupting power of popularity!  Spoon 027  Saw Delight  The Afro-Caribbean influence of Reebop and Rosko Gee took Can into goodtime jams beyond the riff. No original beauty is born out of musicianly self-satisfaction - bongo beach in the everlasting now is not for me - it makes me nervous.  This paradoxically is a nervous record.  Maybe it's for you.  Something magical struggles to be seen behind 'Animal Waves' but it's kicked to death by the feverish foreground busy-busy.  Spoon 028  CAN  The prattle of Saw Delight toned down with terrific results - a final flush before the end of Can's third period.  'All Gates Open' could be called 'I'm So Clean'. 'Safe' could be called 'Shivering Cold'.  'Sunday Jam' could be called 'Jamitis' - a relapse into the blender/blander.  'Sodom' ballons in luminous voluptuousness but is securely tethered to a proud yet relaxed walking riff.  The album ends with a sadomasochistic love/hate relationship with Offenbach.  Spoon 029  Rite Time  Can reform with the original line-up and the result is as unusual,  fresh, modern, and seductive as anything they ever recorded.  Each track is very different from its companions and not one of them resembles anything by anyone else, all wrapped up with the finesse and assurance of experience.  Such slinky irresistible riffs!  Fabulous.  SOLO-EDITION  Spoon 30/31  Anthology 25 years  The thing about life is that the older you get the more mysterious it becomes.  I thought it would become less mysterious, I thought I'd understand more, but I find that the questions just grow bigger and deeper and more impossible and that every achieved piece of understanding seems to multiply, hydralike, one's areas of non-understanding and I think, I hope, this is true for most people, not just for me and Sir Isaac Newton.  Wish someone had warned me - not that it would've made a difference to the brute fact but, you know, they could've just . . . warned me - well, maybe for some people life does grow more comprehensible but when I was young I had no idea what a strange journey it would turn out to be - life was problematic then but not strange.  So you can be a know-all at 18  but at 38, 58, 78, it doesn't look good, which is why the older you get the simpler you become - to become anything else is just silly - don't lose your silliness by the way but later you don't quite believe it, while at 18 you believe in everything because it is all so clearly mapped - of course at 18 you hardly know what to do with the map but at least you do have one, whereas later on the best one can hope for is not to understand but to accept,  which is the way to avoid degenerating into mere bewilderment, and then there's that other problem, staying young in heart but the machine breaking down - problematic! -  and I suppose finally in the end, if one's lucky, one just stands there with the mouth hanging open in sublime and thankful amazement as death pours into you, streams through you, although I imagine by that stage you'd not be standing but lying down somewhere . . .  Spoon  01/2  Cannibalism  No. 1  Do not confuse 'period' with 'incarnation'.  Can has had many incarnations, taken various forms with various contributors, but their work falls into 3 broad periods and these are represented by Cannibalism 1, 2 and 3.  The first period is referred to in my note on  Soon Over Babaluma.  I discovered Can  in the record department of Russell Acott, the music shop in Oxford High Street.  It must have been late 1969 or early 1970. I was into acid at the time and thought this the trippiest band I'd ever heard - the Velvet Underground were immediately demoted to No. 2.  Both were very up-to-date in their daring and ferocity but whereas the Velvet Underground trailed off into picturesque American sleaze, Can trailed up to the stars in the sky above a European castle.  Lyrically Lou Reed was superior - but words I could do myself.  Musically Can were far superior.  The Velvet Underground, like all rock bands, could only repeat itself; Can was something else because it  grew . . . Now, look, I have a problem here - the only other rock band to grow was the Beatles.  So am I saying Can were/are not a rock band?  Yes - and no.  You see, I have been asked to write these commentaries on the Can oeuvre and sometimes this carries you into knots and corners.  Beware of painting yourself into a corner.    Spoon 021  Cannibalism 2  I disagree violently with this selection. Spoon 022  Cannibalism  No.  3  Soloisms.  After listening to all these albums on CD as well as on vinyl, I conclude vinyl to be the superior medium - noticeably a warmer, deeper, rounder, richer sound.  Also - every time I listen to music from the Can world I discover something new - the music is inexhaustible.  The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.  Said that before.  Can't remember where.  This record says I made this compilation.  Don't remember doing it.  Does anyone know where I left my car?    Spoon 015  Canaxis - Czukay/Dammers  Recorded in 1968, Holger demonstrates his new discovery - sampling.  The whole has the atmosphere of the temple and echoes of North European choirs too.  He was never to0 holy again, not even when he sampled the Pope.  In Cologne is an apartment where a man records on sound tape the growing of his plants while his wife slowly on tiptoe takes every phone off the hook and a cat pretends not to be waiting for food.  Play softly.  Spoon  016  Deluge - Karoli/Eltes  Micky's harem album - gorgeous guitar sounds weaving among giggles, squeaks, wails and shrugs.  The female vocalist(s) is (are) bewildered - where am I? (where is/are she/they?) - but the guitar strides on. We are not invited to this private party but are permitted to witness its goings-on from a nearby balcony.  Spoon  017  Nowhere - Jaki Liebezeit and the Phantomband  A tight little space album from Jaki Liebezeit - the galaxy in your pocket.  Thankfully it isn't a drum showcase but a real record and he knows that an album released in the pop/rock milieu must have a vocalist, must have words.  A band by itself is simply not enough and has never succeeded without words. Words are vital in order to define the dramatic or human arena in which the music is to be experienced, drenching the sounds with meaning.  Only the complex intellectual structures of classical music can dispense with this - and even then a colourful title will often supply the conceptual contact with the listener.  Music is no more 'pure' than any other art form because all art is life.  Bach in a cold white room? What Poetry!  Jaki solves the word problem by having an American intone lyrics in a deadpan manner - Holger did it on some of his stuff too.  I don't like that! But Americans do. It reminds them, back on Madison Avenue, of their bohemian days in Prague, Paris, Berlin...  Spoon 011  Toy Planet - Schmidt/Spoerri  This curious marriage album, full of outrageous charm and meditative beauty, is overshadowed by one of Irmin Schmidt's greatest pieces - 'Rapido de Noir'.  (Bruno Spoerri's contribution to the overall album is very great but not to this particular track). At a metaphorical level its meaning is inexhaustible - the devil rides out, the last train to Aushwitz, the journey to eco-catastrophe - but these are only flecks on the wall of its passing.  To fix on any such programme is too small, too negative.  There is awe here, for it is beyond good and evil, a journey to the region beyond myth, the last train to the ultimate mystery, that is, to a reality beyond men - and it is built up from the recording of a real train too.  Since a train journey, as well as being away from something is also towards something, it is always a projection into the future, and the sound of this journey is hypnotically inviting - so this is a soundtrack not towards disaster but more - towards our death - into the gorgeous mouth of our death - and beyond -  into darkness, warmth, vastness, a huge pool of meaning.  At the same time (returning to the earlier point) it does contain for me all the wondrous and tragic history of 20th century Europe in a dark stream of terrible splendour.  And out of this streaming grandiose matrix there appears with unexpected drama and pathos an individual human playing a mouth organ - except that it is not a mouth organ but in fact a Prophet  5 Synthesiser distorted with guitar wah-wah.  Sometimes a man will create something whose power he cannot know - something is created through him - this is such a work.  The listener too is taken.  I can think of little else in contemporary music which enthrals to this degree.  Even better on vinyl.  Spoon 032/33/34  Anthology - Soundtracks  1978-1993  - Irmin Schmidt  Be the star of your own film with 3 1/2 hours of scenic wonders, moods, melodies, surprises, and some strokes of heart-stopping genius.  I play it more often than any other album in the set.  A huge and glamorous soundworld. What more can I say?  Spoon 035  Musk At Dusk - Irmin Schmidt The song, though a cameo medium, has been one of the most fertile art forms of the 20th century - and probably the sexiest.  What Irmin and I have been trying to do on this album and Impossible Holidays and elsewhere is take the song forward in unexpected ways without destroying the appeal of its limitations - 2 romantics with classical methods.  The result is a series of small works which  seem to emerge from and disappear back into a much greater creative soil.  Both Irmin and I are culturally voracious - high, low, alien cultures feed this appetite and from the resultant compost exceptional new fruit do grow.  Cultural life is usually divided into three categories.  Insofar as we subsume all that, our art heralds the 21st  century. The first post-modern songwriters complete with historical references!  But I don't see any of this as 'far out' - and the songs are much more consciously crafted than was usual with say Can (who may be described as classicists with romantic methods) - small windows carved into contemporary life.  Spoon 036  Impossible Holidays - Irmin Schmidt  That  greater creative soil became apparent with the creation of the opera Gormenghast, here trailered by one of Irmin's most magical soundstreams.  His piano on this and on other tracks is a key feature of the album.  Some things to relish elsewhere: Micky Karoli"s fabulously blazing guitar on 'Le Weekend' ; Geoff Warren's sax on 'Surprise' and 'Lullaby Big' ; Juan Jose Mosalini's tangoesque bandoneon on 'Time the Dreamkiller' (and indeed on Musk at Dusk's 'Cliff into Silence').  A word about 'The Shudder Of Love' - it is one of our most moving love songs, both for lyrics and melody, and Irmin's version does not do it justice.  So here I am making a request to Barbra Streisand - judging from your recent albums, Barbra, there aren't too many great love songs around at the moment - this is a great   love song - please record it.

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