2 LP This week Mute Records continue their series of live gigs by the legendary German experimental rock group CAN with the release of Live in Paris 1973. While the three previous releases in this series documenting gigs in Stuttgart, Brighton and Cuxhaven have all been excellent, this one recorded live at L’Olympia, Paris is really something very special indeed! 1973 would prove to be a pivotal year for CAN, the band released the album Future Days, the third in a totemic series of records that includes 1972’s Ege Bamyasi and 1971’s Tago Mago, and lead singer Damo Suzuki would choose to call it time with the group, having been an integral part of a trilogy of records featuring some of the most groundbreaking and influential rock music ever recorded. In fact, the live recording presented here on Live in Paris 1973 document one of Suzuki’s last ever performances with the group. Seasoned CAN fans will be well aware that Suzuki’s integration to the band following the departure of vocalist Malcolm Mooney, to join founding members Jake Liebezeit (drums), Holger Czukay (Bass), Irmin Schmidt (Keyboards) and Michael Karoli (Guitar) is a crucial moment in which the band truly establish themselves as the highly experimental, boundary breaking, free-form group we are most familiar with. While the Mooney era of CAN was and remains a nascent period of exciting experimentation, it is one firmly fixed within the post-Velvet Underground rock idiom, whereas CAN with Suzuki offer something altogether more amorphously psychedelic, fluidly far-out, otherworldly, enigmatic and revolutionary. All of which is abundantly present in the newly restored and cleaned up audio of this live set. Live In Paris 1973 throws the listener in at the deep end with opening track Eins (all tracks are simply numbered in German), a terrific thirty six-minute exploratory, frazzled jam that expands upon the compositions captured on Ege Bamyasi and Tago Mago. It’s perhaps worth noting that much of CAN’s standout studio recordings are the product of extended jams, frequently cut up and edited by bass player and producer Czukay, meaning that as a live unit, the band would then often perform extended, improvisatory work-outs of these relatively concise studio cuts. And Eins is certainly one of these studio type jams. Karoli’s guitars are crazed as they careen and soar skyward, equally adept at inflecting the music with blues-based rock as he is introducing out-there eastern tinged motifs or minimal, drone inspired repetition. Liebezeit’s drums and Czukay’s bass are forever propulsive, producing pounding, eyes wide open, forward facing rhythms that constantly pave out the road ahead in new and refreshing ways. Meanwhile Schmidt is busy cooking up hallucinatory signals and whirring atmospheres as his synth textures elevate the group to new heights. All the while Suzuki is able to, with astonishing grace, not only keep up with the musical assault behind him but become an integral part of its direction and feel. Suzuki is incantatory, shaman-like as he feels his way through the ever-growing, dynamic and shifting onslaught and in the pantheon of great improvisatory singers Suzuki deserves a place among the Morrisons, Beefhearts, Browns of this world. The energy apparent on this superb recording is palpable and all gates are flung wide open, as the five-piece function as a solid unit choose which of those paths to follow with seemingly telepathic cohesion and machine-like precision. It’s a genuinely astonishing piece of improvisation that places CAN, in terms of rock music at an untouchable summit. Perhaps only the Grateful Dead can lay a glove on CAN at this point, and even so it’s rare that the Dead, as good as they were, would reach such ecstatic states of consciousness as documented here. Suzuki’s influence over proceedings begins to grow as the concert goes on, helped by the fact that the three of the following four tracks are all live versions of tracks that had appeared on Ege Bamyasi released a year prior, though the tracks One More Night, Spoon and Vitamin C are greatly enhanced by the long-form free-rock treatment they are given here. Zwei (One More Night) is extended to nine stunning minutes of funk-rock fusion aided by Leibezeit’s percussive patterns, Karoli’s lines of acid guitar and Suzuki’s abstract vocal snatches. Drei takes the track Spoon (a hit single in Germany) as its basis, and it too is a track that undoutably benefits from the long-form rendering it is given. The catchy pop sound of it’s studio version is presented merely as a foundation to be demolished, torn down and rebuilt again and again with Schmidt’s keyboards giving off ominous clouds of psychedelic haze, while Karoli’s guitar growls and shreds as irreverently and as excitingly as any guitarist before or after him. This monstrous rendition pummels with relentless motorik insistence as Suzuki’s possessed vocals re-enter the fray, pushing the track past the ten-minute mark before raring up for an exhilarating conclusion of break-neck rhythms, Stooges-esque garage-rock carnage and a blazing inferno of furious psychedelic soloing. Mindblowing. Vier continues where Drei left off, it’s a blistering jam on which Suzuki’s spell-binding, repetitious phrases and Liebezeit’s rhythms are at their most interlaced. It presents significant evidence for not only Suzuki’s place at the pinnacle of live performers of experimental music, but also reinforces Liebezeit’s standing as not only the very best rock drummer of his generation, but of all time. There is no other drummer in the history of music able to rock, groove and improvise in quite the same way as Liebezeit, and Live in Paris 1973 makes this more than abundantly clear. This five track, ninety-minute live recording begins to culminate on Funf, which reorientates the familiar, bubbling rhythm of what is perhaps CAN’s best known track, Vitamin C. One CAN’s most perfect songs, it’s intoxicating funk rhythm is pure ear candy and Suzuki’s refrain of “You’re losing your Vitamin C” remains one of experimental rock’s most unfathomable but also memorable lines giving the track it’s odd, outsider pop hook. As perfect as it is, you may find yourself wishing the studio recording kind of went on a bit…. longer. And those wishes are granted as Funf, with it’s high speed rhythms, screeching guitar and winding organ drones, displays the group’s ability to intuitively transform established compositional templates and take them down endless avenues of sonic experimentation that are constantly interesting, unpredictable and insanely thrilling. Live In Paris 1973 ranks right up there with those three studio records on which Damo Suzuki features and to have access to a high quality recording from this era is almost beyond belief. It captures one of the greatest rock bands of all time at their absolute peak, as at home summoning the raw riffage of blues and classic rock as they are conjuring sudden, joyous bursts of pure funk or erupting in riotous noise in entirely unique, tumbling visions of boundless psychedelia. For any fan of avant-rock this live set is 100% ESSENTIAL. A1 Paris 73 Eins (Part 1) B1 Paris 73 Eins (Part 2) C1 Paris 73 Zwei C2 Paris 73 Drei D1 Paris 73 Vier D2 Paris 73 Fünf Mute and Spoon Records present the next instalment of the curated CAN live concert series, LIVE IN PARIS 1973, the first in the series to feature Damo Suzukis vocals. The series was overseen by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer/engineer Rene Tinner, who delicately worked on restoring the archival recordings to the best quality for current modern technology. This record captures the band’s 1973 performance in Paris and features Irmin Schmidt on keyboard & synths, Jaki Liebezeit on drums, Michael Karoli on guitars, Holger Czukay on bass, and Damo Suzuki on vocals for one of his final shows with the band. Available on double vinyl and 2-disc CD, with exclusive sleeve notes by journalist Wyndham Wallace.
