Search - Can :: Can (Hybr)

Can can, Can did, and Can still does

gerold firl | san diego california | 08/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Given the eponymous titularity, one might think Can Can was the opening salvo of their brilliant discography. Not so. This was actually their last album (1978) until their Re-union party in 1989 (Rite Time).



This was also the last time their heavy traffic rhythm section (Rosko Gee and Reebop Kwaku Baah) recorded with the group. It's a damn shame they broke up afterwards, because this album is a marvelous masterpiece.



Can (this album) does not contain any of their crazy, atonal, non-melodic experiments, unless you count the non-traditional arrangement of that old chestnut "Ping Pong" which only lasts 25 seconds. Every other song is a gem.



Karoli's guitar work improved steadily as time went on, and here he shows the many facets of his genius: delicate fingering, classical pick-work, and hard-core acid licks bristling with feedback and soaring into outer space.



Best song: Sodom. 5:43 of razor-edge electronic-flavored avant garde acid-rock. Karoli shreds mercilessly, and his guitar still gives me chills despite having listened to this album dozens of times. Beautiful.



Liebezeit kills on the skins, as usual.



The album is also quite humorous. The EFS offering (no. 99) is a bit of a departure for the Ethnological Forgery Series. Rather than working within a specific musical idiom from a non-Western cultural tradition, EFS 99 is a recreation of a Tin Pan Alley/Broadway/Moulin Rouge musical rendition of the Jacques Offenbach Gallop from _Orpheus in the Underworld_. After the musical intermission of Ping Pong, we go right back to the Can Can with Can Be, a sprightly remake of Offenbach in another western idiom, this time a classic 70's Wendy Carlos-type electronica version.



These guys could do it all, and could do no wrong."