Anthology

In granting Can a producer’s highest possible plaudits, Brian Eno said: “If you want to make records for people to remix, make less brilliant records in the first place.” Can are indeed brilliant. The German experimentalists surrendered to an infinity of influences—Velvet Underground fundamentals, free jazz, world-beat, electronic music (two members studied under controversial composer Karlheinz Stockhausen)—during a career that spanned five decades. The remastered, two-disc Anthology covers the group’s catalogue from 1968 to 1993. The compilation is atomic, anarchistic, insurgent, exhausting. Disc one is spliced with tracks featuring Can’s first vocalists: Possessed shaman Malcolm “Desse” Mooney and enigmatic spaceman Kenji “Damo” Suzuki. “Outside My Door” typifies the Can Mooney fronted: Mad Lib lyrics, the guitar squall of Barrett-era Floyd, and a bit of plume (harmonica). In “Mushroom,” an ominous melody and shuffling rhythms bounce over Suzuki’s bewitched chants. Disc two displays less naked enthusiasm, its parts gleaned from post-Mooney/Suzuki efforts: the reggae-tinged Flow Motion, a stab at commercialism, and 1989’s reunion with Mooney, Rite Time. Anthology is a fitting introduction to artists who strived to—quoting keyboardist Irmin Schmidt—“play music that had never been played.”