Can: Future Days (1973)
Just when you think you know what Can was up to, they give us Future Days. This was the final album to feature Damo Suzuki, before becoming a Jehovah’s Witness and getting married.
This is a much more mellow and low-key offering than what they gave us before. Damo Suzuki’s singing is, unsurprisingly more low key as well, you can tell this would be his final effort with Can. The album starts with the title track, which shows Can at their most pleasant. I have a rather difficult time trying to describe this one.
The next cut, “Spray” at first, sounds like a bunch of rather pointless ambient noodling, but then the beauty of the cut reveals itself. The second half is much more structured, with Damo Suzuki’s voice kicking in.
“Moonshake” was also released as a single, and shows Can during one of the more funky moments (not unlike “Halleluwah” off Tago Mago, except this is only three minutes long).
The final cut is the 20 minute epic “Bel Air”. As wonderful this cut is, it really divided the opinions of the band members. Bassist Holger Czukay liked it for its symphonic qualities, while drummer Jaki Liebezeit hated it for those same qualities. This cut goes through several different changes, some rhythmic passages, some rather fusion-influenced passages (not surprising, as Jaki Liebezeit came from a jazz-oriented background), and the occasional passages that are just plain strange.
Future Days is often described as mellow and ambient, but only to a point, because there are actually some intense passages, particularly on “Bel Air”. In my opinion, this is one of Can’s best. For those turned off by odd experiments like “Aumgn” and “Peking O” (Tago Mago), or “Soup” (Ege Bamyasi), you won’t have that problem here. Future Days just proves that Can was simply one of the greatest of Krautrock bands, so if this isn’t in your collection, get yourself a copy.
– Recorded 1973 at Inner Space Studio
– Original label of album: United Artists
Members:
– Holger Czukay: bass
– Irmin Schmidt: keyboards
– Jaki Liebezeit: drums
– Michael Karoli: guitar, violin
– Damo Suzuki: vocals