Can: Soon Over Babaluma [SPOON / MUTE]

Why you'll love it

This remastered edition comes from the band's own Spoon Records with Mute. Soon Over Babaluma pushes the ambient glide of Future Days even further out, with "Chain Reaction" and "Dizzy Dizzy" keeping the pulse up.

This edition

• Remastered

About the album

The word Babaluma began as a mishearing. Irmin Schmidt said something to drummer Jaki Liebezeit, Liebezeit asked if he'd said Babaluma, and Schmidt liked it so much he kept it, explaining the title as a trip through space towards somewhere just past the moon. That's roughly where the music goes, too. It was the band's first album after singer Damo Suzuki left in 1973, so guitarist Michael Karoli took over most of the vocals and Schmidt sang "Come Sta, La Luna."

Karoli's voice on "Dizzy Dizzy" ticks along with the artificial hi-hats Schmidt built from slide guitar and an echo unit, and Pitchfork heard it as Can's version of ska. "Come Sta, La Luna" is a sleepy mechanical tango with a field recording borrowed from the WDR sound effects library, "Chain Reaction" rumbles towards tribal trance, and "Quantum Physics" drifts from a major key into something more unearthly.

It was also the last Can album made on a two-track tape recorder, which makes all that space even more impressive. Some bands need a 48-track desk to sound this far away; Can managed it with two tracks and a misheard word.

Also at Kops: more Can on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Spoon / Mute (cat# 9424-1), a reissue of the 1974 album.