Can: Tago Mago 2LP Orange Vinyl

Why you'll love it

This limited 2LP set is remastered and pressed on orange vinyl, with a download card. Tago Mago is widely hailed as Can's boldest record, and the 18-minute "Halleluwah" is one of the great grooves in rock.

This edition

2LP set
Orange vinyl
Limited edition
Remastered
Download card included

About the album

Can found their singer the way most bands find a good café: by walking past him. Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit spotted Damo Suzuki busking outside a café in Munich in 1970, invited him to sing with them that night, and Tago Mago became the first full album to feature him.

The band recorded it between November 1970 and February 1971 at Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle near Cologne lent to them rent-free by an art collector. Sessions ran up to 16 hours a day, with Czukay editing long jams into finished pieces on two-track tape with just three microphones, often in the castle's echoing entrance hall. "Paperhouse" and "Mushroom" are taut and hypnotic, "Oh Yeah" runs backwards in places, Liebezeit's drumming carries "Halleluwah," and "Aumgn" and "Peking O." plunge into tape-collage experiments, before "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" brings everyone gently back to earth.

Funk rhythms, rock improvisation and musique concrète have rarely shared a room so happily, and the album has inspired generations of musicians since. Recording in a castle may sound grand, but the results suggest the acoustics were worth every draughty corridor.

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