Customer Reviews

Ege Bamyasi

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This may be CAN's most fun album. My personal favorite by this band, the album starts out with a simultaneous squawk from the guitar, a crash from drums, and a smiling sigh from out-there vocal stylist Damo Suzuki. "Pinch" proceeds to loosely veer into dangerous and unpredictable territory for nearly 10 minutes. "Sing Swan Song" is subdued and beautiful, perfectly transforming into the rhythm and quiet feel of flowing of water that begins the track. "Sing Swan Song" also serves as a precursor to the more ambient explorations of their next album FUTURE DAYS. It also, like the lighter, airier "One More Night" features a haunting (without the "haunt") keyboard sound. "Vitamin C" is such a cool song. Jaki L. steps up the intensity with a poly-rhythmic drum march and M. Karoli delivers a sinister descending jazz-guitar.

"You! You're losing! you're losing! you're losing yer Vitamin C!"

"Vitamin C" dissolves into a computerized scramble which turns into the more challenging "Soup" - actually it contains a good song or 2 in there before it goes off the map into some fascinating experimental territory a la the wierder moments on TAGO MAGO. "I'm So Green" is truly the epitome of COOL (unlike what some frankly misguided reviewer wrote here). We get that great jazz guitar style again from Michael and an irressistably catchy rhythm that breaks into an even catchier one at the end - very smooth. "Spoon" could be the coolest of all CAN songs. It's trippier with a distinctive atmosphere, delivered in large manner once again by those haunted keys.

This band was so creative. This album shows them in top form. I know this music isn't for everyone . . . but it should be!

This is absolutly beautiful music. This music can take you off to another land if you let it. Can was a band of brilliant musicians,and were considered to be the best experimental band of the 70's. This album has a very psychedelic feel and sound to it,but also a gloomy one. It kind of gives me the feeling of a rainy day,but yet has a mysticl feeling to it. Songs like Sing Swan Song and Spoon are Dreary and surreal,whilst songs such as Vitamin C and One More Night are run on tight beats and funky rythums. Damo Suzuki's lyrics are basically incomprehensible but also add to the beauty of the music(especially the harmony in Spoon)Jaki Liebezit is one of my favorite drummers. He has some of the most complex rhythums iv'e ever heard eg:One more night,Vitamin C and soup. Michael Karoli's guitar playing is also brilliant and is pretty much toned down very much in comparison with their first three albums. Irmin Schmitt adds some "otherworldly" keyboard effects,and Holger Czukay is one hell of a basist, and a genious! This is a must have album for music fans of Psychedelic,experimental/avant garde music!

Charles Mingus is my favorite jazzman, and I loved this release by Can. The two are not similar. In fact, they are in no way related. The point of this review is to make sure that Mingus fans are not frightened off by the reviewer below.

Thanks.

Ege Bamyasi is Can's fourth album and the third with Damo Suzuki. This time around, they tend to do a more percussion-heavy approach that's not unlike "Spray" off their following album, Future Days, although the music isn't as ambient as what's found on that album, of course. "Sing Swan Song" is a rather meloncholic piece with that great psychedelic vibe. "One More Night" reminds me a lot of early Kraftwerk, especially the use of the Farfisa Professional electric piano. "Soup" is the one that divides opinions. To me, this is very much like "Peking O" from their previous effort (similar weird shrieks from Suzuki himself). The cut starts off sounding more like Mooney-era Can, in fact, this is the closest I've heard Damo Suzuki sound like Malcolm Mooney. But then all that disappears in favor strange feed back and electronic effects. The band then livens things up with "I'm So Green" which I get a kick off, because it's the band at their more humorous side. "Spoon" was actually a single released at the end of 1971, and was a hit for these guys in Germany. I have noticed the occasional Middle Eastern influences on this album, probably because Ege Bamyasi was the name of canned okra that originated from Turkey. This album is a real grower, and if you're a fan of Can, be sure to add this album to your collection.

Can's 4th album found them moving in a more ambient direction after the experimental freakouts that culminated with Tago Mago. Ege Bamyasi has just the right mix of the two styles to make it one of Can's most entertaining and satisfying recordings, and while I rate Future Days as the band's ultimate achievement, I would recommend Ege Bamyasi as an ideal introduction to the band since it neatly and concisely brings together the various aspects of the Can sound on one CD.

The two longer workouts, "Pinch" and "Soup," recall the wild and improvised nature of Tago Mago while reining in enough of that album's excess to make them more accessible. While many of their fellow Krautrock bands tended to be electronics-heavy, Can used a standard lineup of vocals-guitar-keys-bass-drums, then proceeded to do things with their instruments that were anything but standard. Jaki Liebezeit was a human drum machine capable of startlingly precise rhythms and polyrhythms that provided the beat-centric base for the Can sound. Besides his intuitive and brilliant bass work, Holger Czukay loved playing around with experimental studio technology and provided an additional veneer to the sound. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and guitarist Michael Karoli avoided any of the "normal" soloing associated with their instruments, instead choosing to coax new and different effects which included everything from ambient soundscapes to percussive type attacks.

As for Japanese singer Damo Suzuki, his completely unique mixture of opium den ranting, beat poetry and assorted chants, croons and shouts re-wrote the definition of "lead singer."

"Sing Swan Song" begins with watery nature sounds just like Yes' Close To The Edge the same year, before settling into an atmospheric mid-tempo groove entwined with Karoli's sinewy lines and Suzuki's drowsy croon.

"One More Night" and "Vitamin C" both show just why this band is considered so influential. You cannot believe this stuff was recorded way back in 1972 when it sounds so fresh and modern. Both songs are insanely catchy, and my only complaint is that I wish "Vitamin C" was longer so I wouldn't have to hit the repeat button all the time.

The album is rounded out by a pair of 3-minute "pop" songs that showed just how far Can had come from the 20-minute jams of only a year earlier. Both songs set up the usual killer rhythmic underpinning, while everybody else, even Suzuki, seems to be trying to sound like a "normal" pop group. Which of course they don't, and we wouldn't want it any other way!

There isn't a bad track on this album, and it has hooks that will settle deep within your psyche. It's experimental and avant-garde, yet entertaining and accessible. 5 stars.

Since Can established themselves as the best band in the world with 'Tago Mago,' it became customary for them to forge a few genres that wouldn't exist for another decade on each of their successive albums. Modern house and techno owes just about everything to this little masterpiece, Ege Bamyasi. That isn't to say that this album is just proto-dance music - Can is very much an avant-garde/experimental combo and finds plenty of time to dink around with cool noises inspired by Stockhausen along with creating incredibly prescient rhythms.

I would cover every track, since they're all brilliant, but since I'm lazy I'll just point out the finest moments - "Pinch," nine minutes of swirling keyboards, surreal mumbled vocalizations, and insanely funky rhythms bending and twisting in mesmerizing patterns, "Soup," a distorted monster-funk anthem that spirals into utter avant-garde madness with Japanese mock-opera ranting overtop, and "I'm so Green, the single funkiest, coolest little piece of music ever recorded, with the most infectious tune you'll ever hear and a rhythm so bloody cool you could get Strom Thurmond dancing to it. Quit reading this amateurish review by a pseudo-hip English major and buy this thing.

Let's face it, if the members of Can were stock brokers back in 73' they'd see Bill Gates comin' from miles away. These guys are more than a genre, they took music to where it is today. Today's pioneering bands like Stereolab, Tortoise, and the ambient soundscapes that proliferate (Tosca, Mouse on Mars, etc.),owe their livlihoods to Can. They are without a doubt one of the most influential bands ever. Let's face it, no one ever came close to their originality then..or now.

Imagine assembling a band by pulling a delirious drunk off the streets to do vocals, and then calling in the rhythm section of Traffic (circa 'On the Road') and Fripp/Eno/Byrne to provide 'treatments'. This may give you some idea of the sound of this magnificent and influential album. Without it. it's hard to imagine Eno and Byrne's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' (1981) even existing.

'Ege Bamyasi' was, it turned out, the name of the Istanbul manufacturer of okra, a tin of which the band discovered at a Turkish restaurant. There was some delay before the release of this album because the band were in a legal dispute with their former manager. Remember Esther & Abi Ofarim's 'Cinderella Rockefella' single? Dreadful, of course, but Abi was that former Can manager.

What I love about this album is the spontaneous live feel to many of the tracks. The bustle of Jaki Liebezeit's cyclical drumming come straight at you from the first few seconds of track #1 -- and the drums are particularly well recorded for a 1972 album.

The only difficult track is the totally spontaneous 'Soup', an improvisation hastily put together to meet the record company's deadline. Damo Suzuki's vocals here make Magma's Klaus Blasquiz seem really quite restrained.

Otherwise there are many, dare I say, catchy numbers, such as 'Spoon', 'Pinch', 'Vitamin C', and 'I'm So Green'. With so many three-minute songs, it was no surprise that this was Can's most accessible and commercially successful album thus far. And it laid the ground for 1973's superb 'Future Days'.

Pinch - sounds like a live workout, with Karoli providing squalling feedback around Jaki's highly fractured drumming, while Damo sings passionately about something unintelligible, while Holger and Irmin contribute to the rhythm. Avant-garde, far out, and highly uncommercial.

Sing Swan Song - beautiful swaying track, lovely and subtle and strong.

One More Night - even more subtle track, and a brilliant exercise in minimalism. Irmin plays a one-note "noise solo" at one point over the stripped-down R&B groove.

Vitamin C - Damo yelling about losing Vitamin C over a wonderful, creative, typically intense beat by Jaki.

Soup - 10 minutes of tape-manipulated abstraction - "Augmn" but faster.

I'm So Green - so-so sparse song.

Spoon - Wonderful little song full of gently tugging cross-rhythms, every member of the band contributing. Actually became a big hit in Germany.

Not quite as demented as "Tago Mago" or "Monster Movie," this is the album that made them stars in Germany. It's largely a continuation of the ideas pioneered in "Tago Mago," where the band was layering manifold drum rhythms intercut with sparse guitar buzzes, eerie keyboard effects, and ultra-minimalist bass throbs. All is topped off by the incomprehensible but compelling vocals of Damo Suzuki. And like "Tago Mago," this is still a good 20 years ahead of its time, and has been stolen from by myriad artists who have taken credit for innovations that were not theirs. Can deserve to be far more well known than they are. Find out where your fave alternative artists REALLY stole their licks from, and get your brain massaged in the bargain. Buy this CD.