Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shake the moon, December 28, 2008
This review is from: Future Days (Audio CD)
"Future Days", the last of Can's golden era trilogy, is possibly the most ambitious and wildly innovative of the three. It expands on the psych-funk of "Ege Bamyasi" through elegant, vast electronic soundscapes that give an ethereal and haunting atmosphere. It's electronic, but don't be thinking Jean Michel Jarre or Kraftwerk - it's still undeniably Can.
The evolving sound of "Future Days" is evident from the go with the superb opening title track. Layers of texture and noise build until giving way to a sublime, delicate groove, decorated with guitar flashes and lush synth washes. "Spray" offers more experimentation with some frenetic, jazzy instrumentation that swaggers and bulges, builds up and breaks down. "Moonshake" is most reminiscent of the Can sound found on their previous works - by far the shortest and sharpest track on the album, the song is full-on funky Can at their catchy and accessible best.
The centre-piece to the album though comes with the giant twenty minute "Bel Air". The opening five minutes is some of the most beautiful music to pass my ears, anchored by an ethereal, haunting base line, the song then weaves in and out of structures, always shifting dynamics and textures. At times starkly minimal with gentle guitar and synth work, at others energetic, dense and percussion laden. It's a triumph to the band.
Unlike so many bands from the 70s that dabbled in electronic outings, Can's music still sounds fresh and exciting today. This is one of the most important and influential albums to come out of the krautrock and 70s rock scene. Highly recommended to everyone.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timeless Beauty and Drive, November 28, 2008
This review is from: Future Days (Audio CD)
Two tracks on this record are, for me, absolutely essential CAN: The proto-ambient, latin groove of Future Days and the in-your-face drive of Moonshake. While Splash offers an undercurrent of tension and unease, Bel-Air just sings with light. For Damo Suzuki, this was already becoming too symphonic and the album marked his final recording--completing the trio of CAN's most enduring classics. Like CAN's other great material, the recordings are devoid of fashion and impossible to date. They sounds as fresh as the day this music was born (and meticulously hand-edited = spliced with razorblades and tape by Holger Czukay) and hold up to anything from any era. Get it. This may be the best ten bucks you'll ever spend in your life.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ocean in my ears., December 20, 2010
This review is from: Future Days (Audio CD)
Future Days by Can is such a grand achievement of progressive rock, that it literally gives me too much to write about to formulate a standard music review. Instead of focusing on the entire album, I have decided to only write about the final piece, Bel Air...I hesitate to even refer to it as a song. It lasts 19:52 and is set up in three sections resembling the structure of a classical chaconne form rather then a rock song. The first two sections last roughly 4:45 a piece, before the final section reintroduces the opening theme, while leading to an epic conclusion.
The astonishing Bel Air is built upon a set of chromatically descending chords that makes the very framework of the piece feel like it is continually melting at all times. It is as much ethereal as it is elemental, as if it is comprised of wispy curtains of air and water. At first I could not decide if I was being visually transported onto some Pacific north-west beach where the ocean is always bearing down in a continual vapor of grayish blue green sea air and drizzle, or if I was being tossed into the very bowels of the ocean itself. I have ultimately decided on the later. It is at the 11:49 point that a tital wave catapults the listener from the passivity marking the main themes return, into an urgency of such epic proportions and force, that one feels propelled through time and space in suspended animation as if shot out of a cannon...And oh man! The drumming in this first fourty second of velocity, with its subtle use of hyperventilating snares and cymbal paterns is so enchantingly brilliant that it is next to impossible to not rewind the music just to listen to this passage over and over again.
What happens next is the fire and brimstone of Bel Air, four straight minutes of tidal turbulance before the massive swell of disorder and chaos finally breaks upon a rocky shore in a continual dissapating draw of pulling chords and backwards rolling drum riffs, while over the top, a clarinet toned electric guitar flutters through the continual inhale of ocean break like an exasperated sea gull. This continual roll of crashing surf lasts just over a minute and a half before it reaches its conclusion, total stillness. For a full half a minute, the only sound is that of the keyboards pedal point reverb simulating the eerie unsettled calmness after the storm. Then from deep within the silence of the mix, out of the spent devistation of the tsunami, rises the urgent coda with its wondrous clarinet toned guitar soaring over the top of this continual melting foundation like the weightless wings of a hawk. This coda ends with a single exhale, as if some mythical creature like Poseidon itself just sighed with eternal satisfaction...I almost tremble at the mere thought of how magical this single instrumental groan feels, and Bel Air is full of these magical moments throughout.
Notice that at no time will my hand leave my sleeve.
This is what is in store for you if you buy Future Days by Can. What is even more astounding, is that Future Days is in no way superior to Ege Bamyasi or Tagomago. In fact, every single piece of music by Can in which Damo Suzuki was the lead singer is a five star must own masterpiece of progressive rock music. Notice again that I didn't refer to their music as songs. Can's music from 1970 to 1973 transcends the very boundaries of rock music, it may be an aquired taste, but that is only because what the standard person is use to pales in comparison to the epic grandure that is early 70's Can, and nothing is as symphonically grand as Bel Air in the entire Can repretoire. Future Days is that great.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
