Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What does Tago Mago mean anyway?, January 26, 2000
By A Customer
I honestly think that this is some of the greatest ever recorded music. Ok, admittedly the song-writing isn't great, but to criticize that would be to miss the point slightly. The fact is, these men had no pretence to being songwriters. Instead, they concentrated on rhythm, texture and electronics, and, in doing so, re-invented their instruments. Tago Mago is their best album. It opens with Paperhouse, which sounds pretty unremarkable to start with. That is until they descend into an unstoppable, primal rhythm, which maintains its intensity for the duration of the track. Mushroom is the shortest track and strangely eerie, but again has some impressive drumming. Then you get possibly the funkiest 25 minutes of music ever. Oh Yeah, uses a wonderful cyclic groove as the base for some inventive experimentation with backwards sounds and some great guitar imrovisation. The centre piece, however, is Halleluhwah. Incredibly, the band manage to create an even more complex and funky groove than on Oh Yeah, and stretch it out for far longer and include all manner of sounds and effects (including what sounds like a modern drum'n'bass rhythm on drum machine) to ensure that it sounds like nothing ever before or since. This track can either be soothingly hypnotic or funky depending on mood. From there on, Can move into altogether more sinister areas. Aumgn is extraordinary. Mainly electronic, Damo Suzuki seems to be trying to exorcize demons through religious chanting while the band create a claustrophobic atmosphere with very little use of recognisable sounds. It climaxes with an ear-bending tribal dance rhythm and Suzuki's unholy shreeking. Peking O takes music far past the normal boundaries of taste. Suzuki chatters unintelligably as though a thousand demons are trying to speak through him at once. The fact that the only words you can make out are "gonna kill you, gonna kill you!" adds to the uncomfortable atmosphere. The track finishes off with a throbbing groove which seems to have been beamed in from outer space, and sounds unlike anything that has been created even today. It is a good track even though people will hate how it makes them uneasy. I don't understand that attitude, when horror films, which are made for the sole purpose of scaring people, are accepted as good. Why can't the same apply to music? Anyway, to calm you down, the album ends with the very chilled Bring me coffee or tea. Slightly oriental, it is exactly the sort of track you would want to listen to after being subjected to the madness of the previous 2 tracks. The track is eventually drowned out by what has made this such a brilliant album in the first place: the rhythm section. So there you have it, my thoughts on this album. You may very well disagree with everything that i have said, and i'll just tell you fine, stick to your travis and stereophonics etc. But for ingenuity, humour, energy and dynamics, this band cannot be touched.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Descriptions Fall Despairingly Short of Giving "Tago Mago" Justice, February 21, 2008
Can's 1971 release, "Tago Mago," is nothing less than a watershed moment in the world of early progressive rock. Surrounding the emergence of Can was a highly sophisticated rock evolution. With the likes of King Crimson pushing performance boundaries into substantially more complex territory and Pink Floyd exploring the outer realms of space, it would be logically difficult to emerge as something truly unique during the rise of progressive rock in the early seventies. Ironically, Can made originality look effortless. With complexity rapidly becoming the focus of rock, Can pushed against the grain, delving into a far more primal brand of avant-garde modern minimalism, with magnificent success. "Tago Mago" is truly years ahead of its time.
"Tago Mago" was originally released as a two disc LP, therefore clocking in at around 70 minutes rather than 45 minute standard LP time. The contrast between each disk is exceedingly stark, showing two distinct sides of this anomalous entity. The first half of this disk ("Paperhouse"- "Halleluhwah") is very "jammy." The songs are largely made up of repetitive percussive cycles and various bits of improvisation. While the songs largely pulse forward at a non-transitive rhythm, there is much more going on than would seem possible within each track. "Paperhouse" starts off relatively slow, and eventually loops into an expansive jam session, containing some delightful guitar work from Michael Karoli. "Paperhouse" ends with an intense let-out of energy that Jaki Liebezeit has masterfully brewing through his increasingly aggressive percussive cycles. "Mushroomhead" then begins. This is the shortest and most instantly accessible song on the album, consisting of what seems to be an electronic drum beat and Damo Suzuki's disconnected murmuring; a song, to these ears, reminiscent of today's Radiohead. "Oh Yeah" begins an explosion sound bite and what sounds like Suzuki's vocals being played backwards. "Oh Yeah" eventually evolves into a jam with an almost "folky" feel to it. "Halleluhwah" begins like something right off of Miles Davis' electric-jazz-fusion apex, "Live-Evil." A funk beat dominates the entire song, that expands into an amazing variety of atmospheres and colorful, textural explorations in its' 18 minute entirety. The song seems to slowly succumb to insanity as it progresses, but never quite loses its' steam. After "Halleluhwah," Tago Mago completely loses touch with reality, delving into some seriously avant-garde territory, previously explored by the likes of modern composers Stockhausen and Varse, which serves as a perfect contrast to the minimalist nature of the first half of the album. Can continue to delve in a perpetual nightmare of psychedelic hysteria until the album closes.
Everything in "Tago Mago" is sharp, angular and uneasily tense, while somehow able to slowly expand into the listeners inner conscious. The performance is delightfully tight, in its own choppy manner, even as "Tago Mago" moves into obscure and highly illogical territory. You can never really guess where "Tago Mago" will take you, even after multiple listens. There is almost a conscious equilibrium throughout this albums entirety, matching every moment of melodic bliss with haphazardly primitive intensity. Such a staggering amount of cohesive variety has never been as accurately put to mainstream music than in this krautrock classic.
Though "Tago Mago" is unquestionably a landmark statement in rock music, it is certainly not for the average listener. This album is a "grower" in every sense of the word. Even amongst fans of prog-rock, you would be hard pressed to find a listener who can honestly say that they enjoyed "Tago Mago" upon first listen. Everything about this album is sharp, intense, and unsetting, even in its' most accessible moments, revealing almost none of its' dark secrets without intense patience from the listener. If I were pressed to find a single adjective to most accurately describe "Tago Mago," it would undoubtedly be "subtle." "Tago Mago" demands unwavering attention, vivid imagination, and tolerance for the quintessential avant-garde. There is, undoubtedly, nothing more painful to the average listener than the constant barrage of violent percussion cycles that "Tago Mago" offers, or the a-melodic, audio-hallucinations featured throughout the last half of the disk. Of course, when "Tago Mago" finds its way to the appreciative ears of the music fanatic, it eventually becomes a permanent favorite.
Akin to any truly innovative musical composition, even the most thorough of descriptions fall despairingly short of personifying the actual experience. I can only appeal to the adventurous listener's curiosity by resulting in using the utterly cliché, but never more appropriate statement: "You have to hear it to believe it."
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
CAN -- Best band ever?, January 3, 2002
I just discovered Can and I fear it may be one of those once-in-a-lifetime event type discoveries. I still almost can't believe that it's for real. Tago Mago was my first Can album, and I was left in complete awe. To think that this was done 30 years ago! After this I heard Monster Movie, Future Days, then Ege Bamyasi, and can I say, "How, in all my years of record collecting, have I never heard of this group -- Can?!!"The music on this album not only precludes, but out-performs so many of today's musical genres, and it does it in incredibly groovy, irresistable way. The grooves are insane, the beats: exciting and entrancing, hooks galore, and the mind trip can't be matched. Tago Mago pioneers the deep, relentless rhythm seen today in nearly all forms of electronica, ranging from trance to industrial to acid-jazz, dub, and even drum n' bass. The diverse guitar and bass concoctions, as well as the array of singing styles that Suzuki explores, have influenced players across the spectrum of rock and electronic genres. Clearly Radiohead must have been learning from Tago Mago's minimalist textures and jagged vocal delivery while working on Kid A and Amnesiac. The raw, mad vocals of Suzuki may have inspired the likes of Jesus Lizard's David Yow, or Butthole Surfer's Gibby Haynes, while his more subdued performances are clear inspirations to a plethora of others. It seems that the variety of jam-rock bands, and even ancestors Phish and Widespread Panic, may owe their free-form "jam" roots to more than just the the Dead. And as for the experimentation of creating such soundscapes... nearly all forms of ambient music ranging from ambient dub to Einsturzende Neubauten might have been getting ideas from this stuff. Who knows? Maybe they've been keeping it a secret from me this whole time. But somehow the truth got out and I heard about it, and I'm sure many others have and will. All the Radiohead and Tortoise comparisons in interviews will get the word out, and I predict very soon people will be re-discovering this group -- Can. The hipsters will be a little sore, because their diamond of a secret had just been given away, but the world will be done a favor by knowing the truth. To entire genres of contemporary music, In The Beginning There Was Can. Can owns music. Can rules.
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