VIA PRESS RELEASE | Can Live in Keele 1977 is the newest release in a series of live albums that have been unearthed from the Spoon Records vaults and from fan recordings, then painstakingly assembled by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer/engineer René Tinner. The long-awaited recording of Can Live in Keele 1977—a performance that has been requested the most since the series began—is set for release on vinyl, CD, and digitally on November 22, 2024 via Mute and Future Days.
Live in Keele 1977 is a dynamic document of late-period Can. Recorded in March 1977, the core line up of Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, and Holger Czukay are augmented by the addition of Rosko Gee (Traffic) on bass. Gee’s recent addition to the line-up meant that Holger Czukay was freed up from bass duties to perform “waveform radio and spec. sounds,” manifesting here as otherworldly sounds, samples, and what one reviewer of a later show described as “moontalk to a white continental telephone.”
1977 was a difficult period for Can. Their recently released eighth studio album, Saw Delight, had been badly-received and although posterity has been kinder to the album, the reviews on release were savage. Journalist, broadcaster and author Jennifer Lucy Allan’s meticulous research of the time, place, and context of the performance on the accompanying sleeve notes led her to declare of the album “On paper, unremarkable. In practice, a precious hunk of sonic material.” She then goes on to remind us that “The heads know—forums and published books alike agree—that ’76–’77 is the best of the Can live years (Keele included). A couple of the tracks from this show have been included on fan-made “best of” live bootlegs over the years. And wow, are they right.”
The new album is the final release in current series of live documents that launched with Can Live in Stuttgart 1975, followed by Can Live in Cuxhaven 1976, Can Live in Brighton 1975, Can Live in Paris 1973, the first of the series to feature the late Damo Suzuki (“a vivid tribute to one of rock’s best improvisational groups” —Financial Times), and Can Live in Aston 1977 (The Quietus’s Reissue of the Week: “It’s undoubtedly music for mind expansion, but it stretches the brain in ways that remain unique—Can have always been purveyors of inner space rock, with each trip into the unknown as different as their shows”).
Founded in the late ‘60s and disbanded just over a decade later, Can’s unprecedented and bold marriage of hypnotic grooves and avant-garde instrumental textures has made them one of the most important and innovative bands of all time. This collection of albums recorded throughout Europe from ‘73–’77, reveal a totally different perspective to the group. Through the series, you may hear familiar themes, riffs and motifs popping up and rippling through the jams, but they are often only fleeting glimpses of familiar faces in a swirling crowd.
At other points, you will hear music that didn’t make it onto the official album canon. In these recordings Can go to even more extreme ranges than with their studio work: from mellow, ambient drift-rock to the white-dwarf sonic-meltdown moments they used to nickname “Godzillas.” Even as they adapt and chase the rhythm from minute to minute, you can hear the extraordinary musical telepathy its members shared.
