VIA PRESS RELEASE | The second phase of the acclaimed Can Live series, Can Live in Paris 1973 has been announced today, set for release on vinyl, CD, and digitally on February 23, 2024 via Mute and Future Days (the new EU label created by Spoon Records).
Live in Paris 1973 finds Can in magical form for a performance recorded at L’Olympia in Paris on May 12, 1973, marking the first of the live series to feature Damo Suzuki on vocals. From ‘70–’73 the core line up of Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, and Holger Czukay were joined by Japanese improviser and vocalist Suzuki. They met after a chance encounter while Suzuki was busking in Munich and several months after the Paris 1973 performance his wanderlust would take him back on the road.
This new album in the series allows us to witness the band at a particularly important stage of their career, with two of their most acclaimed albums, Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi (the latter feeding into the Paris performance), recently released. The recording itself was uncovered and pieced together from recordings within the Spoon Records vaults and those sent in by helpful fans. It was brought into the 21st century by founding member Irmin Schmidt and producer/engineer René Tinner, who have compiled and edited all the albums in this series.
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, and these albums reveal a totally different perspective to the group. You may hear familiar themes, riffs and motifs popping up and rippling through these jams, but they are often fleetingly recognized 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.
The new release follows Can Live in Brighton 1975 (“Pure dynamite… keep them coming” —MOJO); Can Live in Stuttgart 1975, (Uncut’s Reissue of the Year, #2 in MOJO’s Reissues of the Year, #7 in The Wire’s Archive Reissues of the Year plus more), and Can Live in Cuxhaven 1976, which again featured heavily in the Reissues of the Year.
