Can and the Cosmic Side of Krautrock

Can are the most musically sophisticated and rhythmically innovative band to emerge from the German experimental rock movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Where Kraftwerk pursued machine precision, Tangerine Dream explored electronic cosmos, and Faust deployed cut-up absurdism, Can created a unique synthesis of free improvisation, funk, psychedelia, world music, and studio experimentation that has influenced musicians across every genre for over fifty years. Their music is simultaneously intellectual and physical, avant-garde and groovy, cerebral and deeply funky — a combination that virtually no other band has achieved.

The group’s core lineup — Holger Czukay (bass, tape manipulation), Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Jaki Liebezeit (drums) — brought a collective musical intelligence to their work that was genuinely extraordinary. Czukay had studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Schmidt was a classically trained conductor and pianist. Karoli was a self-taught guitarist of remarkable versatility. And Liebezeit, a former free-jazz drummer, developed a rhythmic approach — motorik, hypnotic, endlessly inventive within strict repetition — that is among the most influential in all of rock music.

The Malcolm Mooney Era (1968-1970)

Can’s first vocalist was Malcolm Mooney, an American sculptor and performance artist living in Cologne. Mooney’s vocal style was frenetic, repetitive, and trance-like — he would seize on a phrase and repeat it obsessively over the band’s swirling improvisations, creating a mantric effect that heightened the music’s hypnotic qualities.

Monster Movie (1969) is the essential Mooney-era document. The opening track, “Father Cannot Yell,” establishes the Can method: a locked groove from Liebezeit and Czukay, Karoli’s guitar weaving distorted patterns over the top, Schmidt adding organ textures, and Mooney chanting and ranting with manic energy. The twenty-minute “Yoo Doo Right” — edited down from a six-hour improvisation — is a masterclass in sustained groove, with Liebezeit’s drumming maintaining a trance-inducing pattern while the other instruments circle, build, and release around it.

Soundtracks (1970) collects music from several film scores, including tracks with both Mooney and his replacement, Damo Suzuki. The film work was significant — Can scored numerous German films, and the discipline of creating music to serve visual narrative influenced their compositional approach, encouraging economy and atmospheric precision.

The Damo Suzuki Era: The Peak (1971-1973)

Damo Suzuki, a Japanese busker whom the band invited to sing after encountering him on a Munich street, replaced Mooney and transformed Can’s music. Where Mooney was intense and confrontational, Suzuki was ethereal and mysterious, delivering vocals in a mixture of Japanese, English, and invented language that functioned as pure sound rather than semantic communication.

Tago Mago (1971) is Can’s masterpiece and one of the essential rock albums of the 1970s. A double album, it ranges from the tight, funky grooves of “Mushroom” and “Oh Yeah” to the genuinely terrifying sound collages of “Aumgn” and “Peking O” — extended pieces built from tape manipulation, distorted electronics, and vocal fragments that dissolve the boundary between music and noise.

The production methodology was innovative. Can recorded their improvisations on multitrack tape at their studio, Inner Space (a converted cinema in Weilerswist), then Czukay would edit the tapes — cutting, splicing, rearranging — to create the final compositions. This process, which anticipated sampling and digital editing by decades, meant that Can’s records were not simply recordings of performances but constructed works, assembled from raw improvisational material into carefully shaped compositions.

“Halleluhwah,” the eighteen-minute centerpiece, is perhaps the greatest single piece of music to come from the Krautrock movement. Liebezeit locks into a funk groove of devastating simplicity — kick, snare, hi-hat, endlessly repeated — while Czukay’s bass pulses beneath and Karoli’s guitar builds from quiet noodling to ecstatic, distorted peaks. Suzuki’s vocals drift in and out, sometimes whispering, sometimes howling. The piece never loses its groove, but it transforms constantly through subtle shifts in texture, dynamics, and density.

Ege Bamyasi (1972) is more concise and arguably more accessible. “Spoon” was a hit single in Germany (used as the theme for a popular TV thriller). “Vitamin C” features one of the most relentless grooves in rock music — Liebezeit’s drumming is metronomic yet alive, mechanical yet swinging, a paradox that no other drummer has resolved so perfectly. “Sing Swan Song” demonstrates the gentler side, with Suzuki’s voice floating over a delicate arrangement.

Future Days (1973) is the final and most radical Suzuki-era album. The music has become almost entirely ambient — the rhythms are liquid and dissolved, the guitars shimmer rather than attack, and Suzuki’s vocals are barely distinguishable from the instrumental textures. The title track floats through its eleven minutes without any conventional rhythmic foundation, creating a sensation of weightless drift that anticipates ambient music and post-rock by decades. “Bel Air” extends this approach to twenty minutes. The album represents the outer limit of what a rock band could become while still remaining, identifiably, a band.

After Suzuki (1974-1979)

Suzuki left abruptly in 1973 (reportedly to join a Jehovah’s Witness community), and Can continued as an instrumental unit or with various vocalists. Soon Over Balubaland (1974) and Landed (1975) maintain a high level of musical invention, with the band incorporating more funk, reggae, and African rhythmic influences.

Flow Motion (1976) features the single “I Want More,” which became an unexpected UK hit, its disco-inflected groove and catchy melody attracting mainstream attention. The later albums — Saw Delight (1977), Out of Reach (1978), and Can (1979) — show diminishing returns as the band’s internal dynamics shifted and the original chemistry dissipated. The band dissolved in 1979.

Jaki Liebezeit’s Drumming

Any discussion of Can must center on Liebezeit’s drumming, which is arguably the single most important rhythmic innovation in post-1960s rock. Liebezeit developed what he called “monotone” drumming — a deliberately restricted approach in which he would find a pattern and repeat it with absolute precision, varying it only through the subtlest changes in accent, dynamics, and hi-hat articulation.

The approach sounds simple in description but is revolutionary in execution. Where most rock drummers rely on fills, variations, and dynamic shifts to maintain interest, Liebezeit created interest through the hypnotic power of repetition itself — the way a pattern transforms in the listener’s perception over time, revealing internal complexities that are invisible at first hearing. His influence extends through post-punk (the Fall, PiL, Wire), electronic music (the entire motorik tradition), hip-hop production, and contemporary art rock.

Where to Start

Tago Mago for the full range of Can’s ambition. Ege Bamyasi for the most accessible entry point. Future Days for the ambient, transcendent side. Monster Movie for the raw, confrontational beginning.

Can’s legacy connects to nearly every experimental tradition explored on this site — from the [INTERNAL: krautrock-primer-for-new-listeners] to the post-punk of [INTERNAL: unknown-pleasures-joy-division-review] to the electronic innovations of [INTERNAL: kraftwerk-blueprint-electronic-music]. The rhythmic principles Liebezeit developed resonate through the post-rock tradition discussed in our [INTERNAL: post-rock-essential-albums-guide].