Bleep

Mute Records continues its excavation of the Can live ephemera trove with this official release of a March 1977 show in Keele. Once again polished from the original Spoon Records vault with assistance from Can principle Irmin Schmidt, this recording is something of a holy grail for the fans, showing off the Cologne krautrockers during a transitional later period. While the core of Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, and Holger Czukay are still in the fold here, they are appended by bassist Rosko Gee (of Traffic fame) which pushes Czukay over to the noise table, adding waveform radio signals and other digital detritus to nice effect. The tension between Can’s motorik groove and the unstable racket bubbling up just underneath makes for a fascinating document of a band thrashing against their own perception of self.