Improvisation five unforgetable improvisations 2) CAN: TAGO-MAGO - 1971 Original release on United Artists, re-issue on Spoon. The inclusion of this album in my list was never in doubt. I guess that I first heard it in about 1975," Oh Yeah" to be precise. I can still blissfully recall those radiating goose-bumps moving down my spine and distinctly saying to myself.." this is it..everything else that I listen to or do has to be measured against this piece of music." Recorded in a period of about three months in a castle called Schloss Norvenich,Tago Mago was put down via improvisations directly to two Revox tape machines,overdubbed (again, spontaneously created) and cut 'n pasted by Holger Czukay. It is Can's magical album, Tago Mago being the name of a Magician and Aumgn (one of the albums lengthy experimental pieces) a magical formula by Aleister Crowley. Both Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt had studied under Stockhausen in the sixties. Czukay released the ambient classic,'Cannaxis 5 ' with Rolf Dammers in 1969...easily a contender for this, my top five selection. However, Czukay developed an improvisor's zeal for performance and recording that along with Faust, restructured rock music in the early 1970's. Based around a core of four musicians, each with a fairly unique style, Can featured two legendary vocalists in their early inception, Malcolm Mooney, a black American sculptor and Kenji 'Damo' Suzuki, an itinerant Japanese busker who Can discovered on the streets of Munich. It is Suzuki who is featured on Tago Mago. He has influenced (along with Can of course) several generations of musicians, among them Mark.E.Smith of the Fall, who went as far as to write a song entitled," I am Damo Suzuki." His extreme vocalisations, the use of made up words and the fact that he was learning to speak English, singing in English, from Japan but in a German band gave his 'sounds' added curiosity! It was Can and Faust who primarily shaped German music for me at that time although attention must also be directed towards Kraftwerk and Neu. There is no doubt in my mind that Germany was leading the way at that point in time. There was significant terrorist action happening with the Baader-Meinhoff group and the 1972 Munich Olympics,where a group of Israeli athletes were held hostage and killed. So it was to me a period of growth, change and social hostility..the perfect climate for creating exciting and dangerous music. Irmin Schmidt joked that Can stood for..Communism, Anarchism and Nihilism... Tago Mago is held together by the incessant drumming of Jaki Liebezeit,without doubt my favourite drummer. It is rhythmically hypnotic, sparse at times, at others densely layered. It bleeds of first take madness,long late night improvisations and awareness of musics far removed from the world of avant-rock. In fact Can went on to record many songs they called E.F.S (Ethnological Forgery Series) and they christened the path later heavily walked by Zoviet-France and other neo-ethnic tribalists. In my own mind Can stood for the erosion of ability,a very European concept,characterised by Joseph Beuys' statements and actions culminating with his ' everyone is an artist ' doctrine. " Inability is often the Mother of restriction, and restriction is the great mother of inventive performance." Holger Czukay. When people ask me questions about my approach to music making I should simply lock them in a room with a copy of Tago Mago and walk away. I cannot talk as eloquently as this music.

(doing) (being) (melding)