Can, Tago Mago, United Artists Records, UAS 29 211/12 X, 2 x vinyl LP (1971)
The news of Damo Suzuki’s death at age 74 years a few days ago got me scurrying to my music collection to fish out Can’s classic album “Tago Mago” for a few spins to remember the singer by. For those unfamiliar with Suzuki and Can, Can was one of the archetypal so-called Krautrock bands from West Germany in the early 1970s, associated with an eclectic style of rock music combining psychedelia, avant-garde influences and composition, improvisation, musique concrète and hypnotic rhythms. Initially Can was formed by Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, former students of famed 20th-century classical / experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, in 1968: the band later added free jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit and teenaged guitarist / violinist Michael Karoli. Vocalist Malcolm Mooney, a sculptor from New York, joined Can and the group recorded and issued its first album “Monster Movie” in 1969. Health issues forced Mooney to return to the United States at the end of 1969 and the group later recruited Damo Suzuki, a young Japanese busker Czukay and Liebezeit found in Munich, in May 1970 to replace Mooney. “Tago Mago” was the follow-up album to “Monster Movie” and the first of three Can albums to feature Suzuki’s minimal improvised vocals before he left Can in 1973.
Originally released as a double vinyl LP set, the album features both conventionally structured songs on Disc 1, and more free-form experimental work on Disc 2. The first three songs “Paperhouse”, “Mushroom” and “Oh Yeah” are dominated by Liebezeit’s drumming, rather than by vocals or guitars as would have been expected of rock albums in the early ’70s. On these songs Suzuki is usually very understated in his singing, and this allows Liebezeit to take the lead with Karoli following close behind and the other musicians filling in the space with their tape experiments and synthesisers. The result is joyous jazz-inspired improvisation that is very hypnotic. On the other side of Disc 1,”Halleluwah” is an even more mesmerising piece that pounds out a continuous trance-funk drumbeat from Liebezeit while the other musicians improvise on guitars and keyboards, and Suzuki murmurs or shouts out nonsense English-language lyrics.
Disc 2 is where the musicians finally unmoor themselves from the ground and go sailing through a psychedelic trance atmosphere in “Aumgn”, an astonishing work of ambient noise improv featuring Czukay’s tape experiments, Schmidt’s chanting and Karoli’s violin soloing. “Peking O”, my favourite song on the album, even though it can be quite dark, sounds like an infernal little machine orchestra (with a drum machine) playing around with listeners’ perceptions of time as the music speeds up and even Suzuki’s vocals and shouts accelerated to insane cartoon speeds. At the same time there are so many strange things happening here, and Suzuki’s singing and ranting are completely unhinged, that this song is probably best heard on its own. On the other hand, if you masochistically insist on hearing it in its proper place in the album, the closing track “Bring Me Coffee Or Tea” initially promises to soothe you but then it starts to move very quickly, with Liebezeit’s drumming becoming manic and the rest of the music following not far behind.
I suspect much of the reputation “Tago Mago” enjoys comes mainly from Disc 1 which has the most varied music where the experimentation works very well in structured, edited settings, while the tracks on Disc 2 can give listeners a real beating with their uncontrolled sprawling (“Aumgn”) or layers of cheeky demented noises turned up to extreme levels of speed (“Peking O”). Even with the more unhinged work on Disc 2 though, “Tago Mago” stands out for its daring and inventiveness, with several music styles being unintentionally generated that have since become genre categories in their own right.
After leaving Can in 1973, Suzuki took a ten-year break and became a Jehovah’s Witness. He came back to performing improvised music in the mid-1980s, performing with his own group Damo Suzuki’s Network and in collaborations with others, releasing albums at a steady clip. In his later years Suzuki’s health began failing with a colon cancer diagnosis in 2014, covered in a documentary “Energy” that tracked his treatment and recovery while he was also continuing an endless world music tour. Even though he didn’t stay with Can for long, and his solo career far exceeds his work with Can in longevity and output, Suzuki will always remain identified with Can and “Tago Mago”.
RIP Damo Suzuki.