Tago Mago
by Can

The first half of the album draws you in with catchy studio jamming, cradling your brain in its fun and cerebral jam-oriented accessibility, just in time for the second half to take your now cradled brain and clamp down on it with a cestus filled with 24-karrot gold dust. It returns to recognizable form towards the end, but by the time "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" comes around, your brain has already been sonically reformed at least half a dozen times, and you'll be all the better off because of it. Not a single wasted moment exists on Tago Mago, despite its containing everything from 20 minute studio jams to almost as long dissonance fests/Damo Suzuki screeching sessions. This album can get as weird as it wants without ever having any risk of alienating of the listener. If anything, the weirdness just makes it more engaging; in fact the eccentric second half may do an even better job of engaging the listener than the undeniable catchy first half, and both wildly different halves of the album are integral to its whole as a landmark of free-from songcraft and studio excellence, both of which it gives an unrelenting exhibition from start to finish

From Antonio-Pedro TOP 100 COMMENTER 05/10/2014 10:49 | #111430 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

1º Listen - Wtf Is this shit my ears are hurting
2º Listen - Hmmm Oh yeah seems so great
3º Listen - "Grape Juice" while listening to this is an adventure
4º listen - Fuck, this is amazing

Can are one of the most influential bands to emerge in the entire history of rock. Their influence is so widespread that there is virtually no band in the modern era who has not been touched by their magic. The clue to the band's significance is that they successfully bridged electronic, jazz and rock music's in an accomplished and original way.

Their originality stems from the fact that they were the first group of musicians to have organically studied rhythm and texture that constituted their instrumental jams of a mainly hypnotic and glacial nature. These jams straddled the line between free-jazz, acid-rock and chamber music that were articulate experiments in loosely structured, fragmented and subdued electronic soundscapes and menacing atmospherics.

Arguably, Can were to master these techniques with Tago Mago (1971), a work blinded by Eastern mystical overtones and immersed in a jungle of avantegarde collage and sound effects within an overall structure that was guided by rock music.

The centrepiece and crowning achievement of the album is the towering 18-minute funk workout, 'Halleluwa' - a mezmerizing rhythmic orgy of music and tribal chanting whose rhythmic pulse predicted Happy Monday's, Primal Scream and Stone Roses amongst others.

With this one album, Can pioneered several genres that would become popular in the 1990s: industrial music, noise-rock, trip-hop and post-rock.

From sageamagoo TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/06/2016 16:29 | #161436 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album instantly transports the listener into some primal realm where all of your instincts and fears are realized. At times you're dancing around a great bonfire, laughing and having the time of your life, but eventually you find yourself lost on some eerie landscape, desperate to find a form of life other than the twisted creatures that surround you. The pictures and landscapes this record calls forth are easily the most vivid of any album I've ever listened to, and on that merit alone it deserves all the praise it can get.

From salahshoori 12/10/2019 08:57 | #245497 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album is without a doubt a 5star album. One of the best albums I ever heard.
The best way to interpret it is to let go of yourself and let the music and story take you on the trip. If you can handle the fear in Aumgn and the insanity in Peking O, then you will gradually come back to normal life with Bring Me Coffe or Tea. But as it is stated in Paperhouse, "you just can't get back no more" to where you were before listening to this album. (Edited)