Can
Tago Mago

LA RECENSIONE

Tago Mago is the second studio album by the German krautrock group Can, released in 1971. It is also the band's first album to officially feature Damo Suzuki, a Japanese singer who had sporadically appeared in some pieces of ''Soundtracks (1970)''.
The record opens with ''Paperhouse'', which essentially revives the 60s psychedelic blues in an eclectic way. Can's goal is not to consecrate or emulate (as many bands did in the early seventies) the music of the sixties, but rather to exalt, renew, and integrate it into something completely new.
Indeed, while Faust and NEU gave rise to this new musical movement called Krautrock in a much more experimental way, Can proclaimed themselves progenitors of New Wave and part of the music that would take off from the second half of the seventies (up to the present day). Their sound is indeed sometimes more catchy, but not less epochal for this.
''Mushroom'' and ''Oh Yeah'' already showcase all of Suzuki's vocal qualities, accompanied by scraping guitars that form a sometimes sick and abstract Blues.
The peak is probably reached in ''Halleluwah'', a track lasting a full 18 minutes that perfectly summarizes the album, highlighting its qualities. The piece is indeed accompanied by rhythms that strongly resemble Funk and African music, while there is extensive use of synthesizers. ''Aumgn'' is certainly the most experimental track of the entire album, as it can indeed be seen as a true cosmic journey that traverses the remote lands of psychedelia and concrete music. ''Peking O'' continues this moment, with electronic sounds now dominating Can's sound. If avant-garde electronics were previously exclusively heard in the minimalist music of people like Terry Riley, La Monte Young, or Steve Reich, now Can, taking a small part of it, blend it into a completely new, spectral, epochal sound. It wasn't about using synthesizers in a common way, as many bands were already doing at the time, but to use them to create something absolutely groundbreaking. ''Bring Me Coffee Or Tea'' is a track more detached from the experimentation that characterized the last tracks, and reconnects to the first songs; it is nonetheless a worthy conclusion to one of the most significant and monumental albums in music history.