Can
Tago Mago

Manliuzzo, folks, is back to writing reviews, for your misfortune... um... joy!

For me, an album, to be considered a masterpiece, must have three characteristics: 

1) It must be pleasant to listen to and interesting (so, even if strange and dissonant, never monotonous);

2) It must be original, not derivative, and must have a "trademark";

3) It must convey sensations, whether they are good or bad;

"Tago Mago" possesses these characteristics. It's a spontaneous album, but not naive at all. It's technical, but not cold. It's entertaining (despite being over an hour long), but not stupid. In short, it is what comes closest to the perfect album. I recently discovered kraut rock, German rock, and this album grabbed me from the first listen, especially because it manages to fuse Western rock of that period with Eastern music: the Japanese Damo Suzuki sings the East with a Western tone and feels perfectly at ease among Karoli's psychedelic guitars and violins, between Schmidt's dreamy and acidic keyboard atmospheres, and Liebezeit's intricate but warm rhythms, probably the best drummer on earth (and here I agree with Scaruffi). Holger Czukay also accompanies the band well with his bass, and the band seems very cohesive.

"Paperhouse" is the first masterpiece: it's a piece with an acidic, psychedelic sweetness, which in the instrumental refrain features one of the most spot-on duets between keyboards and guitars. The driving of the drums leads to a fantastic guitar solo. The piece becomes minimal: the noise increases, and Damo's voice returns, whom I find to be both an animalistic and genius singer at the same time. Before we even realize it, we're in "Mushroom". The repetitive and alienating singing, accompanied by sparse guitar chords and a complex rhythm, stuns: "I was born and I was dead", Damo repeats continuously. "Oh Yeah", on the other hand, is supported by a martial beat and an epic organ, with the bass in the foreground. But the sum of the album and of rock as a whole is constituted by the 18 minutes of the fourth track: "Halleluhwah" is a psychedelic funk piece, incomparable to any other, a musical delirium of unique genius, simple yet complex. Czukay, who kicks off the track, builds a perfect scaffold. Liebezeit, the absolute protagonist, unleashes a hypnotic and consistent rhythm, with the precision of a Swiss watch. Damo "rocks" with his hoarse and seductive voice. Karoli colors the piece with continuous dissonances of the guitar and the violin. Schmidt makes his keyboards ring out at just the right moments. Everyone plays as if they were at a party, drunk and happy, but with monstrous technique, and they achieve fantastic cohesion. I probably wouldn't be wrong if I said this is the best track ever written on the face of the earth.

From now on, the mood of the album changes because from Western psychedelia it shifts to African tribalism and Eastern suggestions. "Aumgn", 17 minutes long, starts with some noise, then there's a minute of trip-hop (yes, you heard right, trip-hop: are you familiar with the gloomy guitars and drum-machine type beat around the first minute?) and immediately some Eastern-like guitars take over. After several minutes of silence-noise created by Schmidt's keyboards, there's a very long drum solo by Liebezeit, accompanied by a whistle of a crashing airplane and sounds of monkeys and dogs. "Peking O", on the other hand, starts with Damo's dreamy singing, which stretches over the vibrating cymbals of the drums and continues in madness: a supersonic speed phrase shot out by Damo, interspersed with a crazy jazz piano. The final gem, which brings things back to calm, is the heart-wrenching "Bring me a Coffee or a Tea", which could be a more Eastern "The End" by the Doors, more atmospheric and more dreamy: only the voice remains acidic and floats among the sweet guitars and the stunning keyboards.

In the end, one is left surprised: can a genre with such an ugly name really contain a masterpiece like this?