| Future Days | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1 August 1973 | |||
| Recorded | 1973 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 41:04 | |||
| Label | United Artists | |||
| Producer | Can | |||
| Can chronology | ||||
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Future Days is the fourth studio album by the German experimental rock group Can, released on 1 August 1973 by United Artists. It was the group's final album to feature vocalist Damo Suzuki, who subsequently left the band to become a Jehovah's Witness, [3] and explores a more atmospheric sound than their previous releases. [4]
On Future Days, Can emphasises the ambient elements they had explored on previous albums, dispensing largely with traditional rock song structures and instead "creating hazy, expansive soundscapes dominated by percolating rhythms and evocative layers of keys". [1] PopMatters wrote that "Future Days is driven by a coastal breeze, exuding a more pleasant, relaxed mood than anything the band had previously recorded." [5]
The album cover features the Greek letter Psi in the middle and the I Ching hexagram dǐng below the title. The surrounding graphics are based on the Jugendstil art style.
Some versions of the vinyl album have a slightly different cover in which the graphics are not embossed, or in which the lightly reflective gold tint is replaced by a flat yellow instead. These differences are also present on the CD releases.
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  [1] |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [6] |
| Far Out |  [7] |
| The Great Rock Discography | 7/10 [8] |
| Pitchfork | 8.8/10 [9] |
| Q |  [10] |
| Spin Alternative Record Guide | 9/10 [11] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [12] |
| Tom Hull | B+ [13] |
From contemporary reviews, Ian MacDonald of NME praised the album, opining it was "an immaculate piece of work, the best German rock record so far, apart from Faust ", and concluded that it was "sheer good music and is perfectly easy for anyone with a pair of ears attached to their heads to get into and thoroughly enjoy. Forget the krautrock tag. Forget how you're supposed to react." [14] Ray Fox-Cumming of Disc gave the album a negative review, declaring the album "attempts nothing that hasn't already been done, often to death, before" while finding "some of it is quite pretty, the music is well-played, nicely spaced and unscrambled, but even after half a dozen hearings I still found most of it went in one ear and straight out the other." [15] NME ranked it the 11th best album of the year in 1974. [16]
From retrospective reviews, AllMusic's Anthony Tognazzini called it "fiercely progressive, calming, complex, intense, and beautiful all at once" and "one of Can's most fully realized and lasting achievements." He also praised Suzuki's vocal performances - described as "all minimal texture and shading" - as being his "most inspired", and praised the track "Bel Air" as "a gloriously expansive piece of music that progresses almost imperceptibly, ending abruptly after exactly 20 minutes." [1]
| Publications/Sources | Accolades | Year | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uncut | "200 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2016 | 121 [17] |
| Rolling Stone | "50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time" | 2015 | 8 [18] |
| Tom Moon | "1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die" | 2008 | - [19] |
| GQ | "The 100 Coolest Albums in the World Right Now!" | 2005 | 70 [20] |
| Pitchfork | "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s" | 2004 | 56 [21] |
| Stylus | "Top 101-200 Albums of All Time" | 2004 | 160 [22] |
| Mojo | "The 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made" | 1995 | 62 [23] |
All tracks are written by Can (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki).
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Future Days" | 9:34 |
| 2. | "Spray" | 8:28 |
| 3. | "Moonshake" | 3:02 |
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Bel Air" (also known as "Spare a Light" [lower-alpha 1] ) | 20:00 |
| Total length: | 41:04 | |
Can were a German experimental rock band formed in Cologne in 1968 by Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Jaki Liebezeit (drums). The group featured several vocalists, including the American Malcolm Mooney (1968–70) and the Japanese Damo Suzuki (1970–73). They have been widely hailed as pioneers of the German krautrock scene.
Irmin Schmidt is a German keyboardist and composer, best known as a founding member of the band Can.
Michael Karoli was a German guitarist, violinist and composer. He was a founding member of the influential krautrock band Can.
Kenji Suzuki, known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), was a Japanese musician best known as the vocalist for the German Krautrock group Can between 1970 and 1973. Born in 1950 in Kobe, Japan, he moved to Europe in the late 1960s where he was spotted busking in Munich, West Germany, by Can bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Can had just split with their vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and asked Suzuki to sing over tracks from their 1970 compilation album Soundtracks. Afterwards, he became their full time singer, appearing on the three influential albums Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyası (1972) and Future Days (1973).
Monster Movie is the debut studio album by German rock band Can, released in August 1969 by Music Factory and Liberty Records.
Tago Mago is the second studio album by the German krautrock band Can, originally released as a double LP in August 1971 on the United Artists label. It was the band's first full studio album to feature Damo Suzuki after the 1970 departure of previous vocalist Malcolm Mooney, though Suzuki had been featured on most tracks on the compilation album Soundtracks the prior year. Recorded at Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle near Cologne, the album features long-form experimental tracks blending rock and jazz improvisation, funk rhythms, and musique concrète tape editing techniques.
Ege Bamyası is the third studio album by German krautrock band Can, originally released as an LP in 1972 by United Artists. The album contains the single "Spoon", which charted in the Top 10 in Germany owing its use as the theme of German TV thriller mini-series Das Messer. The success of the single allowed Can to move to a better studio in Weilerswist, where they recorded the rest of the album.
Soundtracks is a 1970 compilation album by the German krautrock group Can, containing music written for various films. The album marks the departure of the band's original vocalist Malcolm Mooney, who sings on two tracks, and his replacement by Damo Suzuki. "Don't Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone" features Suzuki's first recorded performance with the band. Stylistically, the record also documents the group's transition to the more meditative and experimental mode of the studio albums that followed.
Soon Over Babaluma is the fifth studio album by the rock music group Can. This is the band's first album following the departure of Damo Suzuki in 1973. The vocals are provided by guitarist Michael Karoli and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt. It is also their last album that was created using a two-track tape recorder.
Out of Reach is the ninth studio album by the German krautrock band Can, released as an LP in 1978 on Harvest Records. It is their tenth official studio album, discounting compilations such as Unlimited Edition.
"Mushroom" is a song by the German krautrock band Can, from their 1971 album Tago Mago. It's the shortest song on the album, with a duration of 4 minutes and 8 seconds. A video was made for the track which has been shown on MTV.
Can Live Music is a double live album by the band Can, released in 1999 and recorded in the UK and West Germany between 1972 and 1977. It was originally included in the now out-of-print Can box set, Can Box.
Anthology, also called Anthology - 25 Years and Anthology 1968-1993, is a compilation double album by Krautrock artists Can which was released in 1994. Several of the songs are presented in edited form. The first CD has the same track listing as Can's previous compilation, Cannibalism.
"Mother Sky" is a song by the krautrock group Can, written by members Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, and Damo Suzuki. Lasting fourteen and a half minutes, it was recorded in July 1970 for the soundtrack of Jerzy Skolimowski's film Deep End and released in 1970 on Can's Soundtracks album. It opens in mid guitar solo before settling down into a familiar Can groove as singer Damo Suzuki mulls the relative merits of madness and "Mother Sky".
The Peel Sessions is a compilation album by the German experimental rock band Can. Released in November 1995, it contains songs from four sessions recorded for John Peel's Radio 1 show. The sessions took place in February 1973, January 1974, October 1974, and May 1975. The songs are mostly unreleased improvisations. "Geheim" is released as "Half Past One" on Landed and "Mighty Girl" as "November" on Out of Reach.
Unlimited Edition is a compilation album by the band Can. Released in 1976 as a double album, it was an expanded version of the 1974 LP Limited Edition on United Artists Records which, as the name suggests, was a limited release of 15,000 copies. The album collects unreleased music from throughout the band's history from 1968 until 1976, and both the band's major singers are featured. The cover photos were taken among the Elgin Marbles in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum.
The Lost Tapes is a compilation album of studio outtakes and live recordings by the German experimental rock band Can, which was originally released as an LP in 2012 by Spoon Records in conjunction with Mute Records. The compilation was curated by Irmin Schmidt and Daniel Miller, compiled by Irmin Schmidt and Jono Podmore, and edited by Jono Podmore.
Kamasutra: Vollendung der Liebe is a 1969 film score by Innerspace Productions, an early name for the band Can. It was recorded as the soundtrack for the West German film of the same name and was released some 40 years later in 2009. The musical styles heard on the album demonstrate a temporary departure from the Krautrock sound the band was producing around that time, experimenting with styles such as South Asian music and blues rock, more in keeping with Indian setting of the film. Among their first recordings, this score, together with the band's previous soundtrack album Agilok & Blubbo, are seldom discussed by the band members. Neither have material on the band's 1970 compilation Soundtracks which consists of songs previously only heard on film soundtracks.
All Gates Open: The Story of Can is a book about the German experimental rock band Can, written by British writer and editor Rob Young and Can founding member Irmin Schmidt. It was published in May 2018 in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber in two editions, a trade edition in hardback, and a handbound and autographed limited edition.
Live in Paris 1973 is a live double-album by German krautrock band Can, recorded at a performance of the band at L'Olympia in Paris, France. It was released on vinyl and CD by Spoon Records on 23 February 2024, two weeks after Can's singer at the time, Damo Suzuki died on 9 February 2024.
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