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Malcolm Mooney | |
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| Born | 1944 (age 78–79) |
| Genres | Krautrock |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals |
Malcolm Mooney (born 1944) [1] is an American singer, poet, and artist, best known as the original vocalist for German krautrock band Can.
Mooney began singing in high school, and was a member of an a cappella vocal group known as the Six-Fifths. [2] He gained some fame as a sculptor in New York City, then moved to Germany where he became a friend of Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, who were forming a band. Mooney joined as lead vocalist. The band was originally known as "Inner Space", but Mooney came up with "The Can", later shortened to Can. [2]
An album of material was recorded, initially entitled Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom, although no record company was willing to release it; it was later released in 1981 as Delay 1968. [3] Can's second album became their debut, Monster Movie , released in 1969. It was successful in the German underground scene. Various other tracks that Mooney recorded with the band during this period appear on the compilation albums Soundtracks and Unlimited Edition . Mooney quit the band and returned to America soon after the recording of Monster Movie, having been told by a psychiatrist that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health. The liner notes from the album claim erroneously that Mooney suffered a nervous breakdown, shouting "upstairs, downstairs" repeatedly.
He rejoined Can in 1986 to record a one-off reunion album, Rite Time . He also has released three albums with the San Francisco Bay Area band Tenth Planet, on the first of which, a new version of the song "Father Cannot Yell" from Monster Movie appears. [2] For the second Tenth Planet album, a different line-up was introduced, and the album saw a limited release in Japan on the P-Vine label. Prior to its issue, the Unfortunate Miracle label issued a limited 7" picture disc single containing two early mixes from the forthcoming album. In 2002, Mooney was invited to sing on Andy Votel's "All Ten Fingers" album – on the song "Salted Tangerines", a version of Mooney's poem of the same name. The Tenth Planet released an album on Milviason Records entitled inCANtations. Mooney now focuses on his visual art. [4] In 2007, Matthew Higgs invited Mooney to exhibit a piece at New York's venerable White Columns. [5]
In 2013, Mooney began to collaborate with drummer, songwriter and producer Sean Noonan, along with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Aram Bajakian, to record Pavees Dance: There's Always the Night. The group performed in February 2014 at the Sons D'Hiver festival in France in advance of the release of the June 2014 release of the CD and accompanying book featuring lyrics and Mooney's art work.
In April 2017, Mooney appeared at the Barbican Centre in the City of London as the lead singer of The Can Project, a reunion concert with Irmin Schmidt joined by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe. Jaki Liebezeit, Can's drummer, had recently died. The concert received mixed reviews and suffered sound issues, especially with Mooney's vocals. [6]
In 2021, Mooney's work was exhibited at Aspen Art Museum in the exhibition Winterfest. [7]
In 2022, Mooney had an exhibition at Ulrik in New York titled "Works 1970-1986." [8] Mooney produced his first geometric works in 1970 as set designs for a theater play titled “Harlem Angel.” Shortly after he began work on a series of eponymous silk screens at his father’s print shop in Yonkers, New York. He describes the origin of these pieces as developed from an image of kente cloth viewed under a microscope. This image continued to inform his paintings and drawings of grids throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Mooney’s interest evolved further through his encounter with the 1972 exhibition “African Textiles and Decorative Arts” at the Museum of Modern Art, his friendship with textile curator and shopkeeper Sara Penn as well as his own work in the mechanical processes of textile design. [9]
From experiments with utilitarian objects to stage and lighting design, from graphic design to work with textiles, clothing, and even runway shows, there persists an ongoing migration between the applied and “high art” in Mooney’s work which intentionally cross-pollinates both.
Malcolm Mooney appears on the following original albums:
With Can:
With Tenth Planet:
White Columns: with Luis Tovar and Alex Marcelo
With Andy Votel:
With Dave Tyack
With Sean Noonan
With Jane Weaver
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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, most prominently 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.
Kenji Suzuki, better known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), is a Japanese musician who has been living in Germany since the early 1970s and is best known as the former lead singer of the krautrock group Can.
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 album to feature Damo Suzuki after the 1970 departure of previous vocalist Malcolm Mooney. Recorded in a rented castle near Cologne, the album features long-form experimental tracks blending rock improvisation, funk rhythms and musique concrète techniques.
Soundtracks is a compilation album by the Krautrock group Can. It was first released in 1970 and consists of tracks written for various films. The album marks the departure of the band's original vocalist Malcolm Mooney, who sings on two tracks, to be replaced by new member Damo Suzuki. Stylistically, the record also documents the transition from the psychedelia-inspired jams of their earliest recordings to the more meditative, electronic, 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.
Rite Time is the eleventh and final studio album by the German rock band Can. Though Can had not yet split up, it is considered a reunion album because of the time elapsed since the band's previous album, Can, was released in 1979. The album consists of sessions recorded in the South of France in late 1986, edited extensively by the band over the course of subsequent years. Rite Time features the vocals of the band's original singer, Malcolm Mooney, who had left the group in 1970 after their debut album Monster Movie. Upon the album's initial release, "In the Distance Lies the Future" only appeared on the CD version, but it was included on the 2014 vinyl reissue.
Delay 1968, or just Delay, is an archival compilation album by German experimental rock band Can during its work with singer Malcolm Mooney comprising previously unissued early recordings of the band's rejected debut album, Prepared to Meet Thy PNOOM. The song "Thief" had previously been released officially on the United Artists compilation album Electric Rock in 1970; it was later covered live by Radiohead.
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.
Can, also known as Inner Space, is the tenth studio album by experimental rock band Can, released in 1979. Former bassist Holger Czukay's involvement with this album was limited to tape editing. It was Can's last album before the reunion album Rite Time, ten years later, and was released after the band's break-up.
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.
Canaxis 5 is the only studio album by the Technical Space Composer's Crew, released in 1969 by Music Factory. On later issues, the artist credit was changed to Holger Czukay and Rolf Dammers. The album was remixed for Spoon Records releases and again for the Revisited Rec. release.
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.
