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Malcolm Mooney | |
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| Born | 1944 (age 79–80) |
| Genres | Krautrock |
| Instrument | Vocals |
Malcolm "Desse" Mooney (born 1944) [1] is an American singer, poet, and artist, best known as the original vocalist for German krautrock band Can.
Malcolm Mooney's father, after serving in the navy, became a jazz piano player who had once been taught in North Carolina by a former teacher of Nina Simone. Mooney spent his early life in Westchester County. He, attracted to music from an early age, made attempts at learning accordion, clarinet, and saxophone. In high school Mooney joined a cappella group known as the "Six-Fifths". Later, Mooney moved in with his sister in the Mission Hill district of Boston, where he attended the arts programme at Boston University, striving to become a painter and sculptor. While residing in Boston, Mooney get to know composer Ivan Tcherepnin and his wife. [2] [3]
After his move to New York City, Mooney gained some fame as a sculptor. In 1967, Mooney and his friend, Joshua Zim, left the United States, escaping the potential conscription to the Vietnam war. They embarked on a journey leaving New York on plane, flying through Reykjavík, reaching Luxembourg, then hitching a ride to Paris. Serge Tcherepnin, Ivan Tcherepnin's brother, invited them to use his apartment in Paris while he was in the country, sharing space with Portuguese composer Emmanuel Nunes. After their brief stay, Mooney and Zim continued to hitch hike southwards through France, reaching the southern coast of Spain to get a passage to Morocco, intending to continue their eastward journey by camel across north Africa, but the Strait of Gibraltar crossing was shut down at that time and they were blocked at the port of Algeciras. Mooney and Zim spent three weeks in the Formentera and continued traveling across the Mediterranean and reaching Bombay. After a brief stay, they hitch hiked back to Europe, arriving in Paris in late August or early September 1966, where Mooney met Hildegard Schmidt, spouse of German composer Irmin Schmidt. Hildegard, learning Malcolm was an aspiring painter, invited him to come to Cologne and make connections with the German art world. In April 1968, Mooney parted ways with his friend Zim and took a flight to Cologne, reaching out to the Schmidt household who agreed to let him live in their apartment. [4]
During his time in Cologne, Malcolm Mooney became friends with Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, who were forming a band and accepted to join them as lead vocalist. The band was originally known as "Inner Space", but Mooney came up with "The Can", later shortened to Can. [3] Can showed him an instrumental tape and asked to came up with accompanying lyrics, which turned out as "Father Cannot Yell" on Monster Movie , reminiscing about his pilgrimage and taking inspiration from the relationship between Zim and his girlfriend who left during his journey. This song marked a determining moment for the band, the time when, as Holger admitted, "Can wasn't sure yet which way musically to go till Malcolm jumped one day to the microphone and pushed us into A RHYTHM". Irmin told Ptolemaic Terrascope , Malcolm arrival "gave the group the last kick toward rock". [5]
Mooney recorded enough material with Can to assemble them into their debut album, initially entitled as Prepared To Meet Thy Pnoom. Although record companies wasn't willing to release it, the recordings were later released in 1981 as Delay 1968. [6] 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.
Mooney reunited with 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. [3] 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. [7] In 2007, Matthew Higgs invited Mooney to exhibit a piece at New York's venerable White Columns. [8]
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. [9]
In 2021, Mooney's work was exhibited at Aspen Art Museum in the exhibition Winterfest. [10]
In 2022, Mooney had an exhibition at Ulrik in New York titled "Works 1970-1986." [11] 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. [12]
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). They featured several vocalists, including the American Malcolm Mooney (1968–70) and the Japanese Damo Suzuki (1970–73). They have been hailed as pioneers of the German krautrock scene.
Holger Schüring, known professionally as Holger Czukay, was a German musician best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg[ing] the gap between pop and the avant-garde", Czukay was also notable for having created early important examples of ambient music, for having explored "world music" well before the term was coined, and for having been a pioneer of sampling.
Irmin Schmidt is a German keyboardist and composer, best known as a founding member of the band 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 United Artists Records. It was the band's first full studio album to feature vocalist Damo Suzuki after the departure of Malcolm Mooney the year prior, though Suzuki had been featured on most tracks on the 1970 compilation album Soundtracks. 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.
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.
Landed is the sixth studio album by the German krautrock band Can.
Flow Motion is the seventh studio album by German rock band Can. It was released in October 1976 and features the UK hit single "I Want More".
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 is a compilation album by the German experimental rock band Can released in 1981. It comprises previously unreleased work recorded for Can's rejected debut album, Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom, recorded with the singer Malcolm Mooney.
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.
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 across the band's history, from 1968 to 1975, and both of 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 the soundtrack to the West German documentary film of the same name (1969), written by Innerspace Productions, an early name for the krautrock band Can, and officially released in 2009 by "Crippled Dick Hot Wax!". Initially, the film's producers commissioned only Irmin Schmidt to work on the soundtrack, finished with the contribution from Innerspace Productions.
Agilok & Blubbo is the soundtrack album featured in the 1969 German film of the same name. The songs on this album are the earliest recordings of the German experimental rock band The Inner Space, who would soon become known under the name Can. Years after the film had fallen into obscurity, its soundtrack was eventually licensed from Hans Wewerka's archives and released in Spain in 2009.
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.
