Some critics called it "probably the least loved music Can ever made", assessing that Gee and Baah "seem to impose too strict a sense of rhythm on Can's once free-flowing music, diluted with insipid reggae riffs". Some of them, however, highlighted "Scorpion", "November", and "One More Day" as the tracks closest to anything resembling former spirit of Can. Irmin Schmidt, Can's keyboard player, called Out of Reach the climax of the band's confusion, "musically and psychologically, and in every sense it's bad".[3]
Background and production
The founding bass player and producerHolger Czukay, who already started drifting away from Can on their previous record, left the band before the recording sessions for Out of Reach.[2] As a partial result of Czukay's departure, style of bassist Rosko Gee and percussionistReebop Kwaku Baah dominated on this album (particularly on "Give Me No 'Roses'" and "Like Inobe God").[4] Drummer Jaki Liebezeit was losing interest in the band at the time, leaving most of the percussion duties to Baah.[2] Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, as well, unhappy with the Can's musical direction, and "the falling out with Holger had left a nasty aftertaste" for the band.[5]
Since the Can's usual producer, Czukay, refused to work on the record, the band handed down the production to Conny Plank. Plank, according to Czukay, "got very angry that he said 'I don’t touch with my hands this music!' Conny was saying to him later, why have he done that? Now Plank have to take on his shoulders all the shit."[6]
Music
Rosko Gee wrote and performed vocals on "Pauper's Daughter and I", quoting the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme, and on "Give Me No 'Roses'".[2] Reebop Kwaku Baah sings on "Like Inobe God." The four other songs are instrumental: "Serpentine", "November", "Seven Days Awake", and "One More Day". A simpler version of "November" was called "Mighty Girl" in the May 1975 session for BBC's John Peel Show.[3]
Schmidt told Ian Harrison that "Reebop… seduced Jaki to start playing very fast… You hear it already on Saw Delight—Jaki gets very nervous. Which could be marvellous… but with Reebop, and on Out of Reach, it really got out of reach and control."[7]
Rob Young, the author of Can biography, chose "November" to exemplifying the general flaws of Out of Reach. "November" lacks "sense of space, inner or outer, in its production. Plangent grand piano comps around grouchy chords, as congas and Jaki's busy snare keep up an unvarying chatter. Everyone is always on, there appears to be little dialogue happening on a musical level, and it is all to no obvious purpose or destination."[4]
Young saw "Serpentine" and "One More Day" as nearing closest to anything resembling former spirit of Can "in both title and feel". On "Serpentine", Irmin "resorted to his piano to cut through "Serpentine's dense mulch", and both Jaki and Michael display an encouraging agility. As with every other track here, "One More Day" refuses to open up any space, though it's the most experimental piece sonically, with "wibbly synthetic effects applied to the drums and grinding atonal synth".[4]
On "Give Me No 'Roses'", Irmin is "practically inaudible, apart from a dab of squelchily inappropriate, grouchy synth in the final minute".[4]
Release
Out of Reach has variously been reissued as a double CD with Can's 1979 release Can (also known as Inner Space after the band's recording studio)[8] and on its own in several single CD versions (e.g. on MagMid (TKO Magnum Music) in the United Kingdom),[9] but was more difficult to find than other Can albums.[2]
It was disowned by the band for many years (hence its rather haphazard reissue history) and was not listed as part of their discography on their official website.[10] It was not issued either as part of Spoon Records' first CD reissues of most of their albums in 1989, nor in a remastered Super Audio CD edition in 2006, unlike all the other Can studio albums.[11]
It was finally officially re-issued by Spoon Records, in CD, vinyl and digital formats, on 18 August 2014.[12]
Out of Reach contained "probably the least loved music Can ever made, and also possibly the least heard too". Irmin Schmidt, Can's keyboard player, called Out of Reach the climax of Can's confusion, "musically and psychologically, and in every sense it's bad". He said its title was prophetic.[3] Stewart Mason, in the AllMusic's retrospective review, claimed that many fans don't consider Out of Reach to be a "true Can album", because only two founding members are fully involved in its creation, with a diminished contribution from Liebezeit.[2][1]
In a contemporary review, Ian Penman assessed Out of Reach as "a stab, no more" with "tangled, intriguing, infuriating music". For him, the songs did not "caress sentiment: they go straight for the nerves, the darkness of the heard… A feeling, not surprisingly, of moving into shadows and not emerging again." The closing track "One More Day" represented "what Can were all about: structured such that play might be limitless".[15]
As a highlight, Mason praised Rosko Gee's jazz-influenced playing, specifically on the centerpiece improvisations on "November" and "Serpentine".[2]Pitchfork reviewer, Mark Richardson, also praised Gee's parts, and recalled that "Baah's percussion is sometimes the most interesting thing going", joining in on his praise of "Serpentine" with interesting interplay between Liebezeit and Baah, and lauding "November" as an epic, widescreen drama.[1]
On a more negative side, journalist Andy Gill opined that Gee and Baah "seem to impose too strict a sense of rhythm on Can's once free-flowing music, which are diluted with insipid reggae riffs." He called Out of Reach "a poor record".[16] Richardson, conceptually, liked the Can's exploration of "Latin disco rock", the genre known for "thick layers and elasticity", but he didn't enjoy the result. "Give Me No 'Roses'" was labeled by Richardson as an "OK lite-rock fluff" with chorus containing Out of Reach's "only successful hook", but the song gets ruined by weak vocals. Both Mason and Richardson believed "Pauper's Daughter and I" to one of the worst songs on Out of Reach because of its "comically off-key vocals", and AllMusic chose "Like Inobe God" as the album's worst recording,[1][2] also considered to be a contender for the nadir of Can's entire output.[4]
Additionally, Richardson criticized the mismatched mix, feeling like stitched together recordings made at different times.[1]
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 and composer of numerous film scores.
Jaki Liebezeit was a German drummer, best known as a founding member of experimental rock band Can. He was called "one of the few drummers to convincingly meld the funky and the cerebral".
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. It was recorded at the Can Studio in the Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle near Cologne.
Ege Bamyası is the third studio album by German krautrock band Can, released on 29 November 1972 by United Artists Records. The album contains the single "Spoon", which charted in the Top 10 in Germany after being used as the theme song to the German television mini-series Das Messer (1971). The success of the single allowed Can to establish their own studio, Inner Space Studio, in Weilerswist, where they recorded the rest of the album. In 2004, Spoon Records remastered Ege Bamyası and reissued it as a hybrid Super Audio CD.
Anthony "Rebop" Kwaku Baah was a Ghanaian percussionist who worked with the 1970s rock groups Traffic and Can.
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.
Saw Delight is an album by the German Krautrock band Can. It features two new band members who were ex-members of the band Traffic, Rosko Gee and Reebop Kwaku Baah, with Can's bassist Holger Czukay giving up the bass in favour of experimental effects.
Rite Time is the eleventh and final studio album by the German krautrock band Can, released in late Summer 1989 by Mercury Records. The album 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.
Rosko Gee is a Jamaican bassist, who has played with the English band Traffic on their album When the Eagle Flies (1974); with Go featuring Stomu Yamashta, Steve Winwood, Michael Shrieve, Klaus Schulze and Al Di Meola; and with the German band Can, along with former Traffic percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, appearing on the albums Saw Delight, Out of Reach and Can. He toured with Can in 1977 and also provided vocals for some of the band's songs during this period.
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.
Spoon Records is an independent record label founded and managed by the spouse of keyboard player Irmin Schmidt, Hildegard Schmidt, since 1979. The label, and its sister publishing operation Messer Music, are headquartered in the Luberon district of France, mostly releasing and reissuing music made by the krautrock band Can and its members. Hildegard and Irmin Schmidt's daughter Sandra Podmore has been directors of Spoon Records since 2008.
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.
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.
Movies is the second album by Holger Czukay, released in 1979 through Electrola.
Romantic Warriors IV: Krautrock is a trilogy of feature-length documentaries about progressive music written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder. RW4 focuses on the progressive rock music from Germany popularly known as Krautrock, although the integration of Krautrock into the progressive rock genre is a purely American notion. In Europe, the conventional wisdom is that Krautrock can be considered at most as the connection between psychedelic rock and progressive rock. The term "Krautrock" was applied after-the-fact by British journalists, and in fact the German bands share very few similarities.
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 the death of Can member Damo Suzuki on 9 February 2024.
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