| Out of Reach | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | July 1978 | |||
| Recorded | October 1977 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 35:19 | |||
| Label | Harvest | |||
| Producer | Can | |||
| Can chronology | ||||
| ||||
Out of Reach is the ninth studio album by the German krautrock band Can, released as an LP in 1978 on Harvest Records. [1] It is their tenth official studio album, discounting compilations such as Unlimited Edition .
Founding bassist and producer Holger Czukay left the band before the recording sessions for Out of Reach. [1] As a partial result of Czukay's departure, bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah are said to dominate the group's sound on this album. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit was losing interest in the band at the time, leaving most of the percussion duties to Baah. [1] Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt refused to play on "Give Me No 'Roses'", so Gee and Baah played the keyboards on that track. However, the album's guitar solos from Michael Karoli are a link to the older Can sound.
Rosko Gee performs vocals on "Pauper's Daughter and I" (quoting the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme) and "Give Me No 'Roses'", and wrote these two tracks. [1] Rebop Kwaku Baah sings on "Like Inobe God." The four other songs ("Serpentine", "November", "Seven Days Awake", and "One More Day") are instrumental. A simpler version of "November" was called "Mighty Girl" in the 1975 session for BBC's John Peel Show.
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) [2] and on its own in several single CD versions, e.g. on MagMid (TKO Magnum Music) in the United Kingdom, [3] but was more difficult to find than other Can albums. [1] Being the only Can album that features no input from Holger Czukay (its followup Can had some editing by Czukay [4] ), 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. [5] 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. [6]
It was finally officially re-issued by Spoon Records, in CD, vinyl and digital formats, on 18 August 2014. [7]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [8] |
| Pitchfork | 3.7/10 [9] |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | [10] |
AllMusic's retrospective review of Out of Reach praised Gee's bass playing for creating a jazz sound, but also referred to "Pauper's Daughter and I" (which they erroneously referred to as "The Pauper's Daughter") and "Like Inobe God" as Can's two worst recordings. [1] In an overview of Can's career, journalist Andy Gill opined that Gee and Baah "seemed to impose too strict a sense of rhythm on Can's once free-flowing music, which was diluted with insipid reggae riffs." He called Out of Reach "a poor record". [11]
All songs written by Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt, Rosko Gee, and Reebop Kwaku Baah, except where noted.
Total length - 35:19
According to the liner notes:
| Albums | |
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| Compilations | |
| Live albums | |
| Songs | |
| Related articles | |
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Irmin Schmidt is a German keyboardist and composer, best known as a founding member of the band Can.
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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.
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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 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.
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.
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.
