"Soul Desert" / "She Brings the Rain" Released: 1969
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.[1] Stylistically, the record also documents the group's transition to the more meditative and experimental mode of the studio albums that followed.
"CAN SOUNDTRACKS" is the second album of THE CAN but not album no. two ... Album no. two [Tago Mago] will be released in the beginning of 1971.[2]
Background and production
When working on soundtracks, Can usually let Irmin Schmidt watch the films with the director, discuss it, and get an idea for drama points and structure. While the rest of the band went blind into recording process.[3]
Can recorded a demo version of "She Brings the Rain", the earlier song from Soundtracks, during their several months residency in Switzerland in mid-1969. They were invited by stage director Max Ammann, who had recently received a position at the Schauspielhaus Zürich, and request them to supply music for the premiere of Heiner Müller's adaptation of Aeschylus' Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound. Ammann connected with Can through his acquaintance with Schmidt; Schmidt had composed the music for Ammann's production of a Bertolt Brecht play in Munich the previous year, and Ammann had been impressed by their 1969 song "Father Cannot Yell" from Monster Movie.[4] The initial version of "She Brings the Rain" was taped in a Zürich cellar in November 1969, and re-recorded in December for the 1969 film A Big Grey-Blue Bird[de] edited by Peter Przygodda, friend of Schmidt.[5]
"Mother Sky" was commissioned by Jerzy Skolimowski who had been impressed by "Yoo Doo Right", requesting a long track for his 1970 film Deep End. It is played during a sequence of "totally different scenes all kept together" by scene of a young guy going through town looking for the girl. Schmidt thought it would be fitting to connect these scenes with a monotone rhythm and "then according to every scene, very abruptly, changing what's on top of it".[6]
In August 1970, Can were asked by Przygodda, who was editing the film, to make some music cues for 1970 spaghetti western Deadlock directed by Roland Klick. Przygodda felt that Klick's original idea for the soundtrack—himself improvising on guitar—was a "self-indulgence too far". They were asked at short notice, film was already on the mixing board, and the date of release was fixed.[7] Klick tried to interject into their recording process, but the band convinced him that it would be completed on-time only in his absence. They created the parts in span of a night, and in the morning at eight o'clock Schmidt flew to Berlin, delivering recordings and assisting with the mix. One of the resulting tracks, "Tango Whiskyman", appears in film on a seven-inch single carried by a character Kid and repeatedly spun on a turntable. At one point, Kid force-feeds whisky and makes another character dance as bullets explode around his feet—the track's title.[8]
Composition
"She Brings the Rain" has been characterized as a "jazz-inflected" and "the most simply romantic music Can ever made".[5] The song has a simple composition, involving a walking bassline and gloomy-sounding minor guitar chords. Toward the end, Michael overdubs electric guitar into ethereal loops emulating a cello solo.[9]
Can biographer Rob Young described "Tango Whiskyman" as a tribute to the "funereal bombast of Ennio Morricone" and highlighted Schmidt's organ that creates linchpin "heat-haze shimmer".[8] The instrumental piece, "Deadlock (Titelmusik)", closes the movie with echoing tom-toms and solemn keys. Schmidt used a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach from the St Matthew Passion with additional harmonies.[10]
In a retrospective review in Stylus Magazine, Nick Southall called Soundtracks "a strange beast of a record" that "appear[s] directionless", but has some "absolutely sublime moments".[15]Dominique Leone opined in a retrospective review for Pitchfork that while many of the tracks on Soundtracks lack the "artistic reach" Can achieved on Monster Movie and other albums, they are not "throwaways".[12] Leone chose "Mother Sky" as the album's highlight, adding that it "has an intensity matching anything on the debut".[12] In another retrospective review of Soundtracks, for AllMusic, Jason Ankeny remarked: "The dichotomy between the two singers is readily apparent: Suzuki's odd, strangulated vocals fit far more comfortably into the group's increasingly intricate and subtle sound, allowing for greater variation than Mooney's stream-of-consciousness discourse."[11]
In March 2005, Q placed "Mother Sky" at number 48 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks".[16]
Young remarked that "She Brings the Rain" is "one of the most 'mainstream' songs Can ever made" and an uncommon instance where where only a few members perform (Holger, Michael and Malcolm). Additionally, he called it a "distant cousin to Disney's 'Everybody Wants to Be a Cat'".[9]
Damo Suzuki – lead vocals (1, 2, 4, 6), percussion
References
↑Czukay, Holger. "A Short History of the Can – Discography". Perfect Sound Forever. furious.com. Archived from the original on 30 May 2019. Retrieved 2 November 2011. 'Don't Turn the Light on, Leave Me Alone' was Damo's first recording with CAN ever.
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