Out of Reach [PA]

Performer: Can
Producer: Can
Distributor: Phantom Import Distributi

Notes: Can: Rosko Gee (vocals, keyboards, bass); Reebob Kwaku Baah (vocals, synthesizer, percussion); Michael Karoli (guitar, violin); Irmin Schmidt (keyboards); Jaki Liebezeit (drums). OUT OF REACH is a 1978 release by a reduced lineup of German progrssive rockers Can. Remaster. Can: Rebop Kwaku Baah (vocals, Moog synthesizer, percussion); Rosko Gee (vocals, bass instrument); Michael Karoli (guitar, violin); Irmin Schmidt (keyboards); Jaki Liebezeit (drums). Audio Mixers: Can; Conny Planck. Arranger: Can. One of its less critically praised works, Can's OUT OF REACH is nonetheless a versatile and rewarding entry in this seminal band's catalogue. By the time of the album's release in 1978, Can had added former Traffic members Rosko Gee and Rebop Kwaku Baah to their lineup and had begun incorporating streamlined disco rhythms and African percussion into their already eclectic sound. The polyrhythmic funk of "Pauper's Daughter and I" and the freeform percussion assault of "One More Day" are particular highlights. All but unknown to most but the most hardcore Can fanatics, 1978's Out of Reach is one of the group's rarest albums. This is due in large part to the fact that bassist Holger Czukay left the band before the recording sessions, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit has a greatly reduced role, leaving most of the rhythm duties to percussionist-come-lately Reebop Kwaku Baah. As a result, many fans don't consider this a true Can album. They have a point, and there's no doubt that this is not one of Can's better albums. However, it's not an album to be dismissed outright. As on the group's proper swan song, 1977's Saw Delight, new bassist Rosko Gee largely leads the group, and his jazz-inflected playing is marvelous, especially on the centerpiece improvisations "November" and "Serpentine." On the down side, he should never have been allowed to sing: The inept "The Pauper's Daughter" is saved from being Can's worst-ever recording only by the even worse "Like Inobe God" on side two. Can themselves have disowned this album, making it the only Can music not reissued on their Spoon label in the '90s. Most of the CD reissues are mastered directly off poor-quality vinyl and sound like it. ~ Stewart Mason

Though they were one of the key bands of the 1970s Krautrock movement, Can always saw themselves as individualists. They were influenced more by composers like Stockhausen than by psychedelic rock, but this seminal German band combined their avant-garde tendencies with rock trappings and funk-inflected rhythms in an amazingly natural way, influencing subsequent generations of iconoclasts.

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