Flow Motion

Performer: Can
Engineer: Holger Czukay; Rene Tinner
Producer: Can; Simon Puxley
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: Can: Michael Karoli (vocals, slide guitar, electric violin, baglama); Irmin Scmidt (vocals, keyboards); Holger Czukay (bass, djun, background vocals); Jaki Liebezeit (drums, percussion, background vocals). Recorded at Inner Space, Weilerswist, Germany in 1976. The second of Can's three Virgin albums, 1976's Flow Motion, is a divisive record in the group's canon. It was their most commercially successful album (the opening track, "I Want More," was released as a single in the U.K. and actually charted, thanks to its smoothly percolating near-disco groove, which makes it resemble a late-period Roxy Music hit), but many fans dismiss it as the group's feint toward commercial success. That fluke hit aside, the charge doesn't really hold water. There's a newfound smoothness to the group's interplay, which Holger Czukay attributes to an interest in reggae music, yet the Caribbean influence is quite subtle; only on "Cascade Waltz" and, particularly, "Laugh Till You Cry Live Till You Die" is there a noticeable reggae lilt. The two highlight tracks are "Smoke," a wild, Moroccan-styled entry in their ever-growing Ethnological Forgery Series, and the limber title track, a ten-and-a-half minute instrumental groove that recalls the best moments of earlier albums like Soon Over Babaluma. By no means one of Can's very best albums, Flow Motion deserves better than its poor reputation in some circles. ~ Stewart Mason 1976's FLOW MOTION is probably Can's most immediately accessible album, borne out by the fact that the opening track, "I Want More," was the group's sole chart hit in Britain. The album title is uncannily (sorry) descriptive; this music flows with the sinuous grace of a dancer. The Stockhausen-influenced repetition that marked their earlier records is still evident here, but Holger Czukay's bass has a new limberness and melodic bent, showing a fresh appreciation of the supple rhythms of reggae and other Carribean musics. Czukay's bass combines with Michael Karoli's headspinning polyrhythms to create a powerful, intoxicating sound. The lengthy instrumental title track is one of the finest performances of Can's long career, with the sinister "Smoke" (part of the group's long-running Ethnological Forgery series of faux world music) and the hypnotic "And More" nearly its equal.

The Wire (p.51) - "[Their] hit 'I Want More' benefited from their recently recording equipment and shiny new production sound."

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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