Rite Time

Performer: Can
Artist: Irmin Schmidt; Michael Karoli; Holger Czukay; Malcolm Mooney; Jaki Liebezeit
Distributor: Caroline Distribution

Notes: Can: Malcolm Mooney (vocals); Michael Karoli (guitar, pocket organ, bass, background vocals); Holger Czukay (French horn, synthesizer, bass); Irmin Schmidt (keyboards, kimbele); Jaki Leibezeit (drums, percussion). Recorded at Outer Space Studio, Nice, France in December 1986. An unexpected reunion from Can (made even more unexpected by the presence of original singer Malcolm Mooney, who left the band in 1969), 1989's Rite Time is in large part a return to form for the group, especially when one considers how weak Can's last few '70s albums were. Wisely, the quintet doesn't try to replicate the sound they created over two decades before on albums like Monster Movie. Instead, Mooney and company make Rite Time a document of where they're at musically at the time. In short, it's funkier ("Give the Drummer Some"), funnier ("Hoolah Hoolah," which takes that old schoolyard rhyme about how they don't wear pants on the other side of France as the jumping-off point for its melody and lyrics), and more abstractly ambient (the elliptical closer "In the Distance Lies the Future") than before. Rite Time doesn't have the rubbery, polyrhythmic intensity of classic Can albums like Ege Bamyasi or Future Days, but it's a solidly listenable album that, unlike the majority of reunion albums, doesn't soil the memory of the band. ~ Stewart Mason RITE TIME finds Can's original lineup--including first vocalist Malcolm Mooney-- reconvening nearly 20 years after its stunning 1968 debut, MONSTER MOVIE. With the decade-long legacy of Can's unparalleled accomplishments (and another decade of oft-worthy solo activities) under their collective belts, the musicians have little to prove here. Unlike many cash-in reunion efforts, RITE TIME is a thoroughly entertaining coda for an extraordinary musical career. Recorded in sun-drenched Nice during December of 1986, the one-off RITE TIME captures an ageless band at play. Without so much as a blink, the regrouped Can leaps right back into the loose-limbed polymorphic groove-working magic of such monumental albums as SOON OVER BABALUMA. While time may have taken the edge off the restless intensity that informed the earlier TAGO MAGO and EGE BAMYASI, Can still sounds vital. Jaki Liebezeit remains an incomparable drummer; multi-instrumentalists Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt have honed their instrumental and electronic signatures to perfection; Michael Karoli's dazzling guitar work still packs a psychedelic/pyrotechnic punch. Collectively, they've never sounded merrier. The album's big surprise is the return of absentee Mooney, his once-hoary croak mellowed to an endearingly melodic rasp and given to boisterous scat acrobatics ("The Withoutlaw Man," "Movin' Right Along").

Q (11/94, p.136) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...this re-formation proved to be just the right thing to do...full of Can's trademark edginess and claustrophobia..." The Wire (p.53) - "[RITE TIME] sounds remarkably fresh....There's a leanness and tautness bout tracks...and the grooves are restrained but still potent..."

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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