CAN - Live In Brighton 1975 3LP

Confession time…. I’ve tried for years to listen and get my head around Can’s Tago Mago (and occasionally other parts of their discography) but to no avail. But I’m also a sucker for bootleg tape recordings of gigs that have been cleaned up and made listenable, so I reckon these are gonna be my in…..

Listening to both Live in Brighton and Live in Stuttgart is weirdly de ja vu inducing. Both recordings from the same year follow a post-Damo Suzuki lineup in improv mode (that a couple of people are indicating are loosely based around previously released material). Much of both releases consist of a pretty amoebic jam, with the group seeking out grooves, textures, and riffs. But when they get going do they get going! A couple of killer solos from Karoli on the Stuttgart release and a particularly wild drum solo from Leibezeit on Brighton make these differentiate themselves enough to make them worth the time!

-Mitch (Repressed Records) 

LIVE IN BRIGHTON 1975 is the second in a series of Can live concerts available in full for the first time on vinyl, CD and digital formats and is set to be released December 3. Originally recorded on tape, these carefully restored live albums will comprise the entirety of each show in the format of a story with a beginning, middle and end, with Can’s performances taking on a life of their own. The band’s line up for this legendary 1975 performance features all four original members— Irmin Schmidt on keys, Jaki Leibezeit on drums, Michel Karoli on guitar, and Holger Czukay on bass.