Can- Future Days

After several albums of all out weirdness, for the fifth effort, Krautrock kings Can took a drastic change in direction. They eschewed the avant garde and fuzzy elements of their music and made an ambient album. 1973's Future Days took the band's prior minimalism and made it the focal point of the music, Czukay, Karoli, Leibezit and Schmidt make their instruments recede into nothingness. Damo Sazuki features less prominently, and he would leave the group after the album to become a Jehovah's Witness.

The album fades in with some very distorted symbols for the title track. There is almost no formal instrumentation here, just some strange effects layered on each other and a wispy vocal. Can defiantly sees the future as a fairly sterile, orderly place. Afterward comes the aptly titled "Spray", with an ocean like feel conveyed via the washed out keyboards and rhythmically pounding drums. ?It's a bit more active, but it still has that empty and power full feel. Juxtaposed in the mix is the three minute (the rest are all 9+) little pop dity "Moonshake." It's a nonsensical song, and although it's not to bad, it kills the mood of the album. This should have been a single.

On the B side is the side-long suite "Bel Air", which has many shorter movements instead of one long one. It starts of similarly to the title track, with even matching maracas. Then all of a sudden the rhythm section seals the show, with some layered keys and guitar chords to liven the mix. All goes quiet for a heavily fuzzy middle, then farm sounds, and afterwards there's cycle back to the beginning. This is a far cry from their prior side longers, and even casual fans might enjoy this. Good background music/

This is one of the first ambient albums ever created. Ahead of its time in many ways, Future Days is one of a handful of blueprint albums for electronic music. With just light sprinklings of lyrics, guitar, and even formal keyboards, the sparseness is the entirety of the album's embodiment. That does make it difficult to get in to the record until several listens, but there's a lot on offer. Not quite a Tago Mago, though.

This album is like a cloud, an interesting and beautiful object that passes by with so little fanfare it barely goes noticed. Grade: B+