FILTER REISSUES
Paris, trance
Volume vier in the live chronicles of Cologne’s mythic improvising superpower – actually playing their songs? Hold tight! says Ian Harrison.
Can
★★★★
Live In Paris 1973
SPOON. CD/DL/LP
CAN DRUMMER Jaki Liebezeit left the planet in 2017, but in 2020 his pal and collaborator Jono Podmore compiled rhythmic biography The Life, Theor y And Practice Of A Master Dr ummer. It’s a book packed with curiosities. These range from a decoding of Liebezeit’s esoteric ‘dot-dash’ percussion thesis to his instr ument collection (he treasured his father ’s old accordion), as well as the repertoire of facial expressions he favoured for photo shoots, with “visionar y gaze into the distance” in pole position. It also details his thoughts on the problem of ego, arguing that, “it holds us tight, it dictates the illusion of the self… when you get rid of it, that is where it all begins.”
As this ongoing archival project re-states, Can seemed particularly able to renounce such psychic bonds when in the live arena. Drawn from the audio stash of late collector Andy Hall – who nobly made his earliest recordings with a tape recorder stuck down his trousers – previous volumes in the series presented long-for m, all-instr umental mur murations in Brighton and Stuttgart in 1975 and a shorter, punchier groove-based show from Cuxhaven a year later. All are indispensable for Can junkies, allowing those who never got to witness them in the flesh a chance to experience their in-the-moment creative spontaneity, with the type of sonic upgrade and judicious enhancement that hissy old bootleg recordings do not have.