FUTURE DAYS

FUTURE DAYS, from German avant-prog pioneers Can, is a very good album, but it's also very different. This music is not at all like that of Genesis, Yes, or ELP and their ilk. There are no pompous, loud or grandiose moments; instead it's rather percussive and dreamy, with breathy, indistinct vocals that act much like another instrument. This strange and wonderful stuff is a classic example of what my friends and I used to call "head" music: meditative, hypnotic and other-worldly.

I can remember lying on my bed in the dark, listening to this album on headphones. By the end of the opening nine-plus minutes title piece, I felt as if I had already been on a very unusual, long and wondrous "trip." I had never heard anything even remotely like it before, and the mind-blowing music prompted some very rich "visions" in my teenaged brain. With three more tracks yet to come, I knew I was in for a rich and fulfilling listening experience.

Next up, "Spray" was almost as good as the opener, and "Moonshake" was three minutes of more "poppy" (a very relative concept, in this context!) fun. Still, the best was yet to come. The full side, twenty minute "Bel Air" was a real odyssey in "inner space" (that's the aptly-named studio where the band recorded the album) exploration, and by itself worth the price of passage to this "alien" brave new world!

Listening to this ground-breaking disc will take you to another place -- a unique, exotic and magical place! As Jim Stafford might say: "Take a trip and never leave the farm" (or your bedroom, for that matter)!