FUTURE DAYS

"Future Days" is a courageous step forward onto a completely different path for the band in question: one of the highlights of Can's glorious career.

After 'Tago Mago', Can released yet another landmark album, 'Ege Bamyasi', a more toned down, but still freaky LP that kept the fans still very happy. 'Future Days' follows 'Ege Bamyasi', leaving the fans stunned by how different this sounds from everything else the beloved band had done. Nevertheless, because of it's bravery, it still remains as an important Krautrock album and one of the highlights of Can's glorious artistic career.

'Future Days' indeed is the quietest of the band's albums; some have even drawn comparisons to Tropical music, because of it's extremely calm atmosphere. The production is very toned down, lowering the volume of all the instruments, especially the vocals, which seem always lost and drowned by the music. Of course, the lower tone is not accidental, it's just another form of experimentation Can decided to use, instead of the stunningly bizarre sounds used in 'Tago Mago'. We still have though a lot of typical Can elements, particularly the always very creative and versatile rhythm section, at times dominant in the music, at times rigid, at times loose, at time driving, at times laid back. It is though a much more melodic album, thanks to the straight-forward guitars and soft vocals. In other moments, it feels that the band is improvising instrumentally, especially thanks to the touch of organs, which give to the music almost a Jam Band feel.

'Future Days' includes only four tracks that barely end at the forty minute mark, like 'Ege Bamyasi'. But the forty minutes can be quite puzzling, starting from the first nine minutes, the title track, a great start for this album. It's a bit of a builder, where the punch is a soft, yet psychedelic influenced melody with Damo Suzuki's almost whispering vocals in the background. But surrounding that are tons of buried details, as if you were listening to the track in another room, with your ear attached to the wall. Same thing goes for the more lively 'Spray', a long instrumental that is a little less repetitive and hypnotic and much more progressive in nature. After the small little track 'Moonshake', that is however the loudest and liveliest this album gets, comes the grandiose, near to twenty minute epic 'Bel Air', a sort of mixture between Krautrock and Progressive, being at times repetitive, however having a structure very similar to the one of a suite, with a few melody changes and some free experimentation in between.

This album isn't one that exactly clicks at first listen, because it surprises and, in a way, disappoints a listener who perhaps was fond of the previous work of the band, like I was. 'Future Days' ends up being once again a courageous and interesting LP, contributing in giving the title to this wonderful band as the best Krautrock band.

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