HALLELU HWAHI
THE four men who arrive on the sweaty stage of Stuttgart’s Gustav-Siegle-Haus on Halloween night in 1975 do so without any undue drama. Unlike the theatrics of other progressive rock groups of the era, they are not clad in outlandish costumes nor do they come with any elaborate stage set – no castles, polystyrene megaliths or ice rinks here. The music they quietly begin to summon – from a humming synthesiser and a whining electric guitar, unadorned by any elaborate visual pyrotechnics – conjures up misty vistas of distant hills. After three minutes, through this swirling mizzle, comes the light footfall of a drum pattern, like some warrior lost in the marshes. Punching bass notes carry the flavour of Persian scales. All the elements spiral about one another and coalesce, eventually precipitating in a groove we would recognise in the 21st century as a techno pulse.
This describes the first six minutes or so of Live In Stuttgart 1975, the first in a series of restored live recordings by Can. The studio albums Can released between 1969 and 1978 were products of that happy era when a rock band could receive a living wage from a major label and touring, and still run their own live-in recording studio, giving them a totally free hand over their own music production. Their posthumous reputation is now built almost entirely on the contents of those albums, their warp-drive Teutonic response to The Velvet Underground and the Stooges, veering from hypno-funk groove to avant-garde drone science.
“I always loved those wonderful relentless rhythms that used to chug away,” says Hawkwind’s Dave Brock, who bought a copy of Can’s debut, , as far back as 1970, “Because they were always rather avant-gardeish, with their electronics and stuff, I always found them a very
