Can — Live in Aston 1977

German Kosmische legends Can have a reputation for being innovative musical pioneers. During the late 1960s and 1970s, they released a number of groundbreaking records and were renowned for their live performances. Held together by the metronomic drumming of Jaki Liebezeit, and the supreme bass playing of Holger Czukay, the band forged a career built around a solid, faultless rhythm section. This allowed guitarist Michael Karoli and keyboard wizard Irmin Schmidt to unleash their creativity over the top, with occasional vocals from original vocalist Michael Mooney or, later and more significantly Damo Suzuki. This recording was captured slightly later in their careers in 1977, and by this time, they were performing long jam-style pieces without a vocalist and had added former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee on bass, thus allowing Czukay to step away from the bass and mess about with shortwave radios and tape loop

The band’s set is broken up into four parts "Eins", "Zwei", "Drei" and "Vier". The first of which is a lengthy prog/ska masterpiece with some absolutely incendiary guitar work from Michael Karoli, which eventually gives way to some equally outstanding keyboard histrionics from Irmin Schmidt. "Zwei", is built around "Vitamin C" from the Ege Bamyasi album, however, it feels a lot more upbeat and happy. Michael Karoli supplies some pretty interesting guitar parts that range from jazzy noodling to near heavy metal riffage, before heading into funkier territory towards the middle of the song. Once again, his soloing is electric, and you really do get to see a different, freer and expansive side to the band’s sound. "Drei" starts off with a weird, almost jazzy electronic blast of weirdness as Schmidt and Czukay become more prominent with lots of weird little pops, clicks and scraping noises all over the top of a funky backline formed by Liebezeit, Gee and Karoli. At 16 minutes, this is the longest track on the album, and it builds and builds as each member of the band brings their own elements to the fore with some pretty exciting performances from everyone, including Jaki Liebezeit who gets to take on more of a central role at certain points during this particular jam. The album closes with "Vier", meanwhile is a deconstructed version of "Dizzy Dizzy" from their 1974 album Soon Over Babaluma, where the guitar and keyboards merge perfectly to create something so damned funky that you can almost sense George Clinton or Eddie Hazel’s fingerprints involved somewhere.

Can have elicited a great many different superlatives from this journalist over the years, their music is unique, life changing, revolutionary, beautiful, terrifying, glorious and eclectic to name but a few. Above all else, they are probably one of the greatest experimental groups of all time. Deserving to be spoken of with the reverence as Miles Davis or John Cage. Live at Aston celebrates a different version of Can, this is not quite the same animal that gave us Tago Mago, Soundtracks, Ege Bamyasi, or even Saw Delight. This is stretched-out experimental space rock that has never dated and remains as exciting and innovative today as it was in 1977. Glorious and essential for fans of Kosmische, prog rock or just music in general.