The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Can · produced by Can · recorded and edited by Holger Czukay · United Artists · double LP, over seventy minutes
Mode
Rock song given over to the groove, then to chant, noise and tape collage; long group improvisation edited into tracks
Mythos
The night journey: a descent from daylight song into ritual and dissolution, and a return
Phase
Seven tracks on four near-equal sides; three songs, one side of a single held pattern, one side of chant and drone, collage and a closing song
Presentation
Double album; seven tracks, over seventy minutes, recorded in 1970 at Schloss Nörvenich and released in West Germany in 1971
Register
Drums holding one figure, bass, guitar and keyboards around the pulse, a voice half sung and often in no language, a rhythm box, tape splices
Scale
Five players as one organism, a state of attention and its breakdown, and one domestic request at the end
Governing Proposition
Five players record long improvisations in a castle near Cologne and edit them on tape into seven tracks on four sides: a descent from song into groove, from groove into ritual and noise, and back up into a quiet domestic request, in which a drummer’s single pattern, held long enough, becomes the composition and the group becomes one mind.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens quiet and tense, and within its first minutes it leaves song for groove. Paperhouse breaks from that opening into a driving middle and comes back, and the move it makes is the move the whole record will make on a larger scale: from a song with a singer in it to a pulse with a group inside it. The voice is there from the start, but it does not stand in front. It is absorbed into the playing, one more instrument among the drums, the bass, the guitar and the keyboards.
United Artists released the album in West Germany in 1971 as a double LP. It was recorded in 1970 at Schloss Nörvenich, a castle near Cologne where the band had its studio, and produced by Can; Holger Czukay recorded and edited it. The players were Damo Suzuki on voice, Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitar, Jaki Liebezeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards. It was the band’s first studio album with Suzuki as its singer, after Malcolm Mooney had left. The making was the band’s own, in its own rooms, away from any studio’s practice.
The architecture is four sides of near-equal length and seven tracks, over seventy minutes in all. Side one holds three songs: Paperhouse, then Mushroom, short, tight and reverberant, then Oh Yeah, which sets a backward vocal over a hard pulse before Suzuki sings forward. Side two is a single track, side three a single track, side four two. Three of the seven run past ten minutes and take most of the record’s time. The words are improvised or half formed for most of it, and though the voice is on every track, intelligible lines are few. Only the titles are certain, and only titles are given here.
Movement II
Side two is Halleluhwah, and it is the record’s proof. Liebezeit plays one pattern and holds it for about eighteen minutes, with exact time and constant small variation, and the guitar, keyboards and voice move over it. The track does not rise by peaks. It rises by duration, until the groove feels like weather and the listener is inside a state rather than following a song. Cut to five minutes it would be a good groove; held to eighteen it is a world. Its knowledge is its length.
The length is made, not merely played. Czukay cut the band’s long takes and rejoined them on tape, and the editing that joins them into one continuous span is the form that makes the state. The splices are part of the music, audible to an attentive ear and changing how the track is heard. This is the record’s method in its plainest form: long group improvisation, recorded and then edited into something that is neither a jam nor a composition. Karoli and Schmidt place themselves around the pulse without crowding it. No player leads.
What the record discloses can be stated here, through sound: five players can make one mind, with no leader, out of listening, and a single figure, held, opens a kind of attention that ordinary song does not reach. That is credited as fully as words would be. But it is a disclosure of a way of making and a state of attention more than of a human or social condition, and the words, half sung and mostly sound, state almost nothing that could be held as true. The record’s plainest limit is here, at its centre: it shows a condition and does not articulate one.
Movement III
The second disc goes underground. Side three is Aumgn: Schmidt intoning the title syllable over drones, scraping, reversed and treated sound, in what feels like a dark room, with the drums arriving late and building to a long climax that is as much assault as transport. It is the record’s terror, and its lowest point. After the warm trance of the first disc the elevation turns cold. The syllable is a sacred one, and the side is a rite more than a piece of music in the usual sense.
The title of the record names an island, Tagomago, off Ibiza, which the band’s own account associates with magic. The structure carries more than the name. The first disc stays in the daylight of song and groove; the second goes down into ritual and dissolution; the last track comes back up. That is the night journey, among the oldest of patterns, and it is load-bearing in the sequence: the four sides are the stages of the descent, and the double album is its instrument rather than its container.
No figure bears it. There is no person, place or story the descent happens to; the syllable is intoned by no character, and the dark room is nowhere in particular. The myth is real, and it holds the four sides in one passage, but with the particular withheld almost entirely it is atmosphere more than construction. And the side is long. Stretches of Aumgn are texture held because the tape ran, and its place in the design is required while its length is permitted rather than compelled. It enacts dissolution partly by being shapeless, and there the form serves without enacting.
Movement IV
Side four begins with Peking O, and the group mind breaks into collage. A rhythm box ticks under Suzuki’s rapid vocal in no language, keyboard clusters and fragments of sound cut across one another, and the frenzy has more force than height. It is the possession of the descent, the self coming apart with the group. It is also, as much as it is a necessity, a collage of incidents, and long stretches of it are accident in which command gives way, some of it intended and not all of it achieved.
The tradition turned from is twofold. On one side stood the rock of the late 1960s, the drone of the Velvet Underground, the funk of James Brown and the psychedelic jam; on the other the European avant-garde and tape music in which Schmidt and Czukay were trained. The turn is large: the song is subordinated to the groove, the drummer’s figure becomes the composition, the singer becomes an instrument, and tape editing becomes a band’s working method. A young band made its second album a double record with a side of chant and noise. But Bitches Brew had already made a double album of edited group improvisation, the Velvet Underground had joined drone to rock, and the band’s own Monster Movie had begun the method. The swerve is the joining, made further than others had made it.
The joining moved the field. The West German bands grouped as krautrock are measured against Can, and against this record above all. Post-punk took its discipline of bass and drums, Public Image Ltd among others, and the loop-based music of the following decades is often traced to Liebezeit’s playing on Halleluhwah. Much of that reach belongs to the band rather than to this record alone, and it came slowly, and it ran among musicians far more than among the public. The force that began it is this record’s: the held pattern as the form, and the tape as a band’s instrument.
Movement V
The record ends in a calm, almost gentle song. After the rite of side three and the collage of Peking O, Bring Me Coffee or Tea comes back up into daylight with a domestic request, and the quiet is a height of its own, a calm after the storm. The descent needs its return, and this is it. The last word of a record that went down into chant and noise is an ordinary thing asked for at home.
One law governs the whole: the group as one organism, with no part in front, held by repetition. The closing song and Aumgn, the two most distant pieces, obey it at the level of method, the voice inside the sound, the pulse as the ground, the take edited into a span, and the sequence makes them two ends of one descent. But on the second disc the pulse is suspended for long stretches, and there the law is the descent’s argument rather than something heard. A listener may hear two records in one sleeve, a disc of grooves and a disc of experiments. The law holds, and the strain on it is real.
Fifty-five years have tested the record. It has stayed in print and in the lists of the decade’s essential albums, it has been remastered and reissued, and musicians across rock, post-punk and electronic music have kept returning to it; its drumming still sounds current, and nothing in its production has dated, though the recording is rough and close by later standards. It has never been widely heard by the public. What it holds is consciousness as trance and dissolution, the body in the groove, five people as one mind, the sacred glimpsed in a syllable, and a single domestic request; the state, history, labour, the family and the natural order are absent. Within that, one pattern held long enough is what the record knows.
Act III · The Twelve
Seven tracks in over seventy minutes, and the subtractive test bites harder on a double record than on a single one. Side one cannot go: Paperhouse, Mushroom and Oh Yeah are the songs from which the record descends. Halleluhwah cannot go; it is the record’s centre and its proof that one pattern held long enough becomes a world. Bring Me Coffee or Tea cannot go, since the descent needs its return. The test bites on the second disc. Aumgn and Peking O are what a hostile listener cuts, and within them the cutting is easy: stretches of Aumgn are texture held because the tape ran, and Peking O is as much a collage of incidents as a necessity. Their place is required; their length is permitted, not compelled.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The disclosure is made through sound, and is credited as fully as words. It can be stated: five players can make one mind, with no leader, out of listening, and a single repeated figure, held, opens a state of attention that ordinary song does not reach. Halleluhwah discloses this plainly, and so does the way the voice on side one is absorbed into the playing rather than set in front of it. The second disc discloses the reverse of the same condition: the group mind breaking down into chant, noise and machine, and the self coming apart with it. That is real, but it is a state more than a meaning, and the words disclose little that can be stated. A way of making is disclosed more clearly than a human condition, and that holds the figure.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation comes often and in two kinds. The warm kind is trance: Halleluhwah rises not by peaks but by duration, until the groove feels like weather, and Oh Yeah lifts on its pulse with a reversed voice hanging over it. Paperhouse breaks from its tense opening into a driving height. The cold kind is dread: Aumgn is the record’s terror, an intoned syllable in a dark room, the drums arriving late and the climax as much assault as transport. Peking O has frenzy more than height. Bring Me Coffee or Tea is a quiet height after the storm, and Mushroom a close, haunted one. Some of the second disc’s long stretches are level rather than raised. It stands below Low at 8.8, which reaches a higher single summit.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Myth is evoked often and built in one frame: a descent and a return. The title names an island, Tagomago, off Ibiza, which the band’s own account associates with magic; that is evocation only. The structure carries more. The first disc stays in the daylight of song and groove; the second goes down into ritual and dissolution, the intoned syllable of side three and the possession and gibberish of Peking O; and the record comes back up into a request for coffee or tea. That is the night journey, and it is load-bearing in the sequence. What holds the axis well below the bar is that no figure bears it: there is no person, place or story the descent happens to, and myth with no particular is atmosphere more than construction.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The inheritance is twofold: the rock of the late 1960s, the drone of the Velvet Underground, the funk of James Brown and the psychedelic jam, and the European avant-garde and tape music in which Schmidt and Czukay were trained. The turn is large. The song is subordinated to the groove, the drummer’s repeated figure becomes the composition, the singer becomes one more instrument, and long improvisations are edited on tape into tracks that are neither jams nor compositions. A young band made its second album a double record with a whole side of chant and noise, and staked its standing with a label and a public on it. What holds it below the top is the path: Bitches Brew had already made a double album of edited group improvisation, the Velvet Underground had joined drone to rock, and Monster Movie had begun the method.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Change the form and the record loses much of what it knows. The knowledge of Halleluhwah is in its length: cut to five minutes it is a good groove, held to eighteen it is a state, and the editing that joins takes into one continuous span is the form that makes the state. The sequence is counted here, once: four near-equal sides go from song to groove to ritual to collapse and return, so that the double album is the instrument of the descent rather than its container. What holds it below the top is the second disc. Aumgn and Peking O enact dissolution, but partly by being shapeless, and a form that argues formlessness by losing form is weaker than one that shows it; stretches of both serve as container rather than instrument.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Evidence over fifty-five years. Musicians across rock, post-punk and electronic music have returned to the record, and Liebezeit’s playing on Halleluhwah is still taken apart by drummers and producers. The yield is in the recording itself: the long tracks separate on close listening into many small decisions, the edits are audible to an attentive ear and change how the tracks are heard, and the relation between the two halves repays return. What holds the figure is the thin semantic yield. The words are mostly sound, and some of what listeners find on the second disc is projection invited by noise, as with every record that withholds statement. The depth is formal more than semantic, and the figure stands there.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The field is the rock and experimental music of Europe and America around 1970. The intrinsic force is high: the record showed that a rock band could build long works from one held rhythmic pattern and from edited group improvisation, with the drummer’s figure as the composition and the voice as a texture, and it carried the methods of tape music into a band’s working practice. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the West German bands grouped as krautrock are measured against Can, and against this record above all; post-punk took its discipline of bass and drums, Public Image Ltd among others; and the loop-based music of the following decades is often traced to Liebezeit’s playing. Much of that reach is the band’s rather than this record’s alone, it was slow, and it ran among musicians more than the public. It stands below Low at 9.1.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over fifty-five years. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, and has been remastered and reissued. Presence is continuous but not the widest. The record has stayed in print and in the lists of the decade’s essential albums, and among musicians its presence is very wide, but it has never been widely heard by the public, and no track of it is a broadcast standard as Once in a Lifetime or Sound and Vision is. The fabric bears its moment lightly: the recording is rough and close by later standards, and the rhythm box of Peking O belongs to its year, but no production fashion in it has dated, and the drumming sounds current. Narrow public presence holds it where it stands.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing, and it is in two hands. Liebezeit’s drumming on Halleluhwah holds one pattern with exact time and constant small variation for some eighteen minutes, a command of repetition few players of any tradition match. Czukay’s editing turns long takes into continuous tracks, and the splices are part of the music. Karoli’s guitar and Schmidt’s keyboards place themselves around the pulse without crowding it. The faults are real and spread across the record: the recording is rough and the sound often muddy, Suzuki’s voice is uneven in pitch and in where it sits, and Aumgn and Peking O hold long stretches where command gives way to accident, some of it intended and not all of it achieved. It stands below Low at 9.0 and Remain in Light at 8.7, whose sound is more fully commanded.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One law governs the record: the group as one organism, with no part in front, held by repetition. The two most distant elements are Bring Me Coffee or Tea, a gentle song, and Aumgn, a side of chant and noise. They obey the same law at the level of method, the voice inside the sound, the pulse as the ground, the take edited into a span, and the sequence makes them two ends of one descent. The range is wide, from song to groove to ritual to collage, and the law holds most firmly where the pulse holds. What holds the figure is the strain at the far end: Aumgn and Peking O suspend the pulse for long stretches, the law there is the descent’s argument rather than an audible physics, and a listener may hear two records, a disc of grooves and a disc of experiments.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as trance, dissolution and return. The body is held, through the groove. The group, five people making one mind, is held fully, and it is the record’s social order. The sacred is evoked in Aumgn, the syllable and the rite, and in the magic of the title, glimpsed more than held. Domestic life enters once, at the very end, in a request for coffee or tea. The state, history, labour, the family and the natural order are absent, and the record does not reach for them. A few orders, joined by method rather than by a person or a world: that is what holds the figure lowest, under Low at 7.2 and above m b v at 6.6.
Score: 6.9 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve and The Imperishable at 8.7, then Pressure on Tradition at 8.6. A rock band that made the drummer’s held pattern the composition and tape editing its method, a record that has lasted fifty-five years whole and still sounds current, and a turn that the West German bands, post-punk and loop-based music took up after it.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.9: consciousness, the body and the group are held, the sacred glimpsed and domestic life touched once, and the state, history, labour, the family and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.7: what is disclosed is a way of making and a state of attention more than a stated condition, and the descent and return are borne by the sequence and by no figure.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Swerve at 8.7, The Imperishable at 8.7 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.9.
Basis · Tago Mago, the double LP as first released by United Artists in West Germany in 1971, seven tracks in their original order on four sides, over seventy minutes; recorded in 1970 at Schloss Nörvenich near Cologne, produced by Can, recorded and edited by Holger Czukay. Side one: Paperhouse; Mushroom; Oh Yeah. Side two: Halleluhwah. Side three: Aumgn. Side four: Peking O; Bring Me Coffee or Tea. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its making and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The double album is the unit; later remasters and reissues, and any material added to them, are used only as evidence of survival. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Running times are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified, among them the month of release, the instruments each player took beyond his principal one, the story of how the singer joined the band, the contents of later editions, the languages of the words, the sound that joins Mushroom to Oh Yeah, the make of the rhythm box, the title’s association with any particular figure, the members’ studies, later songs that name the singer and the details of the sessions, are not given.