''Future Days'' is the fourth studio album by the German

experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with ...

group Can, released in 1973. It was the last Can album to feature Japanese vocalist

Damo Suzuki , better known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), is a Japanese musician who has been living in Germany since the early 1970s and is best known as the former lead singer of the krautrock group Can. Biography As a teenager, Suzuki spent the late 196 ...

, and sees the band exploring a more atmospheric sound than their previous releases.

Content

Music

On ''Future Days'', Can foregrounds the ambient elements they had explored on previous albums, dispensing largely with traditional rock song structures and instead "creating hazy, expansive soundscapes dominated by percolating rhythms and evocative layers of keys". ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, f ...

'' wrote that "It feels as if ''Future Days'' is driven by a coastal breeze, exuding a more pleasant, relaxed mood than anything the band had previously recorded."

Artwork

The album cover shows a Psi sign in the middle (drawn in the same style as the font used for the cover) and the

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zh ...

symbol ding/the cauldron below the title. The surrounding graphics are based on the

Jugendstil ''Jugendstil'' ("Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of ...

artstyle. Some versions of the vinyl album have a slightly different cover in which the graphics don't have a light emboss or in which the lightly reflective gold tint is replaced by a flat yellow instead. These differences are also present on the CD releases. Even though not all versions of the covers are fully identical, the tracks do not differ on any release version.

Reception

From contemporary reviews, Ian MacDonald of '' NME'' praised the album, opining it was "an immaculate piece of work, the best German rock record so far, apart from ''

Faust Faust is the protagonist of a classic German folklore, German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540). The wiktionary:erudite, erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a ...

''", and concluded that it was "sheer good music and is perfectly easy for anyone with a pair of ears attached to their heads to get into and thoroughly enjoy. Forget the krautrock tag. Forget how you're supposed to react." Ray Fox-Cumming of '' Disc'' gave the album a negative review, declaring the album "attempts nothing that hasn't already been done, often to death, before" while finding "some of it is quite pretty, the music is well-played, nicely spaced and unscrambled, but even after half a dozen hearings I still found most of it went in one ear and straight out the other." '' NME'' ranked it the 11th best album of the year in 1974. From retrospective reviews,

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

's Anthony Tognazzini called it "fiercely progressive, calming, complex, intense, and beautiful all at once" and "one of Can's most fully realized and lasting achievements." He also praised Suzuki's vocal performances - described as "all minimal texture and shading" - as being his "most inspired", and praised the track "Bel Air" as "a gloriously expansive piece of music that progresses almost imperceptibly, ending abruptly after exactly 20 minutes."

Legacy

As of November 2020,

Acclaimed Music Acclaimed Music is a website created by Henrik Franzon, a statistician from Stockholm, Sweden in September 2001. Franzon has statistically aggregated hundreds of published lists that rank songs and albums into aggregated rankings by year, dec ...

finds ''Future Days'' to be the 697th most acclaimed album of all time.

Track listing

Personnel

;Can *

Holger Czukay Holger Schüring (24 March 1938 – 5 September 2017), known professionally as Holger Czukay (), was a German musician best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg ngthe gap between pop and the avant-ga ...

–

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

Michael Karoli Michael Karoli (29 April 1948 – 17 November 2001) was a German guitarist, violinist and composer. He was a founding member of the influential krautrock band Can. Career Karoli was born and grew up in Straubing, Bavaria, moving to St. Gall ...

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

Jaki Liebezeit Jaki Liebezeit (born Hans Liebezeit; 26 May 1938 – 22 January 2017) was a German drummer, best known as a founding member of experimental rock band Can. He was called "one of the few drummers to convincingly meld the funky and the cerebral". ...

– drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

Irmin Schmidt Irmin Schmidt (born 29 May 1937) is a German keyboardist and composer, best known as a founding member of the band Can. Biography Schmidt was born in Berlin, Germany, began his studies in music at the conservatorium in Dortmund, at the Folkwang ...

– keyboards,

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis ...

s *

–

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or witho ...

, percussion

References

Sources

* *

External links

Progarchives info & reviews on Future Days
{{Authority control 1973 albums Can (band) albums United Artists Records albums Ambient albums by German artists Electronic albums by German artists Progressive rock albums by German artists