Future Days (album)

''Future Days'' is the fourth studio album by the German Krautrock group Can, released by United Artists in late 1973. The album employed significantly more complex production than any other album in the Can discography, and explored a more ambient–influenced sound. It was the group's final album to feature vocalist Damo Suzuki, who left the band within a few months after its release.

According to Can biographer Rob Young, ''Future Days'' distinguishes itself as the group's "most weightless achievement, perpetuum mobile, solar-powered in an eternal peach sunset, skipping over the tips of green coastal sierras, gulping lungfuls of delicious air."

Background and production

In the aftermath of the '' Ege Bamyasi'' tour spanning February-May 1973, Can drew their attention back into the recording studio in order to capitalise on the recent live appearances. Before they started working on a new album, the band took a four-week vacation, which put them into a "sunny" mood that left an impression on the core sonic themes of ''Future Days''. Holger Czukay took a trip to southeast Asia, his admired region since he sampled traditional Vietnamese music for his '' Canaxis 5'' project. Damo Suzuki traveled back to Japan for the first time in six years, and returned with his hair cropped to just below the ears. He recalled feeling that his home country was very busy, and he found it much better to stay in the slower-paced West Germany. Irmin Schmidt took his family to the south of France, and Michael Karoli visited his family's summer villa at Carvoeiro on the Portuguese coast.

''Future Days'' was recorded at the band's in Weilerswist, North Rhine-Westphalia. The recording started in July and ended in early September, undertaking the most complex production to date. "Bel Air" was the first song recorded by the band, captured on tape during one session. While they were recording the track, the studio's heating system sprung a gas leak.

As noted on the original LP sleeve, "Bel Air" is dedicated to Hedy Lamarr, the Vienna-born Hollywood actress and the co-creator of frequency-hopping system for the US navy's torpedoes. Irmin Schmidt, band's keyboard player, greatly admired her story.

Composition

''Future Days'' emphasises the ambient elements that Can had explored on previous albums, dispensing with traditional rock song structures and instead "creating hazy, expansive soundscapes dominated by percolating rhythms and evocative layers of keys". ''PopMatters'' wrote that ''Future Days'' is "driven by a coastal breeze, exuding a more pleasant, relaxed mood than anything the band had previously recorded."

When creating ''Future Days'', Irmin Schmidt kept in mind "the scene they existed in before; made up of an elite imagining it had bought the whole spirit and culture for itself." Schmidt wanted to create something that was "lacking in the ontemporarymusic he was making before, was that it had no relation to the body ��What he wanted was to play music with his whole body." According to Rob Young's observation, the instruments performed by Can members on ''Future Days'' indeed sounded like a unified and harmonious whole. He highlighted the limited frame of reference on the album, compared to the contemporary albums; capturing the innovative sounds of psychedelic rock and space rock, but in contrast, playing in less "performative and theatrical" tone.

Songs

The track "Future Days" opens with a minute of abstract electroacoustic music, which builds into a Latin-tinged groove that languidly cruises through a "turbulent, undulating course". Michael Karoli, Can's guitarist, had a concrete video imagery of "Future Days" as a space story with "a sort of Jules Verne spaceship, a nineteenth century spaceship". "Future Days" has notes of melancholy and the disillusionment heard on "Doko E" from '' Unlimited Edition'', which expresses Damo Suzuki's negative feelings from his recent trip to Japan. The song manifests a picture of a "daily existence that feels empty of meaning, a life postponed".

The shimmering, scouring texture, reminiscent of buzzing cicadas, was created by "overloading the organ through the Farfisa's rotating speaker, processed with the Alpha 77, with extra gating in the mix." Another sound was created as a looped recording of crunching cushion from Can's studio. Holger Czukay integrated an editing trick for the song's coda, looping a segment of the rhythm track at double speed.

The instrumentalism of "Spray", while masterfully performed, doesn't sound "showy or professionalised; the drums played by Jaki Liebezeit hurtle headlong with minimal loss of energy". The drums are "forever in motion" and don't land squarely on a backbeat but "relentlessly ricochet off the pulse in seething drifts". It has been compared to Miles Davis's ''Bitches Brew'' and Isaac Hayes's ''Hot Buttered Soul''.

" Moonshake" has been identified by Can's biographer Rob Young among the "Can catalogue of perfectly formed pop songs", alongside "She Brings the Rain" from ''Soundtracks'' and "Sing Swan Song" from '' Ege Bamyasi''. It introduces "elements of rock convention and erasing any sense of cliché around them".

Karoli, when working on "Bel Air", was inspired by his recent oceanside vacation. He added an echo effect to his guitar to get a feeling of the cliff's outlines, overlapped with a progression of strong and softer chords. Schmidt, in turn, "got the exact sound of the wind which was blowing in the house where Karoli was staying". Schmidt recalled: "Everybody played very soft and we had headphones on, whoever was at the mixer didn't want to bring the sound up because we would have heard that and it would have disturbed the atmosphere so he didn't dare to move the controls. Thus it got a lot of tape noise," which pretty much starts off the piece. Another highlight for Schmidt was the fact that he had to "listen, and never interfere" embodying a "just one big ear, looking stunned to my fingers". Can integrated a field recording of a bird in a meadow, which "took pains" for Schmidt to locate in the WDR's sound library.

Release

''Future Days'' was released in late 1973 by United Artists Records and supported by the double A-side single " Moonshake/Future Days". While ''Future Days'' was still in post-production, Can performed at the Edinburgh International Festival on 25 August, and recorded the show with the intention of releasing a live album, but couldn't release it, because the tapes didn't record crucial elements from the show, such as Michael's guitar and Damo's voice. Before Damo's departure, he performed with the band on eight live dates in Germany between 1 and 14 October, including three double bills with Amon Düül II.

''Future Days'', along with the rest of Can discography, was remastered from the original tapes and released by the joint efforts of Spoon Records and Mute Records, in both vinyl and CD formats.

Artwork

The album cover features a midnight blue background contrasted against the serif version of the Greek letter Psi placed in the middle, above the title, and the Chinese ''I Ching'' hexagram dǐng, underlining the title. The surrounding graphics are based on the art nouveau. The Psi is shaped like a trident, reflecting the fluid atmosphere of the album; while the upper trigram stands for fire and the lower means gentleness, wind, and wood. Schmidt added the hexagrams, feeling they suited the most "summery and tender record that they've ever done".

Critical reception

Contemporary

Ian MacDonald of ''NME'' praised ''Future Days'', calling it "an immaculate piece of work"—a sound "full of distance and air, halfway between abstract and concrete .the best German rock record so far, apart from ''Faust''". Additionally, he praised "Bel Air", saying that "the standard of creative interplay" during the last minutes was "close to supernatural". ''NME'' subsequently ranked it the 11th best album of 1974. The french critic Jacques LeBlanc was impressed by the musicians' ability to submerge themselves "in the ensemble to become Can and express the soul of the group ��a penetrating, hovering sound which ransacks and annihilates you". Paul Alessandrini, writing for Rock & Folk magazine, was captivated by the album, experiencing it as "an invitation to a voyage, a descent into a kind of musical unconscious, a slow, planetary, cosmic vibration, a psychedelic trip ��It's not so much an intellectual music, more of a musical appeal to the senses". John Payne, describing the vocals, said that Damo Suzuki is "more often than not an evanescent sprite, poking his head in on select passages of each piece, as if to prod or enhance, only to dash away as the band takes off on their rigorous roamings into the unknown."

Ray Fox-Cumming of '' Disc'' gave the album a negative review, stating that "even after half a dozen hearings I still found most of it went in one ear and straight out the other."

John Peel, reviewing the single ''Moonshake'' for '' Sounds'', described it as "less than promising" but overall feeling that "it's great", although its chances to become a hit were "roughly comparable to his chances of being asked to join Ivy Benson's All-Girl Orchestra on harp".

Retrospective

In a retrospective review, AllMusic'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 especially praised Suzuki's vocals as "all minimal texture and shading" and the track "Bel Air" as "a gloriously expansive piece of music". The ''Pitchfork'' review by Dominique Leone admired the "lush veneer" of ''Future Days'', somehow inventing "the greatest tropicália known to man", and Can performing at their most "sensuous or divorced from gravity".

Suzuki called it his best album he made with Can, explaining: "It was very easy to quit from Can after that album. I wanted nothing from them after that. Musically, I was very satisfied." Liebezeit, on the other hand, felt the album was too fragmented, loathing the idea of constructing a track "artificially from the best fragments of tape", while he leaned more towards the "very simple things" from the early Can and preferred to "hone down one monotonous rhythm pattern". In another quote, Liebezeit further explained that the band's music became too symphonic on ''Future Days''—"there was too much the feeling of stitched-together movements, of long-form pieces moving through different variations and atmospheres."

Accolades

Track listing

All tracks are written by Can ( Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki).

Side A
:#"Future Days" – 9:34
:#"Spray" – 8:28
:#" Moonshake" – 3:02

:Side B
:#"Bel Air" – 20:00

Note

Personnel

Credits adapted from ''Future Days'' vinyl liner notes.

Can
* Holger Czukay – bass guitar, double bass, recording, editing
*Michael Karoli – electric guitar, violin
* Jaki Liebezeit – drums, percussion, congas (1), "melodica-type instrument" (3)
*Irmin Schmidt – Farfisa organ, electric piano, electronics
*Damo Suzuki – vocals, percussion

Production
*Ingo Trauer and Richard J. Rudow – cover-art design
*Chris Sladdin and Volker Liedtke – recording

References

Sources

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External links

Progarchives info & reviews on Future Days

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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