CAN - FLOW MOTION @ 45

 

Released in October of 1976, CAN’s seventh studio album, Flow Motion, is celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. It’s an album that continued the major shift in the way CAN created in the studio, something started with their previous LP, Landed, and was rather divisive among the group’s fans at the time of its release.

CAN always recorded in their own studios, Inner Space, but their equipment drove them to compose in a mostly “live” improvised manner for their early albums as they lacked the ability to do extensive multi-tracking. The arrival of a 16 channel recording system in 1975 meant that they could work in an entirely different manner than they had before and this was part of what drove them to pursue what some would consider more accessible music as the ability to consider and arrange songs usurped the improvisational approach of earlier works. As they came to grips with the possibilities of their new tools, they became interested in working with structures like reggae and disco inspired rhythms, a move that would prove somewhat unpopular with some.

The opening cut from the album, I Want More, and it’s reprisal on the side A closing track, And More, build on a shuffling disco beat with the opening track becoming something of a hit single in the UK, one of CAN's biggest ever. It even scored them a slot on Top Of the Pops, which was great for exposure, but hardcore fans of the band weren’t into seeing them lip-syncing and dancing on the BBC and a lot of them started to write the band off as sell-outs. But in retrospect, the fact is that it’s simply a damn good little song that deserved the popularity it garnered and, once people got off their “high horses” and gave it a chance, they came to recognize its charms.

Much of the rest of the album plays around with variations on reggae rhythms, with Cascade Waltz coming up with the ingenious idea of fusing a reggae shuffle into a 3/4 time signature. While there’s a lot of accessible, compact music on the album, it’s not without its darker turns as is the case with the thundering percussion, like rolling storm clouds, on Smoke (E.F.S. No. 59), or the sprawling strangeness of the album’s ten minute plus closing title track. All in, the balance between so-called “mainstream” dalliances and CAN’s usual weirdness, something that is never truly absent from any of their albums, add up to a pretty great listen. Of their late ‘70s releases, it’s one of my favorites and one of the most thoroughly listenable from this era.