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.
