FRESH OKRA:
The most unique album by the most unique Krautrock band, their sunniest yet most nerve-fraying.
Ege Bamyasi stands at the midpoint of the short but magical period Can’s creative core—Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, and Irmin Schmidt—spent with their vocalist, Damo Suzuki. The album’s title and cover initially seem like a joke; indeed, they are inspired by Turkish canned goods found in a market near Konrad Plank’s studio.
At that time, the group lived in Cologne in a near-collective commune, recording even in the bathroom, hallway, and kitchen, blending music into the flow of life. Ege Bamyasi can be described as the clearest document of this "half-chaos, half-meditation" state.
Although the music carries the classic motorik rhythms of krautrock, Can's approach never stays within the confines of the genre. Jaki Liebezeit's almost superhumanly precise drumming provides the entire album with a pulse as regular as city traffic yet as organic as a forest. Holger Czukay's basslines are both a nod to funk and a hypnotic loop; Michael Karoli's guitar follows feeling rather than melody. Irmin Schmidt's keyboards, meanwhile, pump both Eastern colors and the sharpness of Western avant-garde into the album's veins. On top of all this, Damo Suzuki's vocals flow like half-English, half-internal language, half-poetry, and the songs cease to be structures and transform into living entities.
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https://thecamelrecords.com/products/can-ege-bamyasi?variant=45004681183371
