Can - Tago Mago: Aumgn (1971)

Damo Suzuki – vocals Holger Czukay – bass, engineering, editing Michael Karoli – guitar, violin Jaki Liebezeit – drums, double bass, piano Irmin Schmidt – organ, electric piano, synthesizer; vocals on "Aumgn" Tago Mago is the second album by the German krautrock band Can, originally released as a double LP in 1971. It was the band's second studio album and the first to feature Damo Suzuki after the 1970 departure of previous vocalist Malcolm Mooney. Recorded in castle 'Schloss Nörvenich' near Cologne, the album features long-form experimental tracks blending funk rhythms, avant-garde noise, jazz improvisation, and electronic tape editing techniques. Recording took three months to complete, with sessions often lasting up to sixteen hours a day. Czukay would edit these long, disorganized jams into structured songs. Czukay used only two two-track tape recorders to capture the sessions. Because of the limits of two-track recording the group favoured the castle's high-ceilinged entrance hall, an architectural reverb chamber, using the natural acoustics and placing the microphones optimally relative to their instruments. Due to the intense reverberation, Czukay took advantage of the sonic bleed and limited the band to three microphones, shared between vocalist Damo Suzuki and drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt experimented with sine-wave generators and oscillators in place of typical synthesizers on "Aumgn". The second LP features Can's more avant-garde efforts, with Roni Sarig, author of The Secret History of Rock calling it "as close as it ever got to avant-garde noise music." Featuring Holger Czukay’s tape and radio experiments, the tracks "Aumgn" and "Peking O" have led music critics to write that Tago Mago is Can's "most extreme record in terms of sound and structure." "Peking O" made early use of a drum machine, an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace, combined with acoustic drumming. "Aumgn" features keyboardist Irmin Schmidt chanting rather than Suzuki's vocals. Video created with Sonic Visualizer 3.2.1, vokoscreen 2.5.0 and Kdenlive 18.12.3 on a Debian 10 Buster KDE Linux System.