Track Listing

1. Paperhouse
2. Mushroom
3. Oh Yeah
4. Halleluhwah
5. Aumgn
6. Peking O
7. Bring me Coffee or Tea

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46411 in Music
• Released on: 2004-10-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: SACD

Customer Reviews

Oh yeah!
Oh man, Can are so great. THEY REALLY MeAN IT. A small Japanese dude who used to be a busker, some other guys born and raised in Stockhausen's basement of madness, only let out when the suitably flack of the minds of their creator or for food. Crackers, mainly. Halleluhwah = God's heartbeats. That's what I read somewhere. I forget where// this music is so wonderfully free, like that bit in the shawshank redemption when the dude gets out and goes to live on a beach somewhere. that#s how this album feels, and it fills me with joy and awe and passion every time. Not a wasted note, screw the Aumgn haterz! So this is Tago Mago. Repeat it: Tago Mago. What does it mean?it means whatever you want it to mean, like the S in SCLUB7 as bradley once said. ya know, the sexy black dude. so this is it. music at some sort of bizarre peak. bring a shovel..

Can - you dig it?
Those of you who cut their musical teeth on bands of the late 80s and early 90s would do well to listen to this album as in it you will hear the origins of a whole raft of bands including Jesus & Mary Chain (who covered Mushroom), Happy Mondays, The Fall to name but a few. In Hallewujah you can hear the inspiration for Shaun Ryder's lazy vocal delivery - in fact the vocal bears an uncanny resemblance to the Monday's own Kinky Afro.

This is an album of two halves and some will find the second half unlistenable but believe me it is worth buying this album for the first four tracks alone.

1971's double-album masterpiece...
'Tago Mago' advanced on the climes established by 'Delay 1968','Monster Movie' & 'Soundtracks' and remains part of a trilogy of classics when Can were fronted by Damo Suzuki (the others being 'Ege Bamyasi' & 'Future Days'). It's an epic double-album that opens and closes on similar sounding tracks, between veering off into avant-garde directions which get stranger as the record progresses.

'Paperhouse' builds and builds from a funky-jazzy groove (that would become more apparent on 'Ege Bamyasi'), prior to shifting to the paranoid 'Mushroom', which would be covered by The Jesus & Mary Chain and sounds not unlike recent Primal Scream, where Damo hollers "I gotta keep my distance!" (or is it "I gotta keep my despair"? - it sounds like both...). 'Oh Yeah' builds on the strange-electronic-inflected grooves previously found on records by Can & precursors like The Beatles & The White Noise, again feeling like an odd groove with backwards-looped vocals that disorient (Can voyaging to inner space...). This peaks with the epic 'Halleluwah', which is thoroughly hypnotic, stretching a simple-groove over & over & predicting things like Happy Mondays ('Hallelujah') & The Stone Roses ('Fools Gold 9.53').

'Aumgn' is more out there, a minimal electronic based piece that some find unlistenable- it sounds somewhere between Stockhausen and Japan's 'Ghosts' and would fit on a compilation between 'The Visitations' & 'Beachy Head.' Things get odder with 'Peking-O', which starts off with sinister ambient electronics, then a vocal "driving..." that reminds me of both Ian Curtis & Jim Morrison, before shifting into loops and babble that some may find hilarious. 'Peking-O' is total avant-meltdown that sounds like chaos - so it makes sense that things calm and seem to come back to circular norm with 'Bring Me Coffee or Tea.'

'Tago Mago' remains one of those difficult albums frequently considered a classic, alongside such joys as 'Trout Mask Replica', 'Electric Ladyland', 'Rock Bottom', 'Star Sailor' & 'Hex Enduction Hour.' This album and Can would also influence (or could be argued to influence)many acts afterwards - PIL, The Fall, Stereolab, Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Julian Cope, Happy Mondays, Tortoise, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, The Stone Roses, Joy Division/New Order, David Bowie, Death in Vegas, Primal Scream, (late period) Talk Talk, Spacemen 3, Suicide, Laurie Anderson etc. 'Tago Mago' is a record that rewards, and sounds better in this version than the prior Spoon-release, and one I come back to - though 'Ege Bamyasi' is probably a better introduction to the unfamiliar...