Tago Mago features long-form experimental tracks blending rock and jazz improvisation, funk rhythms, and musique concrètetape editing techniques.[6] The album has been described as Can's best and most extreme record in sound and structure.[7] The album has received widespread critical acclaim and is cited as an influence by various artists. Ned Raggett of AllMusic called it "not merely one of the best Krautrock albums of all time, but one of the best albums ever, period."[1]
Early in 1968, the band had been invited to stay rent-free at the Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle in Nörvenich, North Rhine-Westphalia, for one year by art collector Christoph Vohwinkel, who had rented it with the idea of transforming it into an art center. Tago Mago was recorded by Czukay at the castle, between November 1970 and February 1971.[14]
During Tago Mago recording sessions, Can were visited by an English journalist, Duncan Fallowell, writing for The Spectator magazine. In 1970, he published the first mainstream column about Can.[15]
Production and recording
The recording process took three months to complete.[16] Sessions often lasting up to 16 hours a day,[17] Czukay edited the band's long, disorganized jams into structured songs.[18] He used a pair of two-track tape recorders to capture the sessions,[17] which limited the band, and the group favored recording in the castle's entrance hall to take advantage of its natural reverberation. Czukay used only three microphones to capture the sessions, shared between Suzuki and Liebezeit, and the third microphone carefully placed in the center of the studio. Because they didn't have mixing board and an extra engineer, the band gathered closer to the microphones, and tried to balance the sounds they played and the sounds of the amplifiers.[19][17] Czukay said that "if anyone had moved, it would've destroyed the recording.[20] Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt experimented with oscillators in place of typical synthesizers on "Aumgn."[17]
Tago Mago was the first Can album to contain "in-between" recordings, for which Czukay secretly recorded the musicians jamming during pre-production sessions.[12] He also captured in-between recordings of the shouts of a child who mistakenly entered the room during recording, as well as the howling of Christoph Vohwinkel's dog.[17]
Tago Mago is a double album, with the first LP more conventional and structured, while the second more experimental.[22] Roni Sarig, author of The Secret History of Rock, called the second LP "as close as [the group] ever got to avant-garde noise music".[7] The vocals have lower presence on Tago Mago, which can be explained by the appearance of the newcomer vocalist, more subtle Suzuki, when compared by the more dominant presence of Mooney, the band's previous vocalist.[23] Czukay described Malcolm as a "driving locomotive" and the pusher, leading the band and the band "had to follow him; couldn't stand behind him". Damo didn't have "this attitude. He needed a group which was pushing him."[24]
Tago Mago draws inspiration from such sources as jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and from electronicavant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen.[25] The album was also inspired by English occultist Aleister Crowley: named for Illa de Tagomago, an island that features in the Crowley legend, and the track "Aumgn" is named for Crowley's interpretation of the Hindu mantra syllable Om.[3][26] In 2008, Czukay described the album as "an attempt in achieving a mystery musical world from light to darkness and return".[12] The group has referred to the album as their "magic record,"[3] and the music has been described as having an "air of mystery and forbidden secrets."[11]
Rob Young, Can's biographer, noticed a similarity between "Oh Yeah" and the band's older song "Don't Turn the Light on, Leave Me Alone" from 1970 album Soundtracks, concluding that the speed up version of the rhythmic pattern of the latter song resembles "Oh Yeah".[27] The tracks "Aumgn" and "Peking O", which feature Czukay's tape and radio experiments, have led music critics to call Tago Mago the group's "most extreme record in terms of sound and structure".[7] "Peking O" also makes use of an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace, an early drum machine, combined with acoustic drumming.[28][29] "Aumgn" features keyboardist Irmin Schmidt chanting rather than Suzuki's vocals.[23] The closing track, "Bring Me Coffee or Tea," was described by Raggett as a "fine, fun little coda to a landmark record".[1]
Release
Tago Mago was released as a double album, released by United Artists Records in Germany, in August 1971. The British release, with different artwork, followed in February 1972.
Initially, Can planned to edit the sessions down to a single album, leaving out the more experimental material on the second disc. However, their manager, Hildegard Schmidt, liked the material on the second record, saying it "really represented this group", and insisted they should release it on a second LP. Hildegard approached United Artists and Liberty Records, telling the labels they would only allow the release of Tago Mago as a double album.[30]
The side-long track "Halleluhwah", which closes the first disc, was shortened from 18½ to 3½ minutes for release as the B-side of the non-album single "Turtles Have Short Legs", a novelty song recorded during the Tago Mago sessions and released by Liberty Records in 1971.[31] A different, 5½-minute edit of "Halleluhwah" would later appear on the compilation Cannibalism in 1978, while "Turtles Have Short Legs" remained out of print until its inclusion on Cannibalism 2 in 1992.
Tago Mago has been critically acclaimed, and is credited with pioneering various modern musical styles. Raggett called Tago Mago a "rarity of the early '70s, a double album without a wasted note."[1] Many critics, particularly in the United Kingdom, were eager to praise the album, and by the end of 1971 Can had played their first show in the country.[43][44]
In a less favorable review, Michael Watts of Melody Maker, on one hand, praised Tago Mago for "strange, alien quality", contrasted with the "placidity and unadventurousness" of Pink Floyd's recent Meddle, while expressing disappointment for a lack of "any deep sense of the spirit of rock and roll in the music. It's music of the head, and not the heart."[45][46]
Several artists have covered songs from Tago Mago or recorded songs based on those from the album. The Flaming Lips' song "Take Meta Mars", from their 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance, began as an attempt to cover "Mushroom"; however, as the band members had only heard "Mushroom" once and did not possess a copy of it, "Take Meta Mars" is only similar-sounding and not a proper cover.[54] The Jesus and Mary Chain have covered "Mushroom" live, and included a live version on the compilation Barbed Wire Kisses.The Fall recorded "I Am Damo Suzuki", based on the Tago Mago track "Oh Yeah", for their 1985 album This Nation's Saving Grace. Swedish band Komeda included a cover of "Mushroom" on their 1998 single "It's Alright Baby". Remixes of several Tago Mago tracks by various artists are included on the 1997 Can remix album Sacrilege.
Accolades
Tago Mago is listed in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which states: "Even after 30 years Tago Mago sounds refreshingly contemporary and gloriously extreme."[55]
In February 1972, Sounds magazine published the readers' poll on German music, where Can was voted second-best group; Tago Mago second-best album; Damo Suzuki second-best vocalist; Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt has been placed at seventh and fifteenth places in the "Musician of the Year" category, with Holger also taking fourth-best instrumentalist. The song "Halleluwah" reached the fourth placement as a "track of the year", behind Kraftwerk's "Ruckzuck", Tangerine Dream's "Alpha Centauri", and Et Cetera's "Raga".[56]
