Best Can Album ? --- Depends
Tago Mago is one of the first three albums I think of when I think of this immortal band --- but all the recordings from 1968 - 1975 are generally considered to be the prime stuff.

I imagine that most of those who find the Malcolm Mooney period of Can to be a bit repetitive, primitive, and unpolished will probably pick this superb album as their favorite --- that's okay with me since it's a solid and logical next step to those earlier recordings. And Kenji "Damo" Suzuki, the band's new vocalist, is nearly as interesting as Malcolm Mooney in his own way.

By the way, the other two albums I think of are Monster Movie and what would come to be known as Can Delay: 1968 --- you got it --- the Malcolm Mooney stuff --- these are recordings of singular power, beauty and brutality. These are truely inspired records that are among my all time favorites and Tago Mago is right there in that mix.

Any serious collection would benefit from the addition of any or all three of these great Can albums.

Krautrock At Its Bewildering Best
Riding off the unique and enjoyable sound of 1970's "Soundtracks", Can presented "Tago Mago" to the world in 1971. An album regarded as a pinnacle to the 70's psychedelic, progressive and kraut rock movements. It is a massive body of work, and wildly ahead of its time - flourishing with originality and innovation. It is a demanding listen. "Aumgn" and "Peking O.", the two beastly experimental tracks that make up Tago Mago's challenging and uncontrollable alter-ego, make up almost half of its entirety, and I would be lying if I said I can endure and enjoy them regularly. But so good is the rest of this album...SO so good...I cannot resist, and a hefty 5 star rating has to be made.

Can's trademark minimal, funky and psychedelic sound is in full bloom for the opening four tracks. "Paperhouse" twists and turns through sections, varying dynamics and tempos with ease. The song builds to a climatic ending with Damo Suzuki unleashing his untamed vocals and the band driving home the beautiful final melody. "Mushroom" flows through immediately with its fat, booming groove thanks to a classic Jaki Liebezeit drum loop. Can are renowned for their emphasis on drumming and groove, and this song is a perfect case. Jaki lays down the beat and with subtle precision other elements are trickled between the accents. Damo's voice snaps between haunting, restrained murmurs to feral blasts. Guitarist Miachael Karoli and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt are a master-class in simplicity and efficiency, adding layers and textures to forge a sparse yet brooding atmosphere.

"Halleluhwah" is perhaps Can's finest moment. An 18 minute monolith that summarises everything once could possible love about them. Essentially the song is evolved around one gigantic looped drum beat, a mid-tempo groove that rolls and rolls, subtly changing with precise fills and breaks. Other textures and layers slowly come and go, swirling and cycling, building and de-constructing. At times it roars and crashes with waves of percussion, layers upon layers of elegant guitar lines, throbs of screeching and abrasive noises. At other times it is perfectly stripped down, focusing purely on the elegance of isolated instrumentation. Suzuki's vocals follow the flow to the song, varying in volume and pitch, but always retaining his raw, wandering delivery. It is an astonishing and hypnotic listen, and one that never bores, despite its extended playing time.

As I said earlier "Aumgn" and "Peking O." do little for me. They seem dated as a lot of the synth sounds are tired and rather drab by today's standards. They are also mightily lengthy. I've read people claiming these songs are the best section of "Tago Mago" and I can understand they are certainly the most untamed and bewildering parts, but I just cannot sit myself through the overlong assault. But somehow this matters little. The rest of "Tago Mago" is special. It's some of the best music I have ever heard, and certainly some of the most innovative and original. My absolute adoration of these songs won't allow me to rate any lower than a stern 5. A hit and miss affair in the truest sense - but for once, the hit is more than worth the miss.

I love Tago Mago
Can, while not as bizarre as a few of their contemporaries, Faust comes to mind - put together some astonishingly good rock with their talented Japanese lyrical improviser Damo Suzuki.

My favorite piece is "Oh Yeah" which opens with the sound of a thunderstorm, and the growing rhythm of the drums with organ overlay. The song is a rather long one, and goes through 3 shifts in sound, and subtle tensions. There's also a very fun video of it in YouTube replete with vaudeville style juggler.

the later part of the album has some more of the throbbing "experimental" aspects to it, with delayed instruments, and heavily distorted vocal bits. IT's very hypnotic and for some may be a bit unnerving.

Can and several of the other Krautrock bands were way ahead with their disassembly of pop-rock music, and merging it to free jazz improv. I don't know of anything else like them - their brand was special.

Klassic Krautorck
One complaint: "Aumgn," though conceptually spiffy, is a pain to actually listen to. Nearly twenty minutes of directionless pounding redeemed only slightly by the somewhat directionful pounding that creeps up towards the end. If that hadn't taken up a whole side of vinyl, Tago Mago would've been an easy five stars. Still, not bad for what is basically a morphological Krautpunk sketchbook. The whole "rhythm as an end in itself" thing works better here than on most James Brown records, and the guitars are too cool to be real. Suzuki's "I'm having a seizure, but really, I'm fine" vocal style is the icing on a cake that's damn near perfect, with the exception of one tragically large slice.

Descriptions Fall Despairingly Short of Giving "Tago Mago" Justice
Can's 1971 release, "Tago Mago," is nothing less than a watershed moment in the world of early progressive rock. Surrounding the emergence of Can was a highly sophisticated rock evolution. With the likes of King Crimson pushing performance boundaries into substantially more complex territory and Pink Floyd exploring the outer realms of space, it would be logically difficult to emerge as something truly unique during the rise of progressive rock in the early seventies. Ironically, Can made originality look effortless. With complexity rapidly becoming the focus of rock, Can pushed against the grain, delving into a far more primal brand of avant-garde modern minimalism, with magnificent success. "Tago Mago" is truly years ahead of its time.

"Tago Mago" was originally released as a two disc LP, therefore clocking in at around 70 minutes rather than 45 minute standard LP time. The contrast between each disk is exceedingly stark, showing two distinct sides of this anomalous entity. The first half of this disk ("Paperhouse"- "Halleluhwah") is very "jammy." The songs are largely made up of repetitive percussive cycles and various bits of improvisation. While the songs largely pulse forward at a non-transitive rhythm, there is much more going on than would seem possible within each track. "Paperhouse" starts off relatively slow, and eventually loops into an expansive jam session, containing some delightful guitar work from Michael Karoli. "Paperhouse" ends with an intense let-out of energy that Jaki Liebezeit has masterfully brewing through his increasingly aggressive percussive cycles. "Mushroomhead" then begins. This is the shortest and most instantly accessible song on the album, consisting of what seems to be an electronic drum beat and Damo Suzuki's disconnected murmuring; a song, to these ears, reminiscent of today's Radiohead. "Oh Yeah" begins an explosion sound bite and what sounds like Suzuki's vocals being played backwards. "Oh Yeah" eventually evolves into a jam with an almost "folky" feel to it. "Halleluhwah" begins like something right off of Miles Davis' electric-jazz-fusion apex, "Live-Evil." A funk beat dominates the entire song, that expands into an amazing variety of atmospheres and colorful, textural explorations in its' 18 minute entirety. The song seems to slowly succumb to insanity as it progresses, but never quite loses its' steam. After "Halleluhwah," Tago Mago completely loses touch with reality, delving into some seriously avant-garde territory, previously explored by the likes of modern composers Stockhausen and Varse, which serves as a perfect contrast to the minimalist nature of the first half of the album. Can continue to delve in a perpetual nightmare of psychedelic hysteria until the album closes.

Everything in "Tago Mago" is sharp, angular and uneasily tense, while somehow able to slowly expand into the listeners inner conscious. The performance is delightfully tight, in its own choppy manner, even as "Tago Mago" moves into obscure and highly illogical territory. You can never really guess where "Tago Mago" will take you, even after multiple listens. There is almost a conscious equilibrium throughout this albums entirety, matching every moment of melodic bliss with haphazardly primitive intensity. Such a staggering amount of cohesive variety has never been as accurately put to mainstream music than in this krautrock classic.

Though "Tago Mago" is unquestionably a landmark statement in rock music, it is certainly not for the average listener. This album is a "grower" in every sense of the word. Even amongst fans of prog-rock, you would be hard pressed to find a listener who can honestly say that they enjoyed "Tago Mago" upon first listen. Everything about this album is sharp, intense, and unsetting, even in its' most accessible moments, revealing almost none of its' dark secrets without intense patience from the listener. If I were pressed to find a single adjective to most accurately describe "Tago Mago," it would undoubtedly be "subtle." "Tago Mago" demands unwavering attention, vivid imagination, and tolerance for the quintessential avant-garde. There is, undoubtedly, nothing more painful to the average listener than the constant barrage of violent percussion cycles that "Tago Mago" offers, or the a-melodic, audio-hallucinations featured throughout the last half of the disk. Of course, when "Tago Mago" finds its way to the appreciative ears of the music fanatic, it eventually becomes a permanent favorite.

Akin to any truly innovative musical composition, even the most thorough of descriptions fall despairingly short of personifying the actual experience. I can only appeal to the adventurous listener's curiosity by resulting in using the utterly cliché, but never more appropriate statement: "You have to hear it to believe it."