Can were the most influential band krautrock ever produced — a Cologne group, founded by two students of the avant-garde composer Stockhausen, who fused minimalism, funk and free improvisation into something the world had never heard. Built on Jaki Liebezeit’s metronomic drumming and Holger Czukay’s tape-edited “instant compositions”, and crowned by the masterpiece “Tago Mago” (1971), they changed the course of rock, electronic and experimental music alike.

The short version

Formed in Cologne in 1968 by Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt, Can built hypnotic, groove-based music from collective improvisation, edited together with the precision of musique concrète. Across a run of albums from “Monster Movie” (1969) to “Saw Delight” (1977) — and above all the towering “Tago Mago” (1971) and “Ege Bamyasi” (1972) — they laid the foundations for post-punk, ambient and electronic music. They are, simply, one of the most important bands in modern music.

Cologne, 1968: students of Stockhausen

Can grew from the most unlikely of roots. Bassist Holger Czukay and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt had both studied under the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Schmidt had returned from New York fired by the minimalism of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, convinced that rock could be something altogether new. They recruited the nineteen-year-old guitarist Michael Karoli, a pupil of Czukay’s, and the brilliant Jaki Liebezeit, a jazz drummer who had grown tired of free improvisation and now built relentless, machine-precise rhythms. Calling themselves first Inner Space, then simply Can, and fronted at first by the intense American singer Malcolm Mooney, they set out — as Czukay put it, “studied dilettantes” — to play rock like no one ever had.

Hypnotic grooves and tape-edited improvisation

At the heart of Can was a paradox: music of total freedom, shaped with total discipline. Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming — the steady, hypnotic pulse later christened “motorik” — gave the band an engine of almost mechanical precision, over which Karoli’s textural guitar, Schmidt’s keyboards and Czukay’s melodic bass wove endless variations, the vocals floating free above. The band would improvise for hours, then Czukay would edit the tapes down to their essence, building finished pieces from collective “accidents” much as Miles Davis had. Drawing on Stockhausen and minimalism, funk and the music of North Africa, theirs was a sound at once hypnotic and alive — a single organism breathing as one.

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From Monster Movie to Saw Delight

Their debut, “Monster Movie” (1969), with Malcolm Mooney, announced them with the twenty-minute jam “Yoo Doo Right”, edited down from hours of playing. When Mooney left, the band found his successor busking on a Munich street — the Japanese singer Damo Suzuki, whose otherworldly delivery defined their golden age. “Tago Mago” (1971), a sprawling double album, is their masterpiece, home to the eighteen-minute trance-funk of “Halleluwah”; “Ege Bamyasi” (1972) distilled the same magic into tighter songs and gave them a German hit in “Spoon”; and “Future Days” (1973) drifted into the serene, proto-ambient soundscapes that would prove just as visionary. After Suzuki left, the four-piece carried on through “Soon Over Babaluma” (1974) and, signed to Virgin, the more polished “Landed” (1975) and “Flow Motion” (1976) — the latter home to their British hit “I Want More”. With “Saw Delight” (1977), joined by two former members of Traffic, the band turned toward funk and world music as their first era wound down.

Album by album

Nine albums charting one of the most influential bodies of work in modern music. Tap any title for its guide.

The players and afterwards

Can were, at their core, Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit and Michael Karoli, fronted in their greatest years by Malcolm Mooney and then Damo Suzuki. After the band wound down at the end of the 1970s, their influence only grew — running straight through post-punk and beyond, claimed by everyone from David Bowie and Brian Eno to The Fall, Public Image Ltd, Joy Division and Radiohead. Czukay became a pioneer of ambient and electronic music; Schmidt composed for film; Liebezeit drummed with countless artists; Karoli worked in film and theatre. Guitarist Michael Karoli died in 2001, and Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay both in 2017; the singer Damo Suzuki followed in 2024, leaving Irmin Schmidt as the last of the founders. The music they made together has lost none of its power to astonish.

Where to start

Begin with “Tago Mago” (1971) — their towering masterpiece and one of the essential albums of the era, its long, hypnotic grooves the perfect immersion in everything Can did. From there, “Ege Bamyasi” (1972) offers their tighter, funkier side, and “Future Days” (1973) their most serene and beautiful. Together they form the heart of one of the great catalogues in modern music.

Why they still matter

Can matter as perhaps the single most influential band of the krautrock era — pioneers whose fusion of improvisation, editing, groove and electronics rewrote what rock could be. Their fingerprints are everywhere: in post-punk and techno, in ambient and hip-hop, in every band that ever locked into a hypnotic groove and let it run. Decades on, “Tago Mago” and its companions still sound like the future. For anyone serious about modern music, they are not just essential — they are foundational.

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