Not quite a proper album, and one of the most important Can records anyway. Soundtracks collects music the band wrote for a handful of films between their debut and their breakthrough, and in doing so it captures the exact moment their first singer, Malcolm Mooney, handed over to their second, Damo Suzuki. It also contains Mother Sky, fourteen and a half minutes of driving psychedelia that stand with anything the band ever recorded. A stopgap on paper, it turned out to matter enormously.

The short version

A 1970 collection of music written for films, released between Monster Movie and Tago Mago, partly to satisfy a contract; seven tracks, thirty-five minutes. The instrumental core is Michael Karoli on guitar, Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, Holger Czukay on bass and engineering, and Jaki Liebezeit on drums. The crucial thing is the two vocalists: Malcolm Mooney, the band’s original singer, appears on Soul Desert and She Brings the Rain, while Damo Suzuki, his replacement, sings on the rest — his very first recordings with the band. Not conceived as a statement, it works beautifully as a bridge, and it is anchored by one of Can’s greatest long pieces.

The changing of the singer

Soundtracks documents a handover. Mooney had sung the entire debut, then left the band and returned to the United States; his contributions here, recorded earlier in the sessions, are his last with Can for many years. In his place came Damo Suzuki, discovered by three of the band busking on a Munich street and recruited on the spot to play that same evening — a performance that reportedly began as a quiet murmur and erupted into something so intense much of the audience fled. Suzuki’s first recorded appearance is here, on Don’t Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone, and his voice already sounds like the abstract, incantatory instrument that would define the classic albums. Hearing both singers on one record, and hearing how naturally the band absorbs the change, is a large part of what makes Soundtracks special.

The sound

More varied and, in places, more conventional than the band’s studio albums, which is exactly what film work invites. There are melodic, almost song-like pieces, a smoky jazz number, haunting short cues, and then the enormous exception that dominates everything. What ties it together is the playing: Liebezeit’s drumming is a marvel throughout, so natural and physical you can almost feel the skin of the drum, and Czukay’s studio craft is everywhere, editing and assembling pieces from different sources into new wholes much as Miles Davis’s producer was doing across the Atlantic at the same moment. It is looser and more scattered than a proper Can album by design, but the quality never dips, and the range makes it a rewarding, easy listen.

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The songs

The short pieces are consistently good: Deadlock and its brief reprise, the melodic Tango Whiskyman, and Don’t Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone, notable as Suzuki’s debut. Soul Desert is Mooney at his expressive best, and She Brings the Rain closes the album on a complete left turn, a laid-back, finger-clicking jazz croon that has since turned up in several films. But the record belongs to Mother Sky: fourteen and a half minutes commissioned for a 1970 film after its director was struck by Yoo Doo Right, opening in mid guitar solo before locking into a relentless motorik groove with Suzuki chanting over the top. It is a clear precursor to Halleluwah on Tago Mago, one of the most hypnotic, dance-inducing things the band ever cut, and reason enough on its own to own the album.

Reception and legacy

Soundtracks is often overlooked because it is not a “real” album, but among those who know Can it is a treasured one — both for its role as the bridge between the raw debut and the masterpiece that followed, and for Mother Sky, which has been covered by later bands and remains a fixture of any serious Can playlist. It captures a band mid-transformation, shedding one iconic voice and gaining another without missing a step, and it shows off Czukay’s editing genius and Liebezeit’s peerless groove in a compact, approachable form. As a document of a pivotal moment, and as a home for one of their greatest tracks, it is far more than the stopgap it was meant to be.

The verdict

Essential almost entirely for Mother Sky, and rewarding well beyond it — a more accessible way into early Can than the debut, and a fascinating snapshot of the singer changing hands. Play Mother Sky first and loudest, then She Brings the Rain and Soul Desert for Mooney and Tango Whiskyman for the melodic side. Then Monster Movie for the Mooney era in full, and Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi for the Suzuki-era peak this record leads into. A soundtrack collection that quietly became one of the keys to the whole Can story.

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