CAN

CAN formed in Cologne in 1968, assembled around Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt, two former students of avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen who wanted to know what would happen if rock music had no blues in it at all. With guitarist Michael Karoli and jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit completing the lineup, and Japanese street musician Damo Suzuki joining on vocals in 1970 after being discovered busking outside a Munich cafe, the band spent the next decade recording sprawling improvised sessions and then editing hours of tape into albums that drew from free jazz, funk, psychedelia, and musique concrete in roughly equal measure. Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972), and Future Days (1973) form the core of that catalog. David Bowie, Talking Heads, Joy Division, and Radiohead have each called them foundational. CAN disbanded in 1979. The influence never did.