The Avon Record

By Jake Rochford ’15

Can – Future Days

United Artists, 1973

Krautrock, Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Ambient

Future Days is exactly what a classic album should be. It serves an important purpose in the timeline of music growth and genre creation, but still has a sonically timeless production. Future Days released its psychedelic sounds in the very beginning of a large psychedelic rock era and continues to show its influence in the current era of neo-psychedelic experimentation and creation.

Can’s experimental abilities are shown not only in their own works, but shine in other works influenced by their sonic intelligence. Future Days’ influence is present in bands around now like Animal Collective and Black Dice, who show an impressive ability to jam like their German predecessors.

While Can showed a clear indication of where psychedelic music was headed, along with where progressive rock rested with similar groups like Neu! or Faust, Future Days indicated an individual nature to Can’s music. It presented a self-aware intelligence in their production that resonated well with the overlapping textures they used for each lengthy track.

The starting self-titled track, “Future Days,” is a reverberated and textured starting track that understands its ability to expand as an interesting ambient work. Not often does a progressive rock group understand the presence of a sound, the longevity of a sound, before it becomes monotonous. With this first track, however, there is a clear understanding of variability and expansion. They rarely dismiss an element of the growing collection of sounds, but rather build on it and expand it’s reach until it becomes something new. Like other krautrock / progressive rock albums, developing sounds don’t make their mark in a single song or in a small moment, but rather have their effect through the entirety of the album.

Classic Album