Can - Live In Stuttgart 1975 (3LP) - Orange Vinyl

On 28 May 2021, Spoon and Mute opened the vault and issued Live in Stuttgart 1975, the first instalment in a series of archival Can concerts. It arrived as a 3LP and 2CD set, pulled from audience recordings and treated with care rather than airbrushing. What you get is the four-piece in full flight, no frontperson, no safety net, just Irmin Schmidt, Michael Karoli, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit locked into a language only they spoke fluently.

The structure is simple. Five long pieces, titled “Eins” through “Fünf,” each an instant composition that shifts shape without losing its pulse. “Eins” works like a sunrise. Liebezeit sets a crisp, unshowy pattern, Schmidt worries a motif on keys, and Karoli lets a thin, questing guitar line circle the beat until the whole thing blooms. You feel the room in the recording, the sense of eyes adjusting, people realising something special is brewing. It is Can at their most cinematic, but never indulgent. Every part has intent.

“Zwei” is leaner, with a sly funk undercurrent from Czukay. He keeps tugging the centre of gravity, nudging the band towards odd corners. There are wisps of texture that sound like shortwave radio, that familiar Czukay trick of letting the world leak in, and it gives the music a porous edge. Karoli answers with clipped phrases that would read as rock in another band’s hands, though here they come across like textural brushwork. Schmidt’s organ has a humid wobble that suggests the Liederhalle in July rather than a sterile concert hall. You start thinking less about songs and more about pressure systems.

The centrepiece, “Drei,” stretches past the half-hour and doesn’t waste a minute. It opens on a slow, viscous roll, then tightens into a dance. Not disco, not krautrock as lazy shorthand would have it, but a dance the four of them invented in the moment. Liebezeit’s reputation as a human metronome misses the point; he is elastic here, finding micro-accents that push and pull the pocket. Schmidt throws up glowing chords, Karoli trails ghost blues, and Czukay keeps the whole machine buoyant. When the groove finally tears, the release is physical. I’ve played it loud enough to rattle shelves and it still reveals new layers, a little mutter of crowd noise, a keyboard filigree that flits past and vanishes.

“Vier” and “Fünf” function like epilogues, though they still carry drama. The former starts with a restless shuffle that feels like a detour through Soon Over Babaluma territory, twilight and mercury, while the closer is almost playful, a sprint that shows how the band could pivot from trance to tease in a breath. There is no greatest hits bait, no tidy reprises. The themes arrive because this is how they spoke then, not because anyone demanded “Vitamin C.”

Given the source, the sound is remarkably present. You hear tape hiss and room reflections, and that is part of the charm. The restoration resists the urge to sand away history, so the band sits right in front of you, not on a pedestal. It is the kind of document that reframes a catalogue. Studio Can was visionary, but live Can was a living organism that made hours feel short. No wonder so many reviews at the time called this a revelation. For anyone who has trawled bootlegs, this is the upgrade those tapes always deserved.

If you collect Can vinyl, this is essential. Live in Stuttgart 1975 vinyl gives you the scale these performances crave, the length and breath intact, the bass speaking properly. It also sits nicely next to the later volumes in the series, charting a band that kept evolving even without a singer up front. I’ve pointed more than a few customers to it when they wander into a Melbourne record store asking what to try after Tago Mago. The answer is here. If you’re hunting around vinyl records Australia stockists, or you’d rather buy Can records online, this one should be high on your list alongside the core Can albums on vinyl.

Some archival releases feel like homework. This one is a joy, a reminder that risk and generosity can coexist in the same bar. Put “Drei” on, let it take the lounge hostage, and you will get why people still talk about this band in the present tense.