Can – Future Days (Gold)

Can – FUTURE DAYS (GOLD) is one of the most significant releases in Mute’s catalog of reissues, and this limited colored vinyl pressing makes it a genuinely compelling physical object to own. Originally released in 1973, Future Days marked the end of an era for the group: it was the last album to feature Damo Suzuki as vocalist, and the band clearly knew they were closing a chapter. The result is four tracks that move between weightless drift and deep rhythmic hypnosis, bound together by the instincts of four musicians who had spent years refusing to play by anyone else’s rules.

Why Can Still Matters

Founded in 1968 by Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit, Can built their approach around improvisation, tape manipulation, and the collision of ethnic, electronic, experimental and modern classical influences. The music they made in the early 1970s was not derivative of anything that came before it. It pointed forward, and the artists who have since acknowledged that debt are a long list worth reading: Portishead, New Order, Public Image Ltd, Radiohead, Mogwai, Kanye West, James Murphy, Factory Floor. That kind of reach across decades and genres does not happen by accident.

What You Get on Can – FUTURE DAYS (GOLD)

The album runs four tracks. Moonshake clocks in at around three minutes and operates almost like a pop song, compact and propulsive, which makes it the odd one out here in the best possible way. Then there is Bel Air: a 20-minute closing piece that expands slowly and deliberately, giving the record an entirely different sense of scale. The title track and Spray fill the first side with the kind of loose, floating momentum that defined the group’s approach to rhythm under Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming, one of the most distinctive and influential drum sounds in rock history. Together the four pieces cover a lot of ground for an album that never feels overcrowded.

The Pressing Details

This edition is pressed on gold colored vinyl and issued through Mute under catalog number MUE 38560. Mute has handled Can’s catalog with care, and colored vinyl editions like this one tend to move through collector circles fairly quickly. Gold is a fitting choice for this particular album: the music has a warm, luminous quality that the standard black pressing does not visually represent in the same way. If you already own Future Days on an earlier pressing, the colored vinyl gives you a legitimate reason to add this one. If this is your entry point into Can, it is a strong one. Suzuki’s presence on the album is understated and atmospheric, and hearing it on a well-pressed LP rather than a stream is a different experience entirely.

Tracklist

1. FUTURE DAYS
2. SPRAY
3. MOONSHAKE
4. BEL AIR