# Tago Mago

Tago Mago is the second studio album by the German krautrock band Can, originally released as a double LP in August 1971 on United Artists Records. It was the band's first full studio album to feature vocalist Damo Suzuki after the departure of Malcolm Mooney the year prior, though Suzuki had been featured on most tracks on the 1970 compilation album Soundtracks. It was recorded at the Can Studio [de] in the Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle near Cologne.
Tago Mago features long-form experimental tracks blending rock and jazz improvisation, funk rhythms, and musique concrète tape editing techniques. The album has been described as Can's best and most extreme record in sound and structure. The album has received widespread critical acclaim and is cited as an influence by various artists. Ned Raggett of AllMusic called it "not merely one of the best Krautrock albums of all time, but one of the best albums ever, period."

## Background

After Malcolm Mooney left Can in December 1969, Can was left without a vocalist. While visiting Munich for a performance in early 1970, bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit saw Kenji "Damo" Suzuki busking outside the city's cafe, and invited him to join the performance. Suzuki performed with the band at the Blow Up Club that evening, and subsequently became a full member of the group.
Early in 1968, the band had been invited to stay rent-free at the Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle in Nörvenich, North Rhine-Westphalia, for one year by art collector Christoph Vohwinkel, who had rented it with the idea of transforming it into an art center. Tago Mago was recorded by Czukay at the castle, between November 1970 and February 1971.
During the Tago Mago recording sessions, Can were visited by an English journalist, Duncan Fallowell, writing for The Spectator magazine. In 1970, he published the first mainstream column about Can.

## Production and recording

The recording process took three months to complete. Sessions often lasted up to 16 hours a day, Czukay editing the band's long, disorganized jams into structured songs. He used a pair of two-track tape recorders to capture the sessions, which limited the band, and the group favored recording in the castle's entrance hall to take advantage of its natural reverberation. Czukay used only three microphones to capture the sessions, two of them shared between Suzuki and Liebezeit and the third carefully placed in the center of the studio. Because they didn't have a mixing board and a separate engineer, the band gathered closer to the microphones, and tried to balance the sounds they played and the sounds of the amplifiers. Czukay said that "if anyone had moved, it would've destroyed the recording. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt experimented with oscillators in place of typical synthesizers on "Aumgn."
Tago Mago was the first Can album to contain "in-between" recordings, for which Czukay secretly recorded the musicians jamming during pre-production sessions. He also captured in-between recordings of the shouts of a child who mistakenly entered the room during recording, as well as the howling of Christoph Vohwinkel's dog.

### Name

According to Czukay, the album was named after Illa de Tagomago, an islet near Ibiza in the Balearic archipelago, at Liebezeit's suggestion.

## Music

Tago Mago is a double album, with the first LP more conventional and structured and the second more experimental. Roni Sarig, author of The Secret History of Rock, called the second LP "as close as [the group] ever got to avant-garde noise music". The vocals have a lower presence on Tago Mago as a result of the replacement of the dominant presence of Malcolm Mooney, the band's first vocalist, with the more subtle Damo Suzuki. Czukay described Mooney as a "driving locomotive" and the pusher, leading the band and the band "had to follow him; couldn't stand behind him". Damo didn't have "this attitude. He needed a group which was pushing him."
Tago Mago draws inspiration from such sources as jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and from electronic avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen. The album was also inspired by English occultist Aleister Crowley: named for Illa de Tagomago, an island that features in the Crowley legend, and the track "Aumgn" is named for Crowley's interpretation of the Hindu mantra syllable Om. In 2008, Czukay described the album as "an attempt in achieving a mystery musical world from light to darkness and return". The group has referred to the album as their "magic record," and the music has been described as having an "air of mystery and forbidden secrets."
Rob Young, Can's biographer, noticed a similarity between "Oh Yeah" and the band's older song "Don't Turn the Light on, Leave Me Alone" from 1970 album Soundtracks, concluding that the speed up version of the rhythmic pattern of the latter song resembles "Oh Yeah". The tracks "Aumgn" and "Peking O", which feature Czukay's tape and radio experiments, have led music critics to call Tago Mago the group's "most extreme record in terms of sound and structure". "Peking O" also makes use of an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace, an early drum machine, combined with acoustic drumming. "Aumgn" features keyboardist Irmin Schmidt chanting rather than Suzuki's vocals. The closing track, "Bring Me Coffee or Tea," was described by Raggett as a "fine, fun little coda to a landmark record".

## Release

Tago Mago was released as a double album, released by United Artists Records in Germany, in August 1971. The British release, with different artwork, followed in February 1972.
Initially, Can planned to edit the sessions down to a single album, leaving out the more experimental material on the second disc. However, their manager, Hildegard Schmidt, liked the material on the second record, saying it "really represented this group", and insisted they should release it on a second LP. Hildegard approached United Artists and Liberty Records, telling the labels they would only allow the release of Tago Mago as a double album.
The side-long track "Halleluhwah", which closes the first disc, was shortened from 18½ to 3½ minutes for release as the B-side of the non-album single "Turtles Have Short Legs", a novelty song recorded during the Tago Mago sessions and released by Liberty Records in 1971. A different, 5½-minute edit of "Halleluhwah" would later appear on the compilation Cannibalism in 1978, while "Turtles Have Short Legs" remained out of print until its inclusion on Cannibalism 2 in 1992.

## Reception and legacy

Professional ratings :
| Aggregate scores ||
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 99/100 |
| Review scores ||
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
| Drowned in Sound | 10/10 |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
| The Great Rock Discography | 8/10 |
| Pitchfork | 9.3/10 (2004) 10/10 (2011; 40th Anniversary Edition) |
| Record Collector | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Spin Alternative Record Guide | 9/10 |
| Stylus Magazine | B |
| Uncut | |
Tago Mago has been critically acclaimed, and is credited with pioneering various modern musical styles. Raggett called Tago Mago a "rarity of the early '70s, a double album without a wasted note." Many critics, particularly in the United Kingdom, were eager to praise the album, and by the end of 1971 Can had played their first show in the country.
Julian Cope wrote in Krautrocksampler that Tago Mago "sounds only like itself, like no-one before or after" and described the lyrics as delving "below into the Unconscious." Dummy called it "a genre-defining work of psychedelic, experimental rock music." Melody Maker critic Simon Reynolds described it as "shamanic avant-funk."
In a less favorable review, Michael Watts of Melody Maker, on one hand, praised Tago Mago for "strange, alien quality", contrasted with the "placidity and unadventurousness" of Pink Floyd's recent Meddle, while expressing disappointment for a lack of "any deep sense of the spirit of rock and roll in the music. It's music of the head, and not the heart."

### Influence

Various artists have cited Tago Mago as an influence on their work. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd. called it "stunning" in his autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Bobby Gillespie of the Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream said of the album: "The music was like nothing I'd ever heard before, not American, not rock & roll but mysterious and European." Mark Hollis of Talk Talk called Tago Mago "an extremely important album" and an inspiration for Talk Talk's 1991 album Laughing Stock. Marc Bolan of T. Rex listed Suzuki's freeform lyricism as an inspiration. Journalist Nick Kent likened the music of Siouxsie and the Banshees on their debut album The Scream to the "ingenuity of Tago Mago", and the band's co-founder, bassist Steven Severin, has expressed admiration for the album. Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke of Radiohead have both cited the album as an early influence.
Several artists have covered songs from Tago Mago or recorded songs based on those from the album. The Flaming Lips' song "Take Meta Mars", from their 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance, began as an attempt to cover "Mushroom"; however, as the band members had only heard "Mushroom" once and did not possess a copy of it, "Take Meta Mars" is only similar-sounding and not a proper cover. The Jesus and Mary Chain have covered "Mushroom" live, and included a live version on the compilation Barbed Wire Kisses. The Fall recorded "I Am Damo Suzuki", based on the Tago Mago track "Oh Yeah", for their 1985 album This Nation's Saving Grace. Swedish band Komeda included a cover of "Mushroom" on their 1998 single "It's Alright Baby". Remixes of several Tago Mago tracks by various artists are included on the 1997 Can remix album Sacrilege.

### Accolades

Tago Mago is listed in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which states: "Even after 30 years Tago Mago sounds refreshingly contemporary and gloriously extreme."
In February 1972, Sounds magazine published the readers' poll on German music, where Can was voted second-best group; Tago Mago second-best album; Damo Suzuki second-best vocalist; Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt has been placed at seventh and fifteenth places in the "Musician of the Year" category, with Holger also taking fourth-best instrumentalist. The song "Halleluwah" reached the fourth placement as a "track of the year", behind Kraftwerk's "Ruckzuck", Tangerine Dream's "Alpha Centauri", and Et Cetera's "Raga".
Accolades for Tago Mago :
| Publication/Source | Accolade | Year | Rank |
| Pitchfork | "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s" | 2004 | 29 |
| Uncut | "200 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2016 | 88 |
| NME | "NME's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2013 | 409 |
| NME | "Some of the Greatest Double LPs Ever Issued" | 1991 | 21 |
| Sounds | "The 100 Best Albums of All Time" | 1986 | 51 |
| Mojo | "The 100 Records That Changed the World" | 2007 | 62 |
| The Guardian | "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" | 2007 | - |
| Tom Moon | "1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die" | 2008 | - |

## Track listing

All tracks are written by Can (Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt and Damo Suzuki).

## Personnel

* Damo Suzuki – vocals
* Holger Czukay – bass guitar, engineering, editing
* Michael Karoli – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin
* Jaki Liebezeit – drums, double bass, piano
* Irmin Schmidt – Farfisa organ and electric piano, electronics, vocals (5)

### Production

* U. Eichberger – original artwork & design
* Andreas Torkler – design (2004 rerelease)