Can: Sacrilege

Few groups are approached with the knee-scraping reverence afforded to Krautrock legend Can, so it makes sense that a two-disc set of different artists remixing tracks from the Can archives would be called Sacrilege. For those not familiar, Can's music is best envisioned by mentally combining the earliest Pink Floyd and Funkadelic, boiled down to base elements and tossed off in a manner that seems effortless. What transpires on Sacrilege is not so much sacrilegious as it is expansive upon the group's tableau: Jumping off with Brian Eno's clipped but playful reshaping of "Pnoom," the artists latch on to Can's propensity for spinning sprawling jams and inspired acid funk. While heavy on the techno end, Sacrilege's most successful tracks are those which embrace the group's organic sound, particularly Orb's remix of "Halleluwah" and Sonic Youth's work on "Spoon." Even the hardest techno tracks on the album—which emphasize and augment drummer Jaki Liebezeit's near-robotic style—can't strip the songs of their flow. It is important to note, however, that there are a few go-no-where tracks and a few out-and-out dogs, without which the set could have probably been pared to one disc. If nothing else, such material should have been replaced with re-interpretations by Can itself, thereby proving to a generation of baggy-pants-wearing goofs that the group can still stomp all over those who would try to top it.