My wife, Heidi, heard “Spray” the other day and said “the thing about Can is that they are always playing and have always been and always will be.” With their new Neumann mics, whose sensitivity enabled them to play more softly, Can went into the center of their sensuous and athletic practice. This is the album that best balances the heavy and light—it feels like we are in the middle of the room with them, the noise dialed down and the heat turned up. “Future Days” is Damo at his dreamiest and “Spray” is what it sounds like—a burbling mesh of percussion and instrument splashes. Along with the electric Miles Davis band, Can are unfolding everything they find and looking at it carefully. “Moonshake” distills the eighth note pulse running through the first side of the album and fills Can’s little sardine can with rubies. Side two, “Bel Air,” is one of the band’s most remarkable productions. The band claims it was played once and never again, even though it appears in many live sets, albeit in radically altered form. Moving through three sections taken from three different takes, Can set themselves adrift on memory bliss and wind through twenty minutes of soft noise and hard sparkles, the pulse of the first side surging through and then receding. (Fans of The Fall will recognize the descending riff of “I Am Damo Suzuki” as the final figure in “Bel Air.”)

– Sasha Frere-Jones