Legendary and influential krautrock outfit Can are releasing The Lost Tapes, a 3-CD box set featuring unreleased studio and live material and also soundtracks of films that were never completed.

Can’s keyboard player Irmin Schmidt and Mute’s Daniel Miller curated The Lost Tapes and Jono Podmore helped to compile and edit it.

The material was found after the Can studio in Weilerswist was sold to the German Rock’ N’ Pop Museum.

“Whilst dismantling the studio, master tapes were found and stored in the Spoon archive. With barely legible labeling, no one was sure what was on these until Irmin Schmidt and long time collaborator Jono Podmore started to go through over 30 hours of music.” says the issued press release.
“What they found was years of archived material, not outtakes, but rather tracks which had been shelved for a variety of reasons – soundtracks to films that were never released and tracks that didn’t make it onto the final versions of albums due to space.”

The tracks were recorded between 1968 and 1977 with Can members Holger Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitars, Jaki Liebezeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, and vocals from Damo Suzuki and Malcolm Mooney on most tracks.

The Lost Tapes will be released on June 18th in Europe and a day later in the US via Mute.

The first taster from this upcoming collection is the excellent and groovy opening track ‘Millionenspiel’. Enjoy.