| Ege Bamyası | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Can |
| Cover: | Egebamyasialbumcover.jpg |
| Released: | 29 November 1972 |
| Recorded: | December 1971 – June 1972 |
| Studio: | Inner Space Studio (Weilerswist, West Germany) |
| Length: | 40:06 |
| Label: | United Artists |
| Producer: | Can |
| Prev Title: | Tago Mago |
| Prev Year: | 1971 |
| Next Title: | Future Days |
| Next Year: | 1973 |
Ege Bamyası (in Turkish pronounced as /ˈeɟe ˈbamjasɯ/, lit. "Aegean okra") is the third studio album by German krautrock band Can, released on 29 November 1972 by United Artists Records. The album contains the single "Spoon", which charted in the Top 10 in Germany after being used as the theme song to the German television mini-series Das Messer. The success of the single allowed Can to establish their own studio, Inner Space, in Weilerswist, North Rhine-Westphalia, where they recorded the rest of the album.
Ege Bamyası has received much critical acclaim since its release and has been cited as an influence by various artists, with several playing cover versions of songs from the album. Remix versions of several tracks by various artists are included on the 1997 album Sacrilege. It was remastered and reissued as a hybrid SACD in 2004.
With the success of "Spoon" (which reached #6 on the German charts and sold 300,000 copies),[1] Can were able to hire a large ex-cinema in Weilerswist as a studio and living space, which they named "Inner Space". According to guitarist Michael Karoli, the band's subsequent recording sessions were "frustrated by keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and vocalist Damo Suzuki's playing chess obsessively day in, day out"[2] and "completing recording became a frantic process, with some tracks having to be recorded practically in real time and the single 'Spoon' added to make up for a shortfall in material."[2]
Ege Bamyası was recorded by bassist and producer Holger Czukay[3] and originally released in 1972 by United Artists. In September 2004, the album, along with the majority of Can's discography, was remastered and released as a hybrid Super Audio CD.[4] The re-release includes a booklet with commentary on the album by David Stubbs, as well as previously unreleased photos of the band.
The success of "Spoon" and sales from this album inspired Can to throw a free concert in an attempt to reach a wider audience. The Can Free Concert was filmed by Martin Schäfer, Robbie Müller and Egon Mann for director Peter Przygodda at the Cologne Sporthalle on 3 February 1972 and is included on the Can DVD.[5]
In a 2006 interview with David Stubbs in Uncut magazine, Schmidt commented: "People imagine Can was all done in the editing, but for 'Soup' there was no editing at all. We'd found out the record was too short; it needed ten more minutes of music by the next morning, so we wrote, played and recorded it the night before. No editing!" Czukay added: "We recorded Ege Bamyasi in a new studio, which had formerly been a cinema. That new environment affected the sound. The drums were not so heavy and rough, the vocals and instruments were separated out. 'Vitamin C' became the title track of Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street, a movie by Samuel Fuller. That's often how it was. We made music, then found a use for it later. 'Soup' is my favourite track."[6]
The album cover shows a can of "Ege Bamyası" (Turkish for "Aegean okra"). In the August 2006 Uncut interview with Stubbs, Schmidt explained: "The can on the cover is not a silly concept idea. It was a can Jaki had found in a Turkish shop. There, the word Can means something like Life. There's no concept behind titles like 'Vitamin C' and 'I'm So Green', but certainly we were very organic in our sound by now."[6]
Ege Bamyası has received considerable critical acclaim since its release. Melody Maker wrote in a contemporary review that "Can are without doubt the most talented and most consistent experimental rock band in Europe, England included."[7] PopMatters characterized the album as "every bit as compact and tetchy as its predecessor was epic and spacey," calling it "a masterful piece of psychedelic rock fused with tightly wound funk."[8]
| Pitchfork | "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s" | 2004 | 19[9] | |
| Rolling Stone | "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2020 | 454[10] | |
| Uncut | "200 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2016 | 75[11] | |
| NME | "NME's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" | 2013 | 297[12] | |
| Stylus | "Top 101-200 Albums of All Time" | 2004 | 113[13] | |
| Paste | "The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s" | 2020 | 63[14] | |
| Fact | "The 100 best albums of the 1970s" | 2014 | 97[15] |
Various artists have cited Ege Bamyası as an influence. Stephen Malkmus of Pavement stated in 1992 that he listened to the album "every night before [he] went to sleep for about three years."[16] Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth recalled in 1998: "I found Ege Bamyası in the 49-cent bin at Woolworth's. I didn't see anything written about Can, I didn't know anything about them except this okra can on the cover, which seemed completely bizarre. I finally picked that record up, and I completely wore it out. It was so alluring. Something about it made Can seem to be playing outside of rock 'n' roll. It was unlike anything else I was hearing at the time."[17]
Geoff Barrow of Portishead picked Ege Bamyası as one of the band's thirteen favourite albums in a 2011 interview with The Quietus.[18] The band Spoon took its name from the eponymous track on this album, and has cited Can as a major influence.[19]
There have been cover versions of songs from Ege Bamyası by various artists. "I'm So Green" was covered by Beck and was submitted for a planned Can tribute album produced by the Dust Brothers.[20] Kanye West sampled "Sing Swan Song" for his song "Drunk and Hot Girls" on the album Graduation, and derives many of the song's lyrics from Damo Suzuki's vocals.[21] Remix versions of several Ege Bamyası songs are included on the album Sacrilege. The Kleptones have incorporated "Vitamin C" into their mix "Hectic City 7 – May Daze".[22] For the album's 40th anniversary, Stephen Malkmus played it in its entirety on 1 December 2012 at WEEK-END Festival in Cologne, Germany.[23] A recording of this performance was released as a limited-edition live album on Record Store Day 2013.
"Vitamin C" was featured in Pedro Almodóvar's 2009 film Broken Embraces[24] and Paul Thomas Anderson's 2014 film Inherent Vice.[25] It also features prominently in the 2016 Netflix series The Get Down and in an episode of Preacher.[26] In addition to Das Messer, "Spoon" also appears in the soundtrack to Morvern Callar, while "I'm So Green" was used in the 2020 documentary Spaceship Earth.[27]
In the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, a character named Damo Tamaki has an ability named "Vitamin C".