| Out of Reach | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Can |
| Cover: | Can - Out of Reach.jpg |
| Released: | July 1978 |
| Recorded: | October 1977 |
| Length: | 35:19 |
| Label: | Harvest |
| Producer: | Can |
| Prev Title: | Saw Delight |
| Prev Year: | 1977 |
| Next Title: | Can |
| Next Year: | 1979 |
Out of Reach is the ninth studio album by the German krautrock band Can, released as an LP in 1978 on Harvest Records. It is their tenth official studio album, discounting compilations such as Unlimited Edition.
Founding bassist and producer Holger Czukay left the band before the recording sessions for Out of Reach. As a partial result of Czukay's departure, bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah are said to dominate the group's sound on this album. Drummer Jaki Liebezeit was losing interest in the band at the time, leaving most of the percussion duties to Baah. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt refused to play on "Give Me No 'Roses'", so Gee and Baah played the keyboards on that track. However, the album's guitar solos from Michael Karoli are a link to the older Can sound.
Rosko Gee performs vocals on "Pauper's Daughter and I" (quoting the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme) and "Give Me No 'Roses'", and wrote these two tracks. Rebop Kwaku Baah sings on "Like Inobe God." The four other songs ("Serpentine", "November", "Seven Days Awake", and "One More Day") are instrumental. A simpler version of "November" was called "Mighty Girl" in the 1975 session for BBC's John Peel Show.
Out of Reach has variously been reissued as a double CD with Can's 1979 release Can (also known as Inner Space after the band's recording studio) and on its own in several single CD versions, e.g. on MagMid (TKO Magnum Music) in the United Kingdom,[1] but was more difficult to find than other Can albums. Being the only Can album that features no input from Holger Czukay (its followup Can had some editing by Czukay[2]), it was disowned by the band for many years (hence its rather haphazard reissue history) and was not listed as part of their discography on their official website.[3] It was not issued either as part of Spoon Records' first CD reissues of most of their albums in 1989, nor in a remastered Super Audio CD edition in 2006, unlike all the other Can studio albums.[4]
It was finally officially re-issued by Spoon Records, in CD, vinyl and digital formats, on 18 August 2014.[5]
AllMusic's retrospective review of Out of Reach praised Gee's bass playing for creating a jazz sound, but also referred to "Pauper's Daughter and I" (which they erroneously referred to as "The Pauper's Daughter") and "Like Inobe God" as Can's two worst recordings. In an overview of Can's career, journalist Andy Gill opined that Gee and Baah "seemed to impose too strict a sense of rhythm on Can's once free-flowing music, which was diluted with insipid reggae riffs." He called Out of Reach "a poor record".[6]
All songs written by Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit, Irmin Schmidt, Rosko Gee, and Reebop Kwaku Baah, except where noted.
Total length - 35:19
According to the liner notes: