In case you've been following the daily spin, it hasn't been quite daily as of late. I spent a good bit of last week showing some very personable visitors from Germany around town, and plenty of work-related and plain ol' "normal life" activities got put on the back burner.

I'm starting to get caught up, so in honor of the visitors' homeland, here is today's spin:

Can, "Tago Mago" (Spoon, 1971)

Promotional materials for musical acts often contain the word "unique," often preceded by modifiers like "rather" or "truly." Not only is that an improper use of English, it's amost always hyperbole. Some artists - Zappa, Beefheart, The Shaggs - qualify, but most others could best be considered distinctive rather than unique.

One band that definitely can carry the label is Can, one of the more adventurous of the slew of experimental bands that got their start in West Germany in the late 1960s. The core of instrumentalists - Holger Czukay on bass, Michael Karoli on guitar, Jaki Lieberzeit on drums and Irmin Schmidt on keyboards - developed a sound that followed few of the prevalent conventions of popular music at the time: metronome beat, few chord changes, playing based on dynamics rather than melody.

What really set the band apart was its approach to vocals. Can's debut album, "Monster Movie," features an expatriate American named Malcolm Mooney singing/speaking in a stream-of-consciousness delivery that fits in well with the free-flowing style of music.

Mooney had a few issues that led to his departure, and by the time Can recorded its second proper album in 1971, his place had been taken by an even more esoteric choice for a vocalist, Japanese street singer Damo Suzuki. And the result is one of the more interesting recordings of its era.

"Tago Mago" originally was released as a double album, containing just seven tracks. The three most accessible songs appeared as the set's first side; one of them, the hauntingly flowing "Oh Yeah," appears on Rhino's exceptional five-CD compilation "Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era."

From there, "Tago Mago" gets progressively stranger. "Halleluhwah" takes up the entire second side of the original Side Two, with Czukay laying down a funky bass line that would make the coming wave of funk-rock players proud. Karoli's slicing guitar licks help carry the momentum, but what really catches the ear is Suzuki's singing, which ranges from barely intelligible to totally unintelligble; at times, the words seem to be in English, but you're never too sure.

The instrumentals on "Halleluhwah" are fairly straightforward compared with "Aumgn," the track that constitutes Side Three. Kicking off with the sounds of a pick scraping against guitar strings, the song continues through various nontraditional techniques relayed through an echo chamber; for example, Schmidt can be heard picking at the strings inside his piano. Creepy vocal noises add to the cacophony, which at times sounds as if it wouldn't be out of place on one of those Halloween sound effects collections. Eventually, Liebezeit comes in with some innovative percussion that never loses his machine-like sense of timing. The sound collage wraps up with high-pitched keyboard notes that slowly descend into morass of squeaking noises.

As if that weren't bizarre enough, the CD release continues into "Peking O," during which it's Suzuki's turn to play John Cage. Over a backdrop of more heavy echo and Schmidt's faint organ chords, he barks out a lament of some sort (again, much gets lost in the translation) before a quirky little ditty emerges, driven by the organ's beatbox.

Suzuki chimes in with whispered scat singing, then does his best imitation of a tape player gone berzerk, with rapid-fire chattering that must be heard to be truly appreciated. Schmidt backs his screeching with random keyboard notes, doing his best to follow the lead of Suzuki's unpredictable throat noises. The proceedings wrap up with Suzuki doing his thing over a steady, almost robotic rhythm, closing the door on an experience that the adventurous listener is unlikely to forget.

The final track, "Bring Me Coffee or Tea," returns to earth somewhat with a more conventional song structure, although the extrapolations on a single chord and Suzuki's less-frenetic ravings still resemble nothing that would appear on Top 40 radio.

After "Tago Mago," Can refined its approach a bit and went on to some sales success in Europe and a strong fan base in certain circles that continues to this day.

But for sheer departure from the norm, the band's double-LP set of 1971 lives up to a billing as unique.