One of the most important 'krautrock' bands, Can had a style grounded in the art rock of bands such as the Velvet Underground, with strong experimental and world music influences. Constructing their music largely through free improvisation and editing, they had only occasional commercial success. However, through albums such as Tago Mago (1971) and Ege Bamyasi (1972), Can exerted a considerable influence on avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, New Wave and electronic music.

Can formed in Cologne in 1968 comprising bass guitarist Holger Czukay on bass, Irmin Schmidt on keyboards, Michael Karoli on guitar and Jaki Liebezeit on drums, along with original member David Johnson, an American composer, flutist and electronic musician who left in 1969 after the band had begun taking a more rock-oriented direction. They used the names Inner Space and The Can before finally settling on Can.

In the autumn of 1968, they enlisted the creative, highly rhythmic, but unstable and often confrontational American vocalist Malcolm Mooney, with whom they recorded the material for an album, Prepared to Meet Thy Pnoom. This first album was rejected by their record company and was not released until 1981, under the name Delay 1968.

The band decided to record another album of original material from scratch, which later became Monster Movie, released in 1969. Mooney's bizarre and (often apparently psychotic) ranting stood in contrast to the stark minimalism of the music, which was influenced particularly by garage rock, funk and psychedelic rock. Repetition was stressed on bass and drums, particularly on the epic Yoo Doo Right which had been edited down from a 6-hour improvisation to take up a mere single side of vinyl.

Mooney returned to America soon afterwards on the advice of a psychiatrist after being told that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health. He was replaced by the less overtly challenging Kenji 'Damo' Suzuki, a young Japanese traveller found busking outside a cafe by Czukay and Liebezeit. Though he only knew a handful of guitar chords and improvised the majority of his lyrics (as opposed to committing them to paper), Suzuki was asked to perform with the band that same night.

The band's first album with Suzuki was Soundtracks, released in 1970, which also contained two tracks recorded with Mooney.

The next few years saw Can release their most acclaimed works, which arguably did as much to define the krautrock genre as those of any other group. While their earlier recordings tended to be loosely based on traditional song structures, on their mid-career albums the band reverted to an extremely fluid improvisational style. The double album Tago Mago (1971) is often seen as a groundbreaking, influential and deeply unconventional record, based on intensely rhythmic jazz-inspired drumming, improvised guitar and keyboard soloing (frequently intertwining each other), tape edits as composition and Suzuki's idiosyncratic vocalisms.

Tago Mago was followed by Ege Bamyasi (1972), a more accessible but still avant-garde record which featured the Top 40 German hit Spoon. Next was Future Days (1973), an unassuming but quietly complex record which represents an early example of ambient music and is perhaps the band's most critically successful record.

Suzuki left soon after the recording of the latter album to marry his German wife and become a Jehovah's Witness and the vocals were taken over by Karoli and Schmidt - although, after the departure of Suzuki, fewer of their tracks featured vocals, as Can found themselves experimenting with the ambient music they began making with Future Days.

Soon Over Babaluma (1974) continued in the ambient style of Future Days, though regaining some of the abrasive edge of Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi.

In 1975 Can signed to Virgin Records in the UK and EMI/Harvest in Germany. The albums Landed (1975) and Flow Motion (1976) saw Can moving towards a somewhat more conventional style as their recording technology improved.

In 1977, Can were joined by former Traffic bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, both of whom provided vocals to Can's music, appearing on the albums Saw Delight (1977), Out of Reach (1978) and Can (1979). During this period Czukay was pushed to the fringes of the group's activity - in fact he just made sounds using shortwave radios, morse code keys, tape recorders and other sundry objects. He left Can in late 1977 and did not appear on the albums Out Of Reach or Can, although he did do some production work on the latter album.

Can disbanded shortly afterwards, but reunions have taken place on several occasions since. Since the split, all the former members have been involved in musical projects, often as session musicians for other artists. In 1986 they briefly reformed, with Mooney but without Suzuki, to record Rite Time (released in 1989). There was a further reunion in 1991 to record a track for the Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World.