Ray Bradbury once wrote, “You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.” The famous science fiction author was talking about living life as a grand adventure, but the saying is true for any form of imaginative or improvisational art form. CAN, the legendary Krautrock band, constructed various sets of wings and Rube-Goldberg-esque flying machines every time the band performed. Live in Stuttgart 1975 is the first in a series of bootleg recordings made of the band during its heyday and remastered by founding member Irmin Schmidt and the band’s longtime producer Rene Tinner.

The live album captures the band in glorious free fall, constructing wings from funky scratch guitar, jazzy motorik drumming, spacey keyboard sounds and throbbing bass lines. The instrumental album was recorded a few years after the departure of vocalist Damo Suzuki and much of the music’s melodic content is provided by the groundbreaking bass playing of Holger Czukay.

Live in Stuttgart 1975 is divided into five sections numbered one to five in German. “Eins,” the album’s 20-minute opening track, begins a little like a Jimi Hendrix soundcheck, with the band searching for a groove with wah-wah-inflected guitar and organs percolating over Jaki Liebezeit’s complex drumming patterns. The jam evokes comparisons to the eclectic jazz-funk Miles Davis was producing in the 1970s as well as the overwrought psychedelia of bands like The Moody Blues.

The musical jams ebb and flow with enthusiasm. The closing minutes of “Eins” capture the band at the height of its powers, locked into an incredible groove, a musical Swiss watch in which countless rhythmic musical elements enmesh themselves in perfect precision. The orgasmic musical climax is met with polite applause.

The bootleg recordings benefit greatly from 21st-century remastering that makes the sound crisp and the instruments nicely separated. For fans who appreciate the incredible live energy of the band, these recordings offer even more granular musical detail. There are no “hits” on the record. Fans may spot riffs or musical motifs from the albums, but the music is impulsive, immediate and not in the least bit premeditated.

And yet, even in the sweaty improvisational enthusiasm, the band often operates as a single entity, a shambling, many-limbed musical protoplasm that assumes forms both tranquil and manic. The nearly 15-minute “Zwei” is built around guitarist Michael Karoli’s serpentine soloing. The drums and bass push the jam into stranger territory, an unusual dynamic in rock music where the rhythm section is usually in charge of keeping the groove under control and “in the pocket” rather than striking out for new territory.

The jams explore a variety of moods. “Vier” flows into the mystic with fluttering flute sounds. “Funf” blares with electronic noise and a throbbing bass pulse. Each of the five epic jams is punctuated by at least one “Godzilla,” a term the band came up with to describe its free-form musical freakouts during which melody, harmony and rhythm are thrown into a hydraulic press and then into a blender before being fired out the business end of a wall of amplifiers.

Live in Stuttgart 1975 is bound to please the exclusive cadre of CAN fans who recognize the band’s incredible influence on everything from the angular post-rock of The Fall to John Dwyer’s ever-evolving Osees project. The release will also doubtlessly whet the appetite of these fans for future releases of these vintage live recordings, though no further titles or release dates have been announced so far.

Follow writer David Gill at Twitter.com/songotaku and Instagram/songotaku.