RIP Jaki Liebezeit

RIP jaki hero
One of the most important musicians in recorded history IMO

jammed Tago Mago this morning. One of the top 5 rock drummers ever. Almost seems limiting to just call him a "drummer."

totally

not to insult drummers!

but totally

Weeeeelllll, it is insulting drummers a bit. Jaki played other instruments but was a drummer through and through.

Can were always a group of outstanding individual players, but it is inconceivable to think what they have sounded like without Jaki.

Pink Floyd? Joking... but not outrageously.

He was a drummer! He was the drummer I most want to be and he inspired me to start playing. I can't believe he's gone.

My only consolation is that his spirit lives on in the playing of so many other drummers who he has inspired. I continue to believe that my dreams of being The Jaki in someone's band will come true. RIP, teacher.

ha, yeah, no offense to drummers! i guess i just meant that his parts always seemed more like fully-fledged compositions than backbeats. something like that, anyway.

Also seems like Jaki and Malcolm steered the direction of the band early on, away from arty noodlings to something with considerably more oomph.

I think what I was trying to say is that he was 100% a drummer, and could only have arrived where he arrived by drumming, but like a few other players of miserable physical contraptions he reached a place where drumming becomes idk pure source code or something

Tyler - what you describe is part of being an excellent drummer imo. Not a cog in the machine but the engine itself.

^otm.

there's a reason prince always did the drum track first

yes, you're right LL!

i like this

"Jaki was always proud of being able to make certain people in the audience vomit," claims Karoli. "He could focus on one person in the crowd, and this person would start vomiting. We had a very medical approach to music."

"It would have been a healing for the guy; he needed it," explains Schmidt.

We had a very medical approach to music.

this is incredible

that's amazing

been in my head all day

Shit news, but lord what a force of nature he was.

https://youtu.be/5a_XVM7LGnk

I mean, hell of a run, that's the key thing -- compared to some of the losses last year, 78 years is a long time. It feels more like Cohen's passing than anything else -- someone who kept busy for decades who could have simply rested on laurels. In strict Can terms, Karoli passing at 53 was the real tragedy.

(xp) He said he never did drum solos, what happened at that gig was there was a power cut and Jaki kept playing, even though the entire venue was in darkness, until the power came on. I had that gig on a bootleg cassette years and years ago, Brussels, 1976.

i can probably do without most rhythms if i can just have jaki and autechre ca. 1994.

+1
If Jaki Liebezeit would still be alive, most other drummers could shut up.

damn that is only a single character too long for a display name if u take out the comma and space

That's bc you don't really mean it ;)

In strict Can terms, Karoli passing at 53 was the real tragedy.

v true

Seconded

for a band which played so incredibly fluidly together it's also pretty amazing that can had two super-distinctive players in karoli and leibezeit

Underrated piece of Liebezeit drumming: his appearance on 'The Bottom Line' on Depeche Mode's Ultra. Apparently he tracked each drum separately, too.

I always thought late period, great drumming from Liebezeit was on the Cyclopean mini-album from a few years back. VERY Can sounding (also w/Irmin Schmidt), and a great example of how he could be super minimal, and still provide a rich, organically unfolding rhythmic bed for everyone else to swim on top of. Someone mentioned how Can without Liebezeit becomes Pink Floyd above -- I'd actually argue they become something like early Cluster. Masses of nuanced noise and tape edits minus Jaki's spacetime grid.

recommendations of underappreciated jaki tracks v welcome on this thread - dunno how underappreciated this is tbh but here's jaki and holger underpinning the eurythmics on their conny plank-produced debut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rpbwsZQtAI

here's one from the Cyclopean record, sort of a Soon Over Babaluma vibe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLZIQnHpp8c

The Cyclopean record is excellent. I listened to it this morning while I wondered how he could sound so alive & bubbly in 2013 and be gone today.
I really like the Oblique Sessions with Pascal Comelade, this song esp
https://youtu.be/FvWq2UfrTh8

Here is Jaki & friends covering a Can sing from the same album <3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XJYqwHssduo

Oops song not sing
At least it didn't say dong (lol)

Can't really add anything of worth to what the rest of you have said. Just a fantastic drummer. Rest in peace.

hell, can _with_ jaki is pretty close to pink floyd. there's a great off-air audio recording from a 1974 ogwt performance (the video seems to be missing) where they do a piece called "untitled (for pink floyd)" and it's great. some days i think early 1974 can, just post-damo, was their pinnacle as a band.

here's a complete live show from that era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvpDPmqYxMo

Just put on the Cyclopean record – I really like this.

I was also into some of his Secret Rhythms work with Burnt Friedman. This one from those records, sporting a David Sylvian vocal, was particularly nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIF2qO_kYhY&feature=share

for a band which played so incredibly fluidly together it's also pretty amazing that can had two super-distinctive players in karoli and leibezeit

I don't know why you're singling out just those two, they are all super-distinctive, I mean who the fuck ever sounded like Holger Czukay?!??!? Talking of which, coming home tonight, listening to "Quantum Physics", what Jaki and Holger are doing on that track is pure magic, it's almost beyond telepathy, aaaarggh, I love those guys so much! Please don't die for a long time yet, Holger!

^i came here to post 'Quantum Physics'—Jaki's playing on this is otherworldly. poetic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxRmU8CofE

and my favorite record w/ Burnt Friedman is this ep; sadly not on YT.

When I was a kid it was a c-90 of Soon Over Babaluma that got me into Can. At the the time the Chain Reaction/Quantum Physics run-out just sounded so rad. I was was so into it I walked at least a 10 mile round trip when I couldn't afford the full train fare to Leeds to buy Future Days from Jumbo Records.

That was the first Can album I bought, as I'm sure I've recounted ad nauseum on ILX before, Chain Reaction/Quantum Physics is like my favourite 19 and half minutes ever.

it is so good

thanks for the Burnt Friedman tip, I forgot JL played with those folks!

played "Halleluwah", "Mother Sky", "Bel Air" and Pluramon's "Tel. Bell" on the radio this afternoon

That's awesome you played those songs. Someone will hear them for the first time! I'm still sad about his death. I just wasn't anticipating it at all. I wanted more
and more
and more
and more
and more
and more

and more

The thing about Jaki and the whole "Human Metronome" thing is that for the last 25 years he's been anything but. Certainly he traded on it a bit on the Rother records (tho I think he sounds more like he's doing a Klaus Dinger on those records than anything there). But as the Friedman stuff and a bunch of his other stuff show in the years since, Jaki became an increasingly supple percussionist on the back nine of his career. It was always there but increasingly much more "Quantum Physics" than "Hallelujah." And he was every bit as good as ever.

Thank you Jaki. What a musician.

xxp: again, the "metronome" aspect has nothing to do with boring regularity in the actual rhythm played. It's the pulse which anchors all his fluidity and adventurousness. It's exactly like the best Autechre, there are rhythm patterns bordering on chaos but the pulse is implied so strongly it's visceral.
Klaus Dinger played much more straight "motorik" beats for Neu! et al., but Jaki's metronome was like an atomic clock by comparison.

they are all super-distinctive

Who ever sounded like Irmin Schmidt either? The ferocious solos toward the end of "Halleluhwah?"

I feel like the metronome thing is insufficient. He didn't play on time or in time, he played with time. The beats were all in the right places, but there was a huge amount of elasticity between them.

Human metronome makes him sound super boring and he was so NOT boring.

He was powerful. And clever.

And had super chops.

We were lucky to have him.