RIP Jaki Liebezeit

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.

He didn't play on time or in time, he played with time.

It's almost like he was in liebe with ziet

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

About to come here to post this, more or less. Several of the obits I've seen complimented Jaki along the lines of "human metronome," but that is so inaccurate. He swung like a motherfucker, and just as no one would describe Elvin Jones as a human metronome, or John Bonham, for that matter, the phrase makes no sense describing what Jaki did. Now, Klaus Dinger, sure, human metronome. But Jaki? No way.

i think it's because of those quotes from his bandmates saying he *wanted* to play like a machine.

"His deepest desire was to become a human machine," explains Czukay, "and he found the right guys to enforce that. He was The Can, he was the central figure; we all played around him."

"I didn't understand his aims in those days," adds Karoli, "because I still thought music was very much a human thing. But a drum machine could never play like Jaki: I know no other drummer who has such a sense of dosage for every single beat, how strong to hit it. The regularity of his snare drum work triggered off hallucinations."

What a fucked up metronome. I'm going to have my daughter practice her piano to Can and then blow her teacher's mind.

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.

― attention vampire (MatthewK), Tuesday, 24 January 2017 03:34 (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

I think that's crazy, too, re: Autechre. I love Autechre beats, but "metronomic" is absolutely not the word I'd choose.

So I take it no one has listened to his playing on the Michael Rother records then? He is absolutely not swinging at all on those or deviating much from the set pattern. As noted above, he is almost doing a Klaus Dinger impression on those four records (all of which I love in part because of his Jaki's minimalist playing).

Just to be clear, my point was not that he was a human metronome – or that he was similar to Dinger. Rather, it was 1) that his reputation was perhaps influenced by those Rother records and, more importantly, 2) that his style and sound changed considerably in the second half of his career.

As amazing as something like "Hallelujah" was, there is a metric ton of James Brown in that performance that I haven't come across in any of his post-80s work. When I came across his performances on Nicky Skopelitis's Ecstasis, his sound had become much more Caribbean- and African-based, with tighter snares, more toms and odder time signatures. He continued that approach through much of the next two-plus decades.

That's all I was saying.

he is almost doing a Klaus Dinger impression on those four records

Not much almost about it tbh. I don't think they had much of an impact on his reputation one way or the other, his style had changed on Can records by then anyway.

yeah i think i assumed that the drummer on flammende herzen was dinger at first. seem to recall that Rother said Liebezeit was a genius, while Dinger was just "crazy."

Nicky Skopelitis's Ecstasis

wow I totally forgot about this album (and Jaki being on it). I bought so many of those Axiom records at the time.

Would someone be able to attempt a Jaki playlist? Realising how little of his post-Can work I'm aware of.

here's a good primer on his non-Can action: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1422-jaki-liebezeits-best-drumming-outside-of-can/