... oh it's some of his solo albums, it's not soundtrack music!
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:43 (five years ago) link
not sure if I'm misunderstanding these posts, but Cinema is not a collection of soundtrack work, it's a retrospective of Czukay's non-CAN career. So if you've got any of his solo albums, there will be redundancies. That said, it's a great set! Surprised myself by responding most warmly to the late 80s stuff
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:45 (five years ago) link
It's everything he released from 1969 to, errrr, 1991?
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:45 (five years ago) link
oh well i don't have any of themare they good? i hope?
sorry i was mistaken
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:45 (five years ago) link
They are!
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:46 (five years ago) link
i figured with czukay and liebezeit involved the worst thing it would be is boring and i like them being boring more than i like most things regardless, i am looking forward to receiving it as a gift from myself.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:46 (five years ago) link
no need to apologize--I'm not sure why it's even called "Cinema"...I feel confident in guaranteeing that you will love it. quite a bit of it sounds CAN-like, but it goes in some unexpected directions (sorry to be vague; there's a lot of music on it) and his impish spirit is all over it
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:48 (five years ago) link
i can't wait!!
love his impish spirit <3
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:51 (five years ago) link
also I have the CD version and even that's quite lovely, I imagine the vinyl box will be a very nice object to have!
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:53 (five years ago) link
There's certainly a lot of impishness - arguably too much at times.
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:53 (five years ago) link
well "Hit Hit Flop Flop" is my current favorite, so I think maybe we have different imp tolerance levels?
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:57 (five years ago) link
I was thinking more "The Photo Song" tbh.
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:57 (five years ago) link
aw I kind of dig the young marble giants host a children's show vibe of that one, though the whistling is maybe a step too far I'll grant you
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:02 (five years ago) link
As I think I've mentioned on ILM before I curse my brother for pointing out, on hearing "Cool in the Pool", that his singing voice sounded like *Kenny Everett with a German accent, I've never been able to get that out of my head since.
(*non-UK ILXors might have to resort to wiki here)
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:03 (five years ago) link
the only solo work of his that i know is "cool in the pool" and i'm not entirely sure why i ever had that on my hard drive. probably a blog around the same time i got super into CAN -- like 2004-5? IDK
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:04 (five years ago) link
i had a nightmare about "cool in the pool" once
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:05 (five years ago) link
When you get it let us know what the video vinyl item is. For the life of my I cannot find out from the internet what that is.
― everything, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:08 (five years ago) link
haha! my friend joked about that too, he said he hopes i have a vinyl video playerlol
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:10 (five years ago) link
Happily that bit of UK culture wasn't passed on to me, though now that I've imagined Czukay hosting a children's show my mental image of his face is blending with Captain Kangaroo's
"cool in the pool" is pretty representative of a chunk of the set, so hopefully that nightmare was more weird than horrified
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:11 (five years ago) link
I'm tempted to pick this up, I sampled it on Spotify and found much to love (but not all of it, his tastes and creative spirit was incredibly broad).
I don't think it's *everything* he did in his solo career, it's a large anthology.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:13 (five years ago) link
No, it stops with "Radio Wave Surfer" - which I think was his last album for Virgin?
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:17 (five years ago) link
also I think it only samples most of the albums (all of Movies is on there though)
― rob, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:21 (five years ago) link
there's a lot of amazing music on that box. for me also wildly frustrating. it's the first 7 albums, each nearly complete, minus one or two tracks. czukay released remixed versions of the albums over the last ten years which are profoundly different (sometimes interesting but never improvements - a lot of the tight splices and edits are now gone, and there's more reverb); none of the people who reviewed this box knew the material well enough to mention which versions were included here and the website doesn't mention, but I'm guessing it's the later versions.
the groenland reissues of 'peak of normal' and 'osten ist rot / rome' also left off a bunch of the best tracks, and some of them, but not all of them, are back on this box, and are now the only places you can get them. it is sloppy.
that being said - I love all this music so much, I would still consider buying this if I found a (very) cheap copy so I could pick the box up and hug it while listening to the original versions
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 14 August 2018 18:21 (five years ago) link
The only one I really couldn’t cope with back in the day was radio wave surfer. I wonder how I’d react to it now.
― cheese is the teacher, ham is the preacher (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, 14 August 2018 20:01 (five years ago) link
It's one of these I think. It's a record with black and white video encoded in audio. It's been around since 1999 and there were initially 21 releases in the format before it was 'revived' recently. It uses a special decoder thing.
http://www.vinylvideo.com/http://vinylvideo.supersense.com/
― Absolute Unit Delta Plus (Noel Emits), Sunday, 19 August 2018 07:59 (five years ago) link
Movies is a really strange record. The two short pieces go down easy – witty, melodic, brilliantly edited, it’s hard not to flash a smile at these. But holy shit, the two long pieces are bizarre as shit. “Oh Lord Give Us More Money” is an epic remix of “Hunters and Collectors” from 1975’s Landed (a fact pointed out to me by Milton on some old Krautrock thread), with wandery varispeed guitar noodlings competing for space against Solina string synth noodlings. His almost amelodic vocal entrance on this (“Some arguments in the past have made gold/Out of STONES!!!”) is equally odd – later in the song Czukay even repeats the line and follows it by asking, “What the devil does that mean?” It’s even weirder when you realize how utterly different it is than Karoli’s singsongy lead on the original track. The editing is almost every four bars – building, slowing, and building again with periodic jump cuts to heroic resolutions or nothing other than Liebezeit’s hihat pedal. And then it ends almost arbitrarily after thirteen-and-a-half minutes The effect overall is as disorienting—and often as frustrating—as anything Teo Macero did with Miles in the 70s. “Hollywood Symphony” starts off like it’s going to be an entry into the “Ethnological Forgery Series” before Czukay himself swoops in to croon about “endless nightmares” – again with no sense of actual melody or contour. Here again the guitar dukes it out with the string synth for long stretches at a time. But where at least “Oh Lord Give Us More Money” had its descending piano chords to pin it down, “Hollywood Symphony” has even fewer guardrails – supposedly edited for over two years, the piece feels through-composed, at one point transitioning from a bass rumble figure reminiscent of the introduction to “You’re So Vain” to a sublimely hyperactive synth, guitar and short wave radio jam before returning to the demi-melody (albeit vocaless) with which the piece began. What is Czukay trying to accomplish with this piece? I honestly have no idea.
― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 23 August 2018 04:00 (five years ago) link
the single edit of "halleluwah" is a good one. anybody heard the 2 minute single edit of "oh lord give us more money"?
― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Thursday, 23 August 2018 04:13 (five years ago) link
"Some alchemists in the past have made gold/Out of STONES"
― visiting, Thursday, 23 August 2018 06:05 (five years ago) link
great post btw
― visiting, Thursday, 23 August 2018 06:06 (five years ago) link
(xp) Was about to say...
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Thursday, 23 August 2018 07:09 (five years ago) link
I love how "Oh Lord" fades out fades in again... about four times. I always feel like the two long tracks were partly about Czukay showing the rest of Can just how complex and musical he could get without them.
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Thursday, 23 August 2018 07:15 (five years ago) link
Alchemists? Ok my bad. Barring maybe Cannaxis, Full Circle is probably my favorite non-Can Czukay release when all is said and done. The trio has incredible synergy and equal billing with Liebezeit keeps Wobble and Czukay’s most indulgent qualities in check. On the full release (this was initially an EP), “How Much Are They?” is probably the closest thing the trio got to doing something club ready. The dubbed out piano parts are delightful. I do wonder what Jaki does on this however, given prominence of the drum box. “Where’s the Money?” has a rhythm that could’ve been pulled directly off Metal Box, with Wobble holding down a great 4/4 riff but with some overdubbed echoey African percussion from Liebezeit. Czukay here spends most of his time adding dub accents on rhythm guitar and modulating the dynamics of things with timely edits and atmospheric short wave. But here he lets Wobble’s vocal and bass set the pace to great effect. Then comes the title track and “Mystery” (neither of which were on the original EP), which were part of the “Radio Picture Series.” The latter features creeping footsteps and a drone and an insistent dub bass.The title track is a brilliant high life/dub/radiophonic amalgam. Once upon a time I didn’t particularly rate this but as time passes, it feels increasingly like the strongest track here – with some of Czukay’s lithest guitar work, short wave/dictaphone punctuations and French horn blasts. The Jaki/Wobble groove rivals any Can track for its sheer relentlessness but showcases a level of interplay between Liebezeit and Czukay’s interjections that didn’t exist in that band. Credit here probably goes to Wobble who allows them that freedom by locking things down so completely. Even tho it goes on for 13 minutes and doesn’t really build to anything approaching a traditional crescendo, the track somehow never outstays its welcome. Really, every track is great but “Trench Warfare” is probably the most unhinged piece here and the climax of the full release. Over a deceptively complex Liebezeit rhythm of rimshots, finger cymbals and various cowbells, Czukay again tears into his French horn, but instead of West African guitar wails like Pete Cosey thru a harmonizer during a traffic jam. The garish stereo separations worthy of There’s a Riot Goin’ On and jump cut splices of Jimmy Smith organ and dictaphone, combined with Wobble singing thru a harmonizer as well (it’s possibly feeding the whole mix), give things a particularly psychedelic touch. “Twilight World” rounds things out with a spacey swinging groove, Wobble croon and chicken scratch organ. It’s probably the most conventional thing here and there’s very little editing from Czukay but it’s a perfect comedown from the insanity that just preceded it. I love this record unconditionally.
― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 23 August 2018 15:58 (five years ago) link
it's totally peak era. what felt like a spontaneous casual jam side-release when I first heard it has become a high water mark
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 23 August 2018 19:55 (five years ago) link
When did the full length version come out? I don’t have it.
― cheese is the teacher, ham is the preacher (Jon not Jon), Thursday, 23 August 2018 22:45 (five years ago) link
1982 according to Discogs. The single came out in 1981.
― Naive Teen Idol, Thursday, 23 August 2018 23:54 (five years ago) link
There's quite a bit about the making of that record in Wobble's autobio IIRC. Just reished as a standalone CD by Groenland as well by the looks of it.
― Absolute Unit Delta Plus (Noel Emits), Friday, 24 August 2018 09:53 (five years ago) link
I always loved the ep, didn't know about the LP until about a month ago. Looking forward to its arrival
― Mark G, Friday, 24 August 2018 13:10 (five years ago) link
super enjoying these informative posts and this box set, thank you holger & ilm <3
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Friday, 24 August 2018 13:17 (five years ago) link
posting for later
https://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Rockpalast/Rockpalast-From-The-Archives-Holger-Czu/WDR-Fernsehen/Video?bcastId=8051040&documentId=46816188
― Milton Parker, Sunday, 26 August 2018 20:00 (five years ago) link
Ta.
― Mark G, Monday, 27 August 2018 11:46 (five years ago) link
Awesome.
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Monday, 27 August 2018 12:28 (five years ago) link
Danke!
― willem, Monday, 27 August 2018 13:22 (five years ago) link
Watched some of this last night. Two things:1) I wish I spoke German or this had subtitles – Holger doing an interview while splicing tape of a Papal service would be amazing to understand!2) Is that one of the shows they used for Radio Wave Surfer?3) Michael Karoli. I had no idea that the wispy guitarist from Can was such a damned handsome man!
― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 27 August 2018 22:32 (five years ago) link
1) Ditto.
2) Looks like it.
3) But of course!
― Scottish Country Twerking (Tom D.), Monday, 27 August 2018 22:48 (five years ago) link
haha! Michael Karoli was definitely the prettiest Can man
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, 27 August 2018 23:28 (five years ago) link
3) Michael Karoli. I had no idea that the wispy guitarist from Can was such a damned handsome man!
― Naive Teen Idol
dude that's his sister on the cover of roxy music's "country life"
― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Tuesday, 28 August 2018 01:24 (five years ago) link
True. But forgive me, I said two things and that was a third.
― Naive Teen Idol, Tuesday, 28 August 2018 02:54 (five years ago) link
There's quite a bit about the making of that record in Wobble's autobio IIRC.
― Naive Teen Idol, Friday, 31 August 2018 15:02 (five years ago) link
Karoli's girlfriend was the other woman on the cover of Country Life.
― henry s, Friday, 31 August 2018 15:18 (five years ago) link
It's a bit daunting, but I got one, box dented and some LP sleeves a little creased, but apart from that all sound, for £40
Tempting to splurge, but probably best to just keep to one LP a week or some such.
― Mark G, Monday, 5 November 2018 07:32 (five years ago) link