HOLGER CZUKAY

& this post definitely overlaps with upthread obsessing but this guy was Holger... wouldn't recommend starting with any of the later ones, but being a completist goes like this:

Radio Wave Surfer has moments, the old gang minus Irmin shows up to record. the results stay more jams than songs, not bad if not classic

Moving Pictures is lovely downtempo, the songs on side one in particular are polished & tranquil. side two 'rhythms of a secret life' is an epic in the mold of 'ode to perfume' but the main guitar line is slightly more diffuse and Sheldon Ancel is singing dramatic lyrics about cyberspace circa 1993

Crash - 2 CD live album with Dr Walker. some fellow Czukay fans find Dr Walker's beats too generic but if you've ever liked any Cologne/Berlin 90's techno, then there is that fine line between 'generic' and 'life-giving water'. some techno fans also might resist Czukay anarchically covering everything with loose shortwave sampling & dictophone noise bursts throughout -- you can't dance to this, but the subset of fans of techno and noise are much greater in 2017 than they were in 1997, so I keep thinking this one's a sleeper (though it's definitely a document of a wild improv more than a polished studio thing like 'movies'. I saw the concert in SF and it was live without a net

Linear City - a record that grew out of file submissions & internet collaborations, cut together by Czukay, has moments

Good Morning Story - he starts sampling old Can records on this one, and using drum machines & synths to produce the new songs -- his bizarre sense of rhythm, off-beat timing & reconstruction is in ways even more in evidence when he is using the ultra-familiar Can sources. side two one long piece, layered shortwave, canaxis-esque but also audibly the first time he used a keyboard with a sampler

La Luna - single track late night jam, drum machine metronomic pulse with lots of shortwave, forgot that I never actually bought this one

New Millenium, Time and Tide, 21st Century - the three records with U-She. the emphasis here is largely on her songwriting, and the studio production is on modern equipment. New Millenium has a few tracks with his trademark disruptive editing, Time and Tide has one particularly crazy love duet that makes me smile

Been listening to "Moving Pictures" today, great album. Sheldon Ancel is something of an acquired taste, which many don't feel like acquiring, but he's so eerie and effective on "Rhythms of a Secret Life".

alas, another of the great ones i never got to see/hear in person.

Listened to "Cutaway" this am ... what a great, completely incongruous track. The bits with Holger talking thru the ring modulator are LOL funny. "I must TOOO-OOON!"

Per Milton's post, Full Circle was one of my very big faves for a long time. The How Much Are They EP is unfuckwithable -- and the two radio sessions are really good as well (if a slight bit less essential). This is probably Wobble's best non-PIL recording, FWIW.

I have less patience for Sheldon Ancel but I still wish I hadn't sold Radio Wave Surfer. Dumb dumb dumb.

Also: while I enjoy their two ambient collaborations, don't sleep on Holger's contributions to David Sylvian's solo debut Brilliant Trees. Holger's shortwave (and vocals!) add an air of mystery to an already excellent, and smoothly eclectic, record.

Must..Put..This.Here..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo54P5Z6vhg

susan.

Just saw this in Biba Kopf's (really great) 1984 interview with Holger that's free on RBP right now:

The ancient bathchair that is a prop in 'The Photo Song' takes up a comer of Czukay's kitchen.

"I have just turned 46," volunteers Holger, while making tea. "Still too young to marry! Ha ha. When I'm 80 I will get married and this bathchair will be the present to my wife!"

https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/holger-czukay-the-lunatic-has-taken-over-the-asylum

Alas, neither he nor his wife made it to his 80th birthday. 😢

holger box due in march:

https://pitchfork.com/news/holger-czukay-retrospective-box-set-announced/

It additionally includes a “vinyl video,” which is made from a system that makes it possible to store video footage on vinyl.

ha, so the shitty videodisc technology from the 80s makes a triumphant return. Why not go all in on Zoetrope footage of "Cool In The Pool"?

There are further details and a track listing here - just two unreleased tracks by the look of it, though one of which is a collab w/ Stockhausen:

https://thevinylfactory.com/news/can-co-founder-holger-czukay-box-set/

Considering that collab is from 2008 and Stockhausen died in 2007, the result should be interesting.

He was back on his home planet of Sirius when Holger got on the blower to ask if he fancied working with him.

I've been listening to this box. The opening track on disc 1 is a nice jazz piece, the two long pieces from "Canaxis 5" are ok but don't grab me. Discs 2-4 are almost all great, highlights include "Signal" by Phew, the Les Vampyrettes tracks and disc 4's closer "Hit Hit Flop Flop" (such goofy fun!). Anything Jaki plays on is instantly recognizable and at least good.

Disc 5 later today.

And how is the rest of that Phew album?

So, what exactly is that 7" video disc then, exactly?

And how is the rest of that Phew album?

most excellent.

Sylvian on his work with Czukay

http://thequietus.com/articles/24916-david-sylvian-holger-czukay-plight-premonition

thanks... that was a great read.

Came here to post that as well. Agreed, wonderful.

After listening again to the Sylvian collabs most of this week, I’m remembering back to what got me into Can: Musician Magazine’s review of the 1990 or so Spoon reissues. The way they described the band was so exciting and exotic to me – this real blend of prog, musique concrète, Stockhausen and free improv. The first record I ended up getting by them was ... Unlimited Edition, which hadn’t been reviewed and was a massive mindfuck of, well, prog, musique concrète and free improv. I loved it immediately – Holger’s splicing of two track jams into monster pieces like “Cutaway,” and brooding synth pieces like “Ibis.”. I was actually perhaps a bit underwhelmed when I finally got a record of theirs proper, Ege Bamyasi as it felt a bit tame on first listen, but was soon to be hypnotized again by Future Days.

Of course I adored Jaki, was impressed by Irmin, tolerated Michael and wanted to cuddle Damo. But for me, there was only one hero in that band and it was Holger – the mad professor and the visionary I wanted to be. I burned thru those solo records and chased them down in every store around – I still remember when I found Full Circle at Tower in Boston, it was like manna from heaven (and lived up to the hype). His use of the dictaphone seemed both unprecedented in popular music and wonderfully mad. And as Sylvian notes in this Quietus piece, he had a really odd, somewhat off-putting buffoon-ish side. But really his whole conception of music was just ... different.

I realize that this is really just a poorly phrased stream of consciousness rant that doesn’t actually say much, but he’s one of the few guys whose whole existence makes me feel this way.

God I miss the man.

Also, another good reflection from Sylvian on Holger:

Here’s the full transcript of my interview with ⁦@davidsylvian58⁩ from the current issue of ⁦@uncutmagazine⁩... https://t.co/M531wNQ4bU

— Michael Bonner (@MichaelBonner) July 13, 2018

I love all of them but I've always always thought Holger + Jaki were the geniuses of the band.

i am getting myself a copy of the CINEMA box set for my birthday
what should i expect? the personnel looks good and i love pretty much any soundtrack music.

What is it?

https://www.groenland.com/en/product/holger-czukay-cinema/

i am getting it used from my friend who owns a record store. discount!!

... oh it's some of his solo albums, it's not soundtrack music!

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

It's everything he released from 1969 to, errrr, 1991?

oh well i don't have any of them
are they good? i hope?

sorry i was mistaken

They are!

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.

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

i can't wait!!

love his impish spirit <3

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!

There's certainly a lot of impishness - arguably too much at times.

well "Hit Hit Flop Flop" is my current favorite, so I think maybe we have different imp tolerance levels?

I was thinking more "The Photo Song" tbh.

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

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)

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

i had a nightmare about "cool in the pool" once

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.

haha! my friend joked about that too, he said he hopes i have a vinyl video player
lol

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

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.

No, it stops with "Radio Wave Surfer" - which I think was his last album for Virgin?

also I think it only samples most of the albums (all of Movies is on there though)

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

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.

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.

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/

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.

the single edit of "halleluwah" is a good one. anybody heard the 2 minute single edit of "oh lord give us more money"?