s/d: Late period Can & solo projects

I personally prefer this later period stuff (including Soon Over Babaluma) to much of the earlier stuff. I'm not a huge fan of the jammier aspects on the early albums and I can't say that I love either Michael Mooney's or Damo Suzuki's vocals. Which isn't to say that these early records are bad, I just like the funkier, more synthesized sound of the later records.

I also recently got Unlimited Edition, and this may be my favorite of the early stuff because the brief track lengths somehow focus the whole thing for me.

haha I have that too ... I hate it ...

I've got Out of Reach but I can't really remember what it sounds like. I remember thinking it wasn't great but wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be (at the time I bought it I didn't know it was "disowned" & Holger didn't play on it etc. etc.)

xpost Flow Motion is worth it for "I Want More" alone, that song is so great

I'm not a huge fan of the jammier aspects on the early albums

I personally don't think beating the shit out of a few chords constitutes "jammy", but I see your point.

Best Post-Babaluma Can Record?

the new Can reissues are rockin my world!!!

OK, IS IT ME OR DOES IRMIN SCHMIDT COME OFF LIKE A TOTAL DOOSH IN THE CAN DOC.

I think that last one is the one I was trying to remember...

... because it's rubbish perhaps?

facing still a problem signing the back catalogue contract. this time coming from one of the musicians i had worked together more than 25 years ago. it is not always the record companies which make the trouble. the news ticker will tell you more in the next days. sorry for that, dear. no reason to lose your temper.

Yeah, so what else sounds like that great first half of Canaxis?

No?

uhm you mean other trancey eastern+western music tape collages?

John Oswald "WX"
Carl Stone (again) "Nyala - fourth section" (many of his pieces are world music collage, I like all of his albums especially 'Mom's')

there are world-music-collage precedents to Canaxis, but they are twitchily edit-packed and not meditative -

Richard Maxfield - "Bacchanale (1963)"
James Tenney - "Collage No. 2 (Viet Flakes)"
Stockhausen - Hymnen / Telemusik

plenty of other things in the ballpark though

ha ha

nyala - fourth section - add your comments

also not really a big fan of the Kevorkian, Wobble, Edge, Czukay & a.Russell "Snake Charmer" mini LP.

haha I have that too ... I hate it ...

wow I was so RONG. Snake Charmer is a cool record.

Gotta bring Snake Charmer to the special Arthur Russell tribute Dazzle Ships at Heathers this THURSDAY, official after-party for the premier of Wild Combination, the Russell documentary.

There is a great record that I think is pre-Snake Charmer, credited to Jah Wobble, Holger Czukay, and Jaki Liebezeit- "How much are they" 12"

http://www.discogs.com/release/357065

There is a version on Island apparently meaning you should be able to find this in used shops...Great stuff, Rough Trade disco/not/disco sounding stuff?

Snake Charmer is all right, Czukay adds some nice dictaphone / shortwave / guitar lines to occasional sections, it's more of a Wobble thing though, it sounds like Kevorkian's mid-80's NYC dance/dub mixing instead of Holger's cut-up style w/ splices on the master tape

the 'how much are they' 12" was folded into Full Circle which is in print, and which is much more like the Czukay mutant solo albums from around that time

for adam: Sounds like "Canaxis"

since posting that, i heard a really great track from the Snake Charmer ep, and went to find my copy, and must have sold it :(

Bumping as I was reading the Eno biography On Some Faraway Beach which begins to talk about his inspiration Eno drew from watching Czukay recording Movies while working with Cluster in Conny Plank's studio. I've owned Movies and the CD of Rome Remains Rome/Der Osten Ist Rot forever – collections with brilliant moments but also some experiments that don't work. It prompted me to pull down Canaxis, Phew, and On the Way to the Peak of Normal – all of which are pretty fascinating and pre-date Czukay's work with the world's most irritating vocalist, Sheldon Ancel.

Anyway, all of these records showcase some pretty nifty studio work, tape editing and dictaphone sampling that is alternately smooth and disorienting. It got me wondering: are there any good articles about Holger Czukay's working methods? I feel like I read about them years ago but for the life of me can't remember what it said.

Ok, this is a good piece:

http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/czukay.html

Includes this passage:

Can you say a little bit about Movies, because that was your first major solo project? You've already said it took two years to make. Can you say something about how it developed?
When I finished with Can that was such a pressure, suddenly I thought 'what are you doing now?' They have the multi-track machine, you are now alone. I knew that by the slow process of editing - that seems to me a sort of Manhattan Project - the project that developed the atomic bomb - that was sort of a such a nuclear thing, this editing process. I thought it was like finding out something about the DNA code, and cloning and making artificial people, Doctor Frankenstein. Suddenly he became sort of a humorous hero. And it was affordable. I bought Telefunken machines, like the BBC they were standing there, built for the rest of their lives and I've never had any problems.
And so I was at home, let's say I had the television on and had a bass and now I played to a film, something to go with the pictures. And then I listened back to that and said 'oh yeah, that was quite something, we take that' and this could be the first beginning of a piece.
This is what I have learnt: when you play make the first recording together as a group don't say anything really musically-wise, you understand that? Don't be too interesting, just make something which is so cool that you could do everything with it. But not interchangable. You have to reduce yourself and not give too much information about it. Because this would be the second step.
In Hollywood Symphony I played guitar but I couldn't really play guitar, but anyway I played and played and played and edited later what I played. And then I brought it onto multi-track and brought all the other things like a symphony.
And then I made eighteen final mixes. Even the tests, everything was recorded. I took it home and now with four editing machines, I made a sort of four colour print out of the whole thing. That means, here I took from this mix, quite good with the guitar, but it is far too loud over here, and suddenly you start becoming a sort of film maker. Films are made like that, you shoot the scenes and shoot it several times and later you put it together by these different takes, and this is the way I make my music. And suddenly I found out as well that the music creates a certain sort of vision, it has a visual character.

I played guitar but I couldn't really play guitar

Yeah right, Holger. He's, uh, a bit of storyteller, the old boy.

Jaki Liebezeit currently touring with Burnt Friedman.

I played guitar but I couldn't really play guitar

I love his guitar playing but I know what he means, he meanders into some really odd, off-time notes but he's a master of recovering from them & he's got an instantly recognizable and wonderful clear tone that carries over from his bass playing. I remember playing 'Perfume' for a Russian guitar playing friend and his comment after the 2nd solo was 'I'm unable to take this guitarist seriously'.

And then I made eighteen final mixes.

This is the key to a lot of it; he throws things onto the multitrack, does a lot of crazy stereo mixes, and then razors those stereo mixes together into a sequence. Then, when called for, one more layer on top of that. Basically he went back to the way he'd always done things on the first five Can records; a lot of Movies is actually just him taking a second crack at remixes of the later Can.

One of the educational ways to hear the way Czukay writes a tune is to compare the 18 minute improv of SYPH's 'Little Nemo' with Czukay's 6 minute song 'On The Way To The Peak Of Normal'. They start out the same, then diverge, but if you listen to the long version occasionally you'll hear two bars or a tiny little guitar skronk that he surgically cut out and worked into his song

He was playing guitar before he was playing bass - jazz guitar - he was a novice on bass when Can started.

the 18 minute improv of SYPH's 'Little Nemo'

I love that track, great guitar playing, I put the album it came from on a Krautrock Listening Klub thread on ILM but I don't know if anyone listened to it!

the world's most irritating vocalist, Sheldon Ancel.

OT motherfucking M. That guy is like Bono onstage with Tinariwen all the time. So very dud.

I don't mind him tbh

/I played guitar but I couldn't really play guitar/

I love his guitar playing but I know what he means, he meanders into some really odd, off-time notes but he's a master of recovering from them & he's got an instantly recognizable and wonderful clear tone that carries over from his bass playing.

Totally agree. There is a turn of phrase at 2:30 in Persian Love that is one of those unbelievable moments – where you can almost hear him figuring his way out of what he's gotten himself into.

Also, I imagine his guitar playing and tone is wholly related to some varispeeded tape and editing.

/And then I made eighteen final mixes./

This is the key to a lot of it; he throws things onto the multitrack, does a lot of crazy stereo mixes, and then razors those stereo mixes together into a sequence. Then, when called for, one more layer on top of that. Basically he went back to the way he'd always done things on the first five Can records; a lot of Movies is actually just him taking a second crack at remixes of the later Can.

I'm wracking my brain trying to remember where I saw an interview with him about all this. Option magazine ca. 1990 maybe? I can't find it anywhere online sadly. I was blown away to read about all the two-track editing.

One of the educational ways to hear the way Czukay writes a tune is to compare the 18 minute improv of SYPH's 'Little Nemo' with Czukay's 6 minute song 'On The Way To The Peak Of Normal'. They start out the same, then diverge, but if you listen to the long version occasionally you'll hear two bars or a tiny little guitar skronk that he surgically cut out and worked into his song.

Never knew either song until this week. Awesome.