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Holger Czukay

Czukay was born in the Free City of Danzig. Czukay co-founded krautrock group Can in 1968. He played bass guitar and performed most of the recording and engineering for the group. He left Can in 1977 a few years before the group's official breakup, and was replaced by bassist, Rosko Gee, of the British band, Traffic. After his departure from Can, Czukay recorded some notable early ambient albums. His trademarks became the use of shortwave radio sounds and his early pioneering of sampling, in those days involving the painstaking cutting and splicing of magnetic tapes. He would tape-record various sounds and snippets from shortwave and incorporate them into his compositions. He also used shortwave as a live, interactive musical instrument, a method of composition he termed radio painting.

 

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Czukay was born in the Free City of Danzig. Czukay co-founded krautrock group Can in 1968. He played bass guitar and performed most of the recording and engineering for the group. He left Can in 1977 a few years before the group's official breakup, and was replaced by bassist, Rosko Gee, of the British band, Traffic. After his departure from Can, Czukay recorded some notable early ambient albums. His trademarks became the use of shortwave radio sounds and his early pioneering of sampling, in those days involving the painstaking cutting and splicing of magnetic tapes. He would tape-record various sounds and snippets from shortwave and incorporate them into his compositions. He also used shortwave as a live, interactive musical instrument, a method of composition he termed radio painting.

 

website  
Canaxis 5
A few months after the foundation of Can, Holger Czukay recorded his first solo album ‘Canaxis’, in conjunction with producer/engineer Rolf Dammers, this album was assembled from thousands of snippets recorded from short wave radio, a long standing obsession of Czukay's which he also incorporated into some of Can's later albums. A refugee during the Second World War, Holger Czukay famously studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ‘60s. That direct exposure to the challenging and experimen…
Full Circle
A total peach comes back into circulation with Holger Czukay’s beguiling, heavily grooving ‘Full Circle’, starring crucial input from his Can bandmate Jaki Liebzeit on drums and Jah Wobble weilding the bass Instantly loveable for the grooving punk-disco ear worm of album opener ‘How Much Are They? - a big anthem in mid ‘80s Belgium and elsewhere - listeners will also encounter the muggy dub of ‘Where’s The Money?’ and the playfully exotic concrète-jazz-funk of ‘Full Circle R.P.S. (No. 7)’, along…
Radio Wave Surfer
Holger Szukay’s sixth solo LP Radio Wave Surfer gets the reissue treatment courtesy of Groenland Records. Originally released in 1991, Radio Wave Surfer found the late Can bassist coming through with some of his most succinct and immediate work. Cuts such as ‘Weird Dreams’ and ‘Get It Sweet’ streamlined Szukay’s experimental tendencies in order to create lean Krautrock vignettes that still pack a heady psychedelic punch. Funnily enough for such a focussed listen, many of the tracks on Radio Wave…
Plight & Premonition Flux & Mutability
Four beautiful, exceptional ambient nocturnes bloom again on a very welcome 30th anniversary reissue, newly packaged together by Grönland for the benefit of your health... David Sylvian and Holger Czukay’s Plight + Premonition [1988] & Flux + Mutability [1989] bouquets remain some of the most enigmatic ambient recordings of the ‘80s since their conception at Czukay’s converted cinema studio in Köln, 1986. But, while Sylvian was ostensibly coming to record vocals for the last track on Czukay’s Ro…
Moving Pictures
Inspired by "non-existing atmospheric disturbance" films, Motion Pictures is actually Holger Czukay's quasi-sequel to Movies, his classic 1979 LP. Long recognized as perhaps the oddest and most adventurously minded member of Can, Czukay has created a broad solo catalogue of unfamiliar, adjunct music with a sorcerer's touch. Besides his trusty bass, Czukay has a fascination with--and a master's understanding of--the studio as instrument. His most provocative audio collages are designed via tape s…
Rome Remains Rome
The 5th solo album by Holger Czukay, ‘Rome Remains Rome’ bubbles up for its 30th anniversary reissue on Gronland - bastion of all things good and Krautrock. Arriving after a string of total classics such as ‘Movies’ and ‘Full Circle’’, and before his ambient outings with David Sylvian, 1987’s ‘Rome Remains Rome’ is a typically, lysegically playful and odd collection of songs tripping lines between pop, jazz and the avant-garde.Make sure to check it for Holger’s possessed vocals on the psychedeli…
Der Osten Ist Rot
‘Der Osten Ist Rot’ is a wigged-out 1984 treat helmed by Can’s Holger Czukay, with drums by his legendary bandmate Jaki Liebzeit and vital synth input from Conny Plank.  Now making its first official digital release, the 1984 album was Czukay’s 3rd solo side, proper, following from ‘Movies’ [1979], and ‘On The Way To The Peak Of Normal’ [1981] in pursuit of an elusive, avant and pop-wise spirit that would also be explored on its follow-up ‘Rome Remains Rome’, before Czukay set off on two seminal…
Movies
Upon examining the eventful life of Can bassist Holger Czukay, one might conclude that this intrepid musician was a loner. His turbulent career exuded an enduring eccentricity governed by a boundless free spirit.  Holger Czukay’s debut solo LP ‘Movies’ [1979] is, quite frankly as mad as a bag of squirrels, but super playful and cool as fuck with it. It’s his first record after striking out from Can, and he clearly had a lot of ideas brewing and ready to get out  From the Afro-inflected lilt of t…
Cinema
5cd box edition. An overview of Holger Czukay's solo work and collaborations, also including Canaxis 5 (1969) - a legendary album which fuses ambient, ethnic music and early form of sampling, several years before anybody else started to get to grips with any of those ideas - Movies (1979), On The Way To The Peak Of Normal (1981), Full Circle (1982), Der Osten Ist Rot (1984), Rome Remains Rome (1987) and Radio Wave Surfer (1991). This five-LP set features a 36-page booklet, DVD of movie starrin…
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