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Science Music and the Angel Radar: Being Holger Czukay

Once Holger Czukay tuned into ocean cargo ships and wove their radio messages into the luminous electronic waft of Can’s music. Student of Stockhausen, potential rocket scientist, he also used to wear white Japanese gloves when playing bass live. He’s continued the legacy of Can’s music with a tunestack of individual and influential releases since 1980’s ‘Movies’. Recent reports state he’s working on a Techno release. Hoping to be lateral I thought these would be among the interesting reasons for approaching science and technology in another way.

ince the release of ‘Movies’ in 1980, a during the war, and later, presumably afterwards, went well-timed and influential record on the to the Gerhard Mercator Scientific school in Duisberg. Sshores of post-punk, a minority of music “A horror”, is how he describes the school. Mercator freaks, many of whom were post-punk graduates and was a Belgian Renaissance scientist, the most knowl- who found the culture which was growing out of eight- edgable Geographer of his time and was among those ies values difficult to remain in step with, looked expec- who developed the original Globe or Planisphere, an tantly towards each subsequent Holger release, awaited influential instrument in the contemporary develop- as much for the sheer surprise level, as the strange inge- ment of cartography and navigational mapping. At the nuity and shimmering, crystal production of the music. school, where Czukay says Werner Von Braun was also Czukay had been a member of Can. And Can was a pupil, he learnt a lot of physics and maths, potential- one of the bands for whom the punk world of the late ly useful for space research. “I thought I wasn’t bad in seventies was looking to as foreshadowers of the sound- physics, but I was best in musical language.” He says worlds it was discovering. Bands who were mentioning that he always knew that he would end up in music, Can as a significant influence were at the forefront of that it was the “best language I could work on.” punk and early postpunk. Public Image, Buzzcocks, Can were a ’68 group which meant and still means Cabaret Voltaire, this heat and various others. As if to a lot in Germany. They were small scale in their influ- seal the connection of mutual respect, Jah Wobble, ence, though such influence continues with new listen- emissary from postpunk and Public Image bassist, at ers. Irmin Schmidt once recalled that by the mid-sev- the time, began a series of collaborations with various enties they had reached maybe 40,000 pairs of ears. members of Can, notably Czukay. It continues to this They toured in Germany, France and England. They day, Wobble turns up on a track off Czukay’s current were perhaps particularly popular in France. The band CD release, ‘Moving Pictures’. in its various versions produced a series of remarkable Czukay tells a possibly apocryphal story, when concertos of music, or soundworlds. There is though asked about his place of birth, Danzig, or as it is known much else unreleased. After the departure of their by its Polish name, Gdansk. “I was about five years Japanese singer Kenji Suzuki they regrouped, as initial- when I left. So I was a pretty small child then. But I ly the original core four-piece, before bringing in much remember everything, especially the house I was living of the Traffic rhythm section; Rosko Gee on bass – thus in. When I was four years old I remember the birthday relieving Czukay of his bass playing – and Reebop when I became four years old. On that birthday I went Kwaku Baah on percussion. Czukay, (who by this time with my younger brother to see the trams coming by. I was wearing, as with Japanese etiquette, white gloves wanted it to get out of the rails. I was very successful. It for his musical activities), made a definite sideways was a very triumphant day.” He wheezes with amuse- move into the investigation of playing a new found ment. Czukay was born in 1938. He moved to Germany instrument, the long wave radio. He would pick out of

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the airwaves radio signals, fragments of conversations, Czukay’s music; machines and technology; and his, the only group to emerge into the public consciousness ENTER HARMONIC SUBROUTINE lost music from around the world, oceanic shipping Czukay’s interest in the East. There were all sorts of out of this whole scene, was the hitherto marginal NO communication, and play them into the weave of the other sections I delved into so its a pretty long inter- Kraftwerk, who in that brave new technological decade VERTICAL ∆>7? music. Later this was, he says, how he got the voice for view. I’ve moved around some of the ordering in which seemed much more of the moment, than hippy groups YES his celebrated ‘Persian Love’ piece off the ‘Movies’ he responded to my questions, and eased up the intoning on the cosmos and South American deities. RECYCLE REDUCE INTERVAL album. He was waiting for a vocalist for the piece, as it German in his English (that is not, so to speak). All in Still, Ian McDonald, a leading rock writer in the were, and tuning the radio signals at five in the morn- all, however, there isn’t much editing. mid seventies wrote of the “undeveloped potential YES ∆=7? ing the voice materialised, as if waiting in the air. The history of Can has been recounted any number inherent in the whole German music culture”. What NO The enthusiasm with the radio was perhaps not of times in the music press. These reports often happened? YES “TRY-AGAIN” ∆=6? shared by the rest of the group. In ’77 he was more or describe Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay as the two Today there is something stirring in German music SUBROUTINE NO less asked to leave by members and the band entourage Stockhausen students, Schmidt with a promising in the House, Techno and Ambient fields, particularly YES ∆ after a particularly difficult gig in Zurich, Switzerland, orchestral and compositional career ahead, and Czukay in Frankfurt and Berlin. Maybe for the first time since =5? who were trying to make the band’s music more com- as serious in his involvement in serial music. Schmidt is the seventies, and the Neue Deutsche Welle there’s a liv- YES NO mercially responsive to the times in the hope that they portrayed as bored with the limits of academic mod- ing music scene. Czukay is interested in this develop- ∆=4? could survive as a continuing functioning unit. ernism, and thinking of beginning a group of sorts. ment. His next record, he says could well be a techno YES NO Some time before this, the band, with money from Soon Michael Karoli, at the time a Law student in record.I begin, though, by getting him to talk about ∆=3? a hit single, had invested in a 24 track studio equip- Lausanne, Switzerland, gets a telephone call enquiring Can and their relation to the Studio. NO YES ment, which Czukay maintains today, “poisoned the whether he wants to play guitar in a new project, and ∆=2? group”. Czukay continually refers to machines and Jaki Liebezeit turns up for some unspecified rehearsals. NO YES machinery in terms of sentience and living metaphors. The core is formed. There’s an early member David ∆=1? This is, for anyone versed in the norms of western Johnson who leaves, and quite soon Michael Mooney is NO thought, at times one of the most disturbing , but also discovered. Two albums exist from this time – the tra- THEN ∆ MUST=0 one of the most interesting parts of his viewpoint. It is ditional first release ‘Monster Movie’, and a cassette of partially this viewpoint, if you continue reader, that I their earliest recordings on Can fan Pascal Bussy’s small PARALLEL MOTION? attempt to question him on. scale Tago Mago label, ‘Prehistoric Future’. This latter NO After this there followed a period of withdrawal, contains recordings from the earliest group days of ’68. DOES A VOICE MOVE two years, he says, when he didn’t talk to anybody, only There’s also a film music single called ‘Karma Sutra’.At AS CONTRARY STEP? NO plants and machines. This probably sounds very the end of the year Johnson has departed for the free YES NO strange, and the ‘apparent’ dialogues may seem on the music world. Can began to perform, particularly on the TRITONE IN VII6? shores of subjective reality, and as the music papers Art Circuit, and a repertoire of material begins to form. YES have portrayed him, wholly eccentric, but when I meet Much of this is from improvised and spontaneous ses- him it is a sensitised, aware and reflective man that I am sions – some appears on the 1976 retrospective RETURN TO MAIN ROUTINE interacting with, although maybe at times an occasion- ‘Unlimited Edition’. At the end of 1967 Malcolm ally strange man. Moony left, because of personal difficulties. Six months Who listened to Can at the time the group were later whilst playing in Munich, Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki is going? According to a 1979 review of a Can compilation discovered – found singer. So begins nearly four years practically nobody, calling the music an aural of collaboration and stability. blitzkrieg. However Ian McDonald who turned from Whilst staying in Cologne, the local city newspaper Single Vector Part 1: initial sceptic to full blown proselytiser called ‘Future runs a piece on Can. “A blossoming of ’68” is the head- Atmosphere, Ritual and Space Studios Days’ “sheer easy listening for anyone with ears” by line. “We were definitely a ’68 group”, said Irmin, years 1974 and in its release year the same album was in the ago. Included among the various questions I wanted to top twenty NME albums. By 1990 the papers were rec- ask Holger was Can’s connection with ’68, which is the The Inner Space Studio was something...that in the all incredibly simple, and when you listen to the tracks ommending Can as a key group, and Melody Maker primary date in recent German social history, until the beginning we would never go into a foreign studio. The they could have been recorded just now, they’re so was asking Holger and Michael Karoli about Can being end of the Iron Curtain in ’89. I also wanted to find out musicians of Can thought we needed a lot of time to fresh. healing music. The latest buzz of Ambient has provid- his thoughts on the wave of experimentation in music develop our music and that would become just too Before, at school I was working beside the school as ed a renewed airing for Czukay to a new generation. which happened in Germany on the wings of ’68. It was expensive in a professional studio. And the atmosphere a boy in a radio and television repair shop and learnt The Ambient people as far as I’ve been reading aren’t known as ‘Cosmic’ or Krautrock in Britland, an engag- in these studios are uninteresting, although they are everything about technique and when we came up with citing Can as key influences, though if units such as ing if casually disparaging way for one country to peg technically very well equipped. We knew we only need- Can, and we wanted to set up a studio, and design it, I Ultramarine are checking Caravan and the Canterbury another’s whole musical culture. ed to play and record. That was it, and to record is very could do it on my own, and I didn’t need any help from scene, it can’t be far along the line. There again there’s a Germany in the early seventies was home to a veri- simple. You just have one simple good recorder – outside. This is how we could be very efficient, and not group who’ve recently broken up called Moonshake – a table, lively musical culture. Those who made a name although we didn’t even have a mixer. We recorded with depend with a lot of money from other people. Can track, and a gentleman who appears in the gig for theirselves included Amon Duul, Popul Vuh, very few microphones, and used them in multiple. The Can wanted to make records, but we wanted to find guide under the name Ege Bam Yasi so maybe the influ- Cluster and Neu all with local regional bases. In 1972 singer stood in front of two microphones from the left our own way and therefore we needed time, and to play ence is institutionalised. some 200 hundred albums were released by German and on the side. He was accompanied by two speakers, together, and all the time had to be recorded. Usually The interview has a triple vector outline to it. By bands and solo artists. With the end of the seventies from guitar and organ. The bass was going directly in the first attempt to do something is worth more than that I mean there were three main themes; Can and most of these faded into the Ambient. In the eighties and the drums – they were separately recorded. It was the finished piece. The more you practise something, if

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you start finding out you want to make a piece, you advice is to start at the very beginning and not to con- What do you think the meaning of ’68 was, Can normal, only two track. And I wouldn’t spend much reproduce the idea. This is something which Can didn’t tinue where other people have stopped, or you have to being a ’68 group? What was the meaning of ’68 to you? time in the studio, and worked everything out, mixed it do, we didn’t want to reproduce an idea, we wanted go back, and say one and one is two. It becomes always spontaneously in a very short time, usually in one In ’68, that was a time where we had on the conti- to produce an idea, from the very beginning and this a new number, actually for everyone who does it. In night, in about eighteen – twenty versions, just looking nent a sort of young people’s revolution. In Paris, the very beginning had to be recorded, and therefore I every time and decade you’re going back again to the for the moods you can create. You make the rhythms students went on the streets, fighting with the police. recorded all instrument tests, for example, until today, roots, and it will have a different result. This happened loud, or emphasise a special instrument or voice or We had the same here in Berlin and Frankfurt and even tunings. with Can, as real beginners. But as we came from a very atmosphere, you know you can find out the landscape, other big cities, with the Vietnam war. But somehow it different background, and of course were very different which creates suddenly a fantastic picture of the same Are you saying all the music on the early records of was such a time that everyone wanted to start some- and strong characters, the power to reduce yourself and piece, but very very different. This I was very interested Can are first time recordings? thing new. You could see that when you went into the minimalise everything got the Can sound. Other peo- in finding out. pubs, and on the tube with other people. Everyone was Yes, more or less. I would say. Of course if we were ple like Kraftwerk had a different result. Here in in a mood, let’s leave all the old things behind, let’s face Did you know what the landscape was when you too much beginners but sometimes the very beginnings Germany we had a lot of people who just went the something new and fresh. began, or was the landscape coming to you out of the of the recordings, they had a special charm or a special British way – those days they had a more universal for- music? atmosphere which all the other recordings didn’t have mula; that means to be successful in terms of being Do you think it’ll happen again? because they were somehow reproduced and it is commercial, and that means worldwide the same hotel, Exactly! You must have some feeling for that. You go It will always happen again. impossible to work like that. the same rooms, the same flowers. No surprise. into the extremes and find that sounds and the other is You know, the studio has a special spirit and atmos- In the beginning I found the pop or rock music or To the extent it happened in ’68? not so important. If you see a way you let the machine phere. It depends who is in there. It is as you can see whatever you call it, I found it pretty ridiculous, in run and you mix it immediately down. So I took all “Of course, to an even greater extent. sometimes in houses. There are so-called houses with comparison to the language that was developed by the these twenty mixes and put them on my four machines. a spell on them, and you might want to rent that serious composers. They had for me a far stronger form You think the music situation in Germany has And what comes out is like a four colour print, these house and you come in, and you know something has of making and expressing music. Working with mater- improved recently? four machines I can listen to this and this, and now happened. Maybe a murder. Numerous films were ial, there was somehow mastership involved. In rock compare the mixes and I can start now at the beginning At the moment I could say so, yes. Now for the first made on the idea that somebody’s renting a house and and pop music there was nothing like mastership of the mix. And you find out which has the greatest time the situation is a bit better. The Germans are pop- it doesn’t feel good. And I know that if you have visited involved, and they didn’t even think about it, that there ambience. What you do is a sort of landscape weaving, ular in the Techno-House music, it’s even world-wide different houses, you know this is really true. was something necessary to achieve – successful and like a carpet, with thousands of edits. It is very organic, ahead. It’s interesting what comes out here, of course It goes with the studio in the same way. Let’s say the being popular. But on the other hand I could see some- all organic. music for minorities, but somehow with a strong ... studio which is only used by third class musicians and thing of worth was there. You know, you can make a arrow on the finger. You use the term infra-sound when describing some all these atmospheres and never has seen anything else world too artificial, and I think that happened with the You could say we have a sort of repetition from ‘68. of Can’s music. Could you explain it? it will have exactly that atmosphere, even if the work of development at that time with modern classical music, I see the essence even more today. For the first time here a superband comes in. You don’t feel good. especially the audiences. You come in there and you If you play very precise together, for example, bass in Germany, the younger people on the wider field of Inner Space was a place where everyday we were suddenly feel – not embarrassed, but a bit clumsy. You and bass drum, and you hit the bass wave on the same Techno-House mix, that is quite interesting as the DJ’s together and did something together. It was not our don’t dare to breathe, and you sit down and everything point, you get what Jaki called infra-sound. In other are becoming quite an interesting part of the music. studio, it was our living place. it was a place of ceremo- is wonderful and great music. But a lot of bullshit, and words many of our recordings sounded bad. Of course They don’t put on the records, they try to get some- ny,ofrituals. It was more a ritual place actually, and the therefore you had to sit down there, completely quiet. It you look up from what is technically going wrong. thing new out of the stuff which they play. The stuff recordings were at the side. They were not the impor- doesn’t make sense. the forms of listening to music Maybe the microphones are standing in the wrong they put on is like an instrument. Someone plays the tant thing. That was how we somehow found each these days are easier. You can go out if you want to. position, the iq’s are wrong or something like that. And synthesizer, the other one plays on the record player other in the music and the recording just happened. always Jaki said about infra-sound, if you are so tight How do you feel about the direction the rock avant- and gets his music out of a record player. I could see together and understanding each other so much you Did the studio help you find each other? garde took. Was it a possibility dissipated, what could from the very beginning of the seventies that DJ’s get to something beyond sound. You can say a shadow have happened? would become a very, very important part. Very much.Because we designed it in a way as a world of music which becomes soundwise incredibly I was not at all suprised about that development very open studio, without a control room, done like a Well, could have done. First, it happened, what hap- good. It has something to do with two frequencies, they because we started sampling, especially me, before the bar. It meant the communication was very easy without pened. There were many people and a lot of groups. We give overtones by addition and infrasound by subtrac- sampler was developed on the analogue basis, with a intercoms. The technique was not much, but it was had many, many groups here in Germany, but some- tion. And that subtraction world of infrasound is very, sound, beginning and end, giving a rhythm and chang- somewhere in the centre and around where the musi- how... Now we are twenty years further and very few very interesting. I’m working on such a piece of, you ing pitch, dynamics, what samplers do. You are able to cians and the atmosphere of the studio and the instru- names and few people remain. could say, inaudible music, music you don’t hear so do on an analogue basis, with tape machines, especial- ments, which were all collected. Instruments are most Of course it was undeveloped because the music much but you feel it incredibly strong. The audio ly with a dictaphone. important. If you were short of an idea, you just look was killed for more than thirty years during the Hitler impact is in comparison to all the other impacts very, The time when I got independent from Can, I did- aound you and you get it, because you see the right years. Everything was suddenly cut off, unlike in very small. That means, you think, do I hear something, n’t have a lot of money, and I could see how the techni- instruments. Britain. There the music somehow continued, but here yes or no – I think it works surrounding on full power. cal development was going in those days, with the early in Germany we had a big break with all the people That’s interesting to find out. Would you say that the rock avant garde in synthesizers, the first midi and these kind of things. involved in music in a serious way. They were thrown Germany in the late sixties and early seventies had a There was the very poor electronic music which came So you’ve gone on working in this infra-sound out and many Jewish people went to America. You particular identifiable character, and was Can part of out in the eighties, I was on a completely different way world? know you could destroy the houses by bombs and you that or separate? though. I was not interested so much in multi-tracking can build them up relatively quickly. But on the creative Yes – at the moment, very strong. so I had at home four excellent stereo recorders, editing The character was very weak in the beginning. I side the wounds were much greater than the lost hous- machines, some sort of Rolls Royce Recorders, but would say Can was certainly an exception. The best es. It’ll be refound just by time.

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electronicisation as part of a next evolutionary step, the it is a very good mirror of being musical. You can say Double Vector Part 1: view of some Biospherians. This in part was a question electrons are musical as actually they move to the laws mooted because there are various images of Earth-as- of harmony. Music is not only a national language or a The Machine in the Geist Biosphere on the ‘Moving Pictures’ cover. How thus, did worldwide language. It is a universal language. It is he feel about this? And what were his views on another based on the steps of harmony – which is the universe. From the interviews Czukay has conducted over the machines, then the way Czukay travels could provide constituency which is altogether uncertain about elec- A repetition would be understood on the Mars or years he has said various interesting things about part of any future map of this human-machine rela- tricity, an outlandish idea to a modern, to be sure, but another planet as here. From that point of view music machines. Statements such as the following:“In a studio tionship. there are various Goethean-derived natur philosophies, is a universal language. you make a concert for machines, and machines really If Czukay interacts with machines, then it is elec- which view it as originating out of sub-nature. First. Electricity these days is pretty well understood. You like to listen. They have a heart and soul – they are liv- tricity which are his and most contemporary machin- however, he began by talking about machines: can talk about electricity in terms of formulas. ing beings.” Or another; “Repetition is like a machine, ery’s enablers. “All machines are standing still” Czukay’s Therefore it’s not an occult phenomenon. I can only see and of course we like machines. If you can get aware of whisper intones eerily on ‘Hiss n’ Listen’, the final track Machines is always something that has really interested it in terms of activating electricity. Two hundred years the life of a machine then you are definitely a master.” of ‘On the way to the Peak of Normal’ . If machines are me, because machines make me free. People try to pos- ago electricity was somewhat unmodulated. In these Similarly in Pascal Bussy’s recent book on energised there is also a relationship between the sess me...not so much machines. Actually it was with times man has somehow known how to activate the Kraftwerk, Bussy referred to a dialogue between Czukay machine and its energiser, electricity. Rene Tinner, machines that I could achieve everything that I wanted, whole thing in terms of communicating by electricity and the recording machines in the Inner Space studios. Can’s engineer, said years ago that electricity was defi- especially in creating music. This is what you can’t say to each other. Czukay, as was mentioned earlier, was apprehending or nitely more peaceful at night in the studio. Here again about Beethoven for example, if he would have lived You think that’s an evolutionary step? understanding real qualities of life in a world many is the appeal to a kind of sentience or living quality, this today. I think he would be very lucky, he would have would only extend inertness to. This organicising and time applied to electricity. I wanted therefore to ask worked in the same way. He sometimes complained In a way I think so. Yes, I think so. animising of machinery is far from any Western under- Czukay about this, and in this respect about a phenom- about his musicians when he was playing with them, And what you do connects with that? standing of reality, and seems, I feel, quite threatening enon of the present, the electronisation of the planet, especially when they performed his things, he could get or eery to many of us. If there is a reality there howev- the latest chapter, perhaps, in the history of electricity. I very,very angry. This is a problem you usually have I mean otherwise I wouldn’t work as I work. I er, and if people are going to continue to interact with was interested in asking him whether he saw planetary when you work with musicians. Like orchestras. would take a violin and practise all the time and play to Orchestras are part of a museum these days, therefore, the people. I would never use a microphone, an ampli- I think, the medium suddenly becomes so important, as fier. I would never try and appear on a record. I can you write down the score just by listening. I don’t need understand if someone’s becoming an enemy of these to write it literally down. You can compose it, and pin it ideas, and says, it all leads back to where we have been, down so that other people can listen to it like a score. we should just be with the instrument. Even this makes Therefore I am a good friend of machines as I don’t sense somehow. I’m not yet in that end position, to say need to get angry. If I get angry with someone, it’s convincingly, oh yeah, forget about everything, forget just about me. This of course has something to do with about all power stations. It’s interesting to see that my group experience, with other people, with Can and someone’s who’s a diletante and who’s not able to play so on. such an instrument and can even beat the best master Talking to machines, which Pascal wrote about, that on his instrument, just being innocent. The pure inno- was in a time when I wasn’t talking to anyone for about cent can be caught by the electricity, and you can now two years. So they and the plants became my only bring that in terms of communicating. And this is speaking partners. This is why I suddenly found it so something worth far more than the super-performance important to find my own way to get my music pro- of a super-violinist. This is something that without duced, in a way alone, as a privat philharmonist. electricity hadn’t been possible. Electricity made that The telepathy with plants was of course a very possible. strong period, a great experience. For me it is the com- And the negative side? munication of the pure heart, if the heart is pure, then I would say the language understands what you think, As I say, I’m not at the point of the negative aspects. then it works- if you think just in terms of language – If I would go on stage live, I would not go with hi-tech plant language and human language. I mean there’s equipment. If I’m sitting there as part of the audience another language. You can talk Chinese and I can talk and I see on stage a lot of hi-tech, I feel cold from the Russian and we wouldn’t understand each other. But very beginning and actually want to go out instead of there’s always something on top of it, where we could getting surprised. Somehow there is something nega- understand each other. This is what plants understand. tive about it. You said electrons are musical. Oh yes. If they wouldn’t be musical, you wouldn’t have electronic music. The man is musical who makes the electrons flow. The circuit itself is not musical. But

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people don’t understand it, the way I understand it. If it And then the mixing, you say okay I’ve got seventy six Double Vector Part 2: just leaves people in total slavery for example. I don’t tracks, you have so many things at the same time, with want to say that can’t become true, it can become true me I have very, very little. You are constantly working, The Waning of Mother Sky of course. The technology revolution is going pretty on the very, very minimum of recording. It’s something fast at the moment. But when I was starting to develop I’m very interested in, extremely simple, so simple, If the activation of electricity is a notable if unnoted of measurement, in contrast to the qualitative world of up my studio, and I was working, you can say on an nothing is easier than that. development of the last one hundred and fifty years, music was either blurred or reconciled when someone analogue basis, but in the digital field, in digital soft- So we have learnt to use the technology, especially then the move away from analogue and towards digi- such as Czukay came along and produced an analogue ware that’s what I have done. I was doing that fifteen the young people learn it very well. This is the positive talisation is a new chapter in such a history; a contem- mirror out of the products of abstraction and scientis- years before all the digital things came up, in such a way aspect of that, although for me it’s difficult to say. I porary move with contemporary consequences. tic rationalism. When I put the bones of the analogue- as I could buy them, so I had fifteen years time. I often don’t know what people will come out about it, how the Digitalisation or binarisation is a new departure in the digital dialogue to him he responded as follows. said to myself it really goes very, very slow, it could have language of creativity will come to the brains of young outward emergence of electronicisation. Although it gone five times as fast when it comes to my point of people.We’ll have to see that. You can say, I have this predates computers, it is characterised by computerisa- That is something which is again a little bit too much view. equipment here, therefore I must be a good musician. If tion which has brought the binary base of zeroes and for me. I can only see the very beginnings, when These days I don’t need a multi-track machine. someone believes that you can forget it. So it depends ones into the foreground, albeit not with any signifi- humans started to make music, it was first done in dig- With a very simple digital editing recorder I have a on the character or the human-ness. For me the ques- cant acknowledgement by the public. Where it is ital language, a sort of digital language. Like the morse multi track machine with endless tracks, as much as I tion of composership comes up. I have the feeling the addressed, there is a quiet ferment about this. When alphabet it is a digital alphabet actually. Everything you want, incredible. It just points out the lists and I mix it composer of old times was dependent on other people considering questions to put to Czukay I felt there were say, what you pronounce and what you explain on an straight from the very beginning, and later I have noth- a lot to express himself. Today he doesn’t need many reasons to believe Czukay would have interesting things analogue basis can be easily transformed into digital, ing to mix. people and he is happy enough to express himself far to say about this. He’s made various observations which and all the rhythms are not so much analogue sounds. It’s wonderful. No stress, no nothing, and you are more stronger than that and is still working indepen- suggest a residing ambivalence to digitalisation and, at They are, but actually the rhythm language is a digital always on the level, on the mini-moog and you say, dent. This is something very positive. It means people least, music; “this computer artistry, this inflation of language. Everything you can say that happens in music okay finished, or you do something else, this overdubb- who have a feeling of expression, can get the stuff to music, this rich world of electronic sound is so poor, it’s and all the wisdom of people can be pinned down in a ing which is so easy with the multi-tracking machine. express themselves. I’m sure about that. beyond belief”.“You can’t touch CD’s as you could the sort of one and zero combinations. This is what a LP . If you understand music you should be able to drummer is doing. A drummer is making differences touch it and grip hold of it”.And “Just listening is some- between long and short. Long and short is the morse thing which the new digital technology makes harder. I alphabet, although actually human beings feel and Triple Vector: Part 1 go for very old equipment where I have maximum communicate on an analogue basis , but rhythm makes musical output and a very direct relation to sound.” an exception. Bodhi and Soul Unlike Eno, who has quite happily digitalised him- You can say rhythm is the mother of music. So I self, Czukay has in the past made much to his commit- understand very well if a drummer finds himself a bit ment to the analogue generation of music technology. better than all the rest. The word, Can, band members discovered when found him busking in Munich, appeared on what Can In a summer ‘93 interview with ‘Sound On Sound’ he I think the digital world is just an interface for ana- recording ‘Ege Bamyasi’ means ‘life’ in Turkish. The fans possibly consider their finest moments, a trilogy of said how much he preferred the warmth of analogue logue communication. It is the direct form of commu- connection bespeaks the interest the Can musicians strange, at times intense and completely other albums machinery, a contrast to the coldness of hi-tech, which nication, the rest is just an interface. It’s somehow very have maintained for non-Western musics, an interest in the musical language being forged across the western seems, if the above quotes are anything to go by, to similar. It is like the relationship between computers which was beginning in the sixties with the growth of world at that time. They were ‘Tago Mago’, ‘Ege include digitalisation. I felt this suggested a variety of and television. The television system is a sort of digital ethnomusicology, but predates the boom it experienced Bamyasi’ and the lighter, more peaceable ‘Future Days’. questions. Arguably, firstly the wisdom of the runaway system. It’s not really a digital system, but somehow it in the eighties, with the coming of World Music. Suzuki left to become a Jehovah’s Witness. He’s still turnover of technological innovation, and the pre- has all the elements of a digital system...on the colour Czukay’s first album, ‘Cannaxis’ is a strange and very around Cologne playing music, I presume in his spare sumed rapid obsolescence of generations of technolo- system, it’s the same as, compared to that of the drum. hypnotic re-fusing of two Vietnamese women singers, time rather than professionally, with a line-up of young gies, which quickly became generations of ghost tech- A drummer is somehow a televisioner. onto a wash of loops and other early seventies ideas and enthusiasts. nologies. Was this apparent inevitability actually At the moment I’m working fully digital. That technologies. There are moments on Can records where In the eighties Czukay also featured Michy, another absolutely neccessary? Were there other inclusive and means a mixture of course, all the time. the music can sound African or Indian. Indeed their Japanese singer on his fourth solo album,‘Der Osten ist less ruthless ways, (as far as the machines were con- singers, early on, weren’t Europeans but the black New Rot’, and she appeared, albeit briefly on the ‘Flux and Are you sad about the loss of the analogue world of cerned), of organising technological change? Some Yorker, Malcolm Mooney, who was reunited with the Mutability’ collaboration Czukay made with David technology? form of steady state, for example? It was possible with four original members for the 1989 ‘Rite Time’.An even Sylvian. Czukay also worked with his production part- his curatorship of a museum of analogue machinery, Not at all, not at all. It’s just a different language stranger move for the pre-transglobal airflight network ner, the late Connie Plank, on a solo record by a second that he would be sympathetic to alternatives in the pace which I was doing with analogue. I do now digital, but early seventies rock audiences to come to terms with Japanese woman, Phew, which is, at times, another of technological change. five times faster. I don’t spend so much time on manu- was a German band with a Japanese singer. The powerful piece of music. She’s since released the record I also wanted to try him on the analogue-digital al processing. Japanese alternative counter-culture wasn’t a feature in ‘View’ which was made in Japan. dialogue in another form. It’s been put forward that on the western hippie press in the seventies – at least I Can also explored the I Ching. ‘Future Days’ con- So you look positively to all the changes the new a graph of consciousness, analogue, would be compara- never saw a piece on it – maybe because the Japanese tains on its cover the fiftieth hexagram, Ting, or digital technology brings. ble with dreaming, animistic, enchanted body lan- counter-culture was non-media oriented, and if you Sacrificial Vessel, whilst on ‘Flow Motion’ there are two guage, gesture and phantasy, whilst at the digital end Yes, at the moment. But I have as well a different dropped out in Japanese culture at that time, there hexagrams, K’an, ‘the abyss’ and ‘Huan’ or ‘Scattering’ the kind of consciousness found is rational, abstract, approach to that too, as well. I myself feel quite com- weren’t any ways back in. Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki who (it was the last Can album Czukay worked on.) Each verbal (rather like this.) Maybe the algorithmic world fortable with it, but I can see of course as well that other stayed with Can from 1970 to 1973, after the band hexagram is maybe representative of a side of the

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music. K’an has its obvious resonance, of course. The the beginning, but how can these people make such an rather than to supply dangerous atomic bombs to most I get the feeling you’ve been interested in Buddhism? Chinese point of view was thus of interest to this group ugly music. And this is how we thought about it on of the world. I was very interested in Buddhism. Because I want- of musicians. both sides. And see how the Japanese have learnt. I Do you believe the Tao can be the basis for ed to know about myself. If you have problems with I wondered what this was about, what drew Czukay think that just the first reaction, that was all. They were contemporary science? yourself, you just end up at a time (pause) with Buddha. and the others of the band to the East. was there any- fascinated by European music. More than we are fasci- Because what he did was just self-experience, that was thing beyond the times they were living in, where every nated by the Japanese music, somehow. I haven’t seen a Yes, ver y much. it. I was interested in Zen Buddhism, especially. self-respecting hip young person was turning to the European Gagaku orchestra. Do you feel that in someways what Can has been Meditating is very easy for me to do. I have no East? I went to Japan in ’82. in the beginning it was like doing has been a kind of Taoistic application of problem with that. I also wondered what Czukay thought of the tech- being in the Western world. I was with Connie Plank. I technology? Can also seemed to have a considerable nological Pacific shift. Japan these days, is looked on had to do a lot of interviews, so I stayed in the same Animals can meditate much more easily than interest in the I Ching? with stunned awe. Would the same happen, as some hotel most of the time. I had one evening when I was humans. have suggested to the computer compatible, alge- free, so I said to Connie, “okay, let’s go outside”. We Well on the level of the first step, I would say yes, of Yeah, they do, they never feel bored. I never feel braically minded Chinese? went onto the streets. here were a lot of cars, and bars course. We were always very interested in that. bored myself. That is interesting. I know many people The first question I asked in this section related to and everything. And then we saw – it was in the centre The I Ching was of course something John Cage who feel so bored. If I feel bored with the situation I whether Czukay felt Western musicians, and new music of Tokyo, there was one way going off the big road. Now was always interested in. I know that it was something, leave the situation. I’m not at all depressed or unhappy could learn from Eastern musical traditions. He we walked by there and came in a very silent quarter because you never get a right answer from it, it depends or unlucky or something like that. I’m completely ful- responded with some interesting comments: with small houses. No cars could pass by, and we heard what you do out of it, how you interpret it. It is of filled in the life of what I’m doing. I think I somehow someone with a Shamisen playing. we were standing course a Book of wisdom. I was always interested in live in harmony with myself, which I couldn’t say when A lot, I think. For example if you listen to music of under a window singing in Japanese, and I said to these things very much. It is a very old book, an ancient I was younger. Nepal. It’s a fantastic music, and it’s actually exciting. Connie, “you see, Connie, now we are in Japan!” book. And all what people do is climbing up the scale and Who is Phew? down again, and without melody. It’s just scales, up and down. It’s like an automatic music. it sounds great. I lis- She is a Japanese singer, and when she started, she tened to a lot of it (Eastern music) but at the moment made quite an interesting single in the beginning. Then it’s very seldom. All exotic music. Not just Asian, she came here to Germany and visited Connie Plank, African, as well. The African aspect of music is incredi- and she had, for a Japanese lady a very low voice. That Triple Vector Part Two: ble, when it comes to the musicianship, the relations to was interesting. Bound by the Void the musicians between each other when they’re playing The first record, that had something. Later I was a in a group. It has something to do with moving about. bit more disappointed. It was especially the recording In basketball you mustn’t keep the ball for a long time, on that album was a bit like Can in the old days. Phew Can and Czukay emerged uniquely in Europe, out of Baltic States, the Ukraine and Russia. Those one time you have to give it away to someone else. this is for didn’t bring anything with her, just herself, and we did- the electronic music and jazz milieus of the early six- Soviet lands, all of which have long histories of folk and example something very important for black people. n’t know what to expect, so everyone was a little bit on ties. Would the music which the musicians of Can classical musics, elements of which are definitely with- When they play they give the musical ball immediately the surprise, that was good. It became very fresh. brought into being have happened anywhere else? in Can’s musical backdrop. Sometimes I have thought to his neighbour, so it runs between everyone, instead Britain? The Pink Floyd, The Soft Machine, the that a kind of kindred relative to Can was Prague’s What are your thoughts about Japanese technology? of losing themselves in big solos like jazz musicians. Canterbury Scene? The spirit is connected but differ- Plastic People of the Universe, a mid seventies Czech It’s very similar to a football game actually. You I always say the image of Europeans was of being ent, I feel. The U.S.? The Grateful Dead or Zappa? Both group who were key dissidents in the Czech under- don’t know where the ball is going at the next moment. inventors. Inventors usually not working so much in with avant-modernist connections, but both explicitly ground movement, and influential participants of the It is always a surprise. Something really spontaneous is the community, working on their own. You could say, west coast. The group Can themselves, felt a connection Velvet Revolution. What will happen in these lands to involved in that. I found that very interesting. And it that was in the past, many developments were done by with the Velvets, because of their mutual non-musi- music, given the changed political circumstances since was something, for example, Can was very interested in, people sitting alone at home finding out something. cianship. But beyond non-musicianship the journey 89/90? I asked him about the fellow Pole, Gorecki, the instead of reproducing written music there is always a special creativity involved even if it is these two bands travelled is weighted with difference. current darling of the Western contemparary classical on the technical side. This is something I would say the Can, in their continuing influence today, with the music fashion world. Czukay hadn’t heard of him, how- You seem to have been particularly involved in Japanese do that is on the wider different basis to how exception of Kraftwerk, are the only mainland conti- ever. Maybe it was my pronunciation. I thought after- Japanese music. There was Damo Suzuki in Can, and we do that. nental band to have survived the travails of time. wards of Arvo Pärt. you’ve worked with Michy and Phew. I’m not so sure where everything will lead like that. I wanted to ask Czukay about this continental Another thought is that Can’s approach was The Japanese music is somehow interesting. First I can’t tell you. Maybe at the end everything will dimension. And about his contemporaries and their informed in part by other visual arts strategies. It could the Japanese seem to be very musical. This is more than become so small, and at the end more and more effi- contemporary journeys. In the event, I don’t think I did be proposed that there was a parallel flow between what others I would say in comparison. And like England cient that you don’t need it any more. I mean, we are in unequivocal terms. But I asked him about Zappa, Can were doing, and the various late sixties art move- they were quite isolated, in an island for a long time. back where we started. who he wasn’t interested in these days and, Eberhard ments; the dematerialising of the art object, as it’s And for the first time when European music, I think it Weber, (as a kind of representative for ECM), which he known, which led to the earth and land art movements What about China, do you think the continent was an Opera by Puccini, the first performance was used as a launching off point for disabusing illusions at the turn of the seventies decade. I don’t put this to emerges as a technological giant? made with European music in Japan, it was in about jazz. I also asked about the Europe to the east of Czukay, but I do mention Joseph Beuys. Beuys it was Yokohama and the people were laughing about it and Well, not with the communist system. The Chinese Germany. Can at times appear to face in a Middle who became the leading figure in Germany’s anti-art we (Europeans) did the same when we listened to have much better to offer, you can say in philosophy, European way East Europe rather than West. Lands world and became understood as a ‘shaman art worker Japanese music. The Europeans thought, what a people and certainly the wisdom of mankind which is some- such as Bohemia, (today Czechoslovakia), Hungary, mystic’ in the corridors and galleries of the fine art with such a lot of culture. We estimated very high from how involved very much with the Chinese people, Poland (where Czukay, as mentioned, was born), the world. His influence extended much further, in his

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belief that everyone could be, and was, an artist. Such what is the relationship between us, is it really neces- What about the Re Records magazine interview different, and because in two years we both developed suggestive proposals was and is, I would hazard, close to sary, yes or no. If you see a sort of necessity, yes, he’s with Pierre Schaeffer, whose headline quotes Schaeffer as of course a lot. Can’s and Czukay’s approach. welcome. saying; “It took me forty years to conclude nothing is ‘Moving Pictures’ seems like a continuation of what There is also David Sylvian and the collaborations possible outside DoReMi”? Eberhard Weber made a sort of plea (in the Wire, began with David. the pair have made – two so far. Sylvian seems to have sometime back) for the continuation of what he called Ha ha, okay, okay. I mean he must know certainly as expended energy into perpetuating, or at least continu- Yes, that’s right. It’s imaginary film music which ‘European’ music, and the traditions of European he was the counterpart to Stockhausen and Berio. It is ing something of the traditons of the early to mid-sev- seems to be at the moment, not only to me, it seems playing in the face of world rock music (which was his late, but he found his way back through the normal enties rock avant-garde whilst dressing it in an eighties that young people are connecting with that. complaint.) How do you feel about this? notes of scales. It’s okay if you comeback. It’s alright. gloss. Their experiments are versions of Ambient It seems to be the most Ambient of your solo work. musics; Sylvian once referred to their brand name as That’s a very nice wish, a very nice desire. that is How about the work of your art world ‘Music for Chemists’ although they haven’t explicitly right, but you can only do that, not by programmes. contemporaries in Germany. Do you feel any It is Ambient of course, it has a lot of that. It is espe- gone too far with this. This turn to Ambient is perhaps You have to be true to yourself and find your own connection with for example, Joseph Beuys? cially creating pictures. an expansion on themes late Can were also exploring. unexchangeable expression about, and your own lan- You see, with Beuys – he just made a single, and he What do you feel to this current interest with ‘Unfinished’ off ‘Landed’ seems to anticipate elements guage about what has happened. Then you are standing made very ridiculous singing on that. The first time I Ambient music? of Czukay’s and Sylvian’s work. Meantime Czukay has for that new standard. came across Beuys, I thought such a stupid man, how returned to the Ambient landscape on ’93’s ‘Moving I understand that because everything is so much I think there’s always these two extremes. First the can he make such a stupid music. Now he’s an artist. I Pictures’. These tracks continue in smaller detail some- Americanised these days. And even they can say that high density rhythms on the techno field which replace hope that his art is better than what he did on the thing of the soundworlds found on the Sylvian collab- here the British influence was very strong and the pop even the living drummer. It has great rhythm impact. it record.So I was not interested. orations. One track features Ushi, a new singer for influence especially was killing jazz and everything that has great lifting up the legs, the body impact with Czukay whose singing performance, my feeling was, was coming up. He is of course a jazz musician and I Fluxus? machines, by high density rhythms, very dense leant an almost indian nuance to the ambience. Czukay would give him good advice to count all the notes what rhythms. It’s funny because until now we always Yeah, Irmin was... that was at least a bit more inter- says that for him her singing is reminiscent of Nico. He he is playing and to find out if he really needs to play thought automated rhythms is just something for a esting. says she’ll feature very much on his next album, a two notes if one is enough. This is the mistake of all jazz demo tape, and to make it sound real, to sound good ‘songs’ album, albeit through the promised techno musicians. They never thought about that strictly, and To turn to your contemporary work. You’ve worked you have to hire a drummer to back up the drum gauze. very strongly and critically, if something is necessary. quite a bit with David Sylvian. How was that? machine. this is the standard of rock music. And these The proliferation of Ambient in the last few years people when you hear the rhythms of them, of Zappa, do you feel sympathetic to his musical With David I have a very, very easy understanding, has made Czukay a significant player of the elder gen- machines, you say, we don’t need the drummer, actual- futurism? as we didn’t need to talk so much with each other. I did- eration of influences on this new techno-Ambient and ly. It runs like that perfectly. And of course that sort of n’t need to explain very much. I think David under- trance music – although the Orb and the Aphex Twin Not at all, not at all. I liked ‘Hot rats’. I liked espe- high density rhythms need the opposite – to go togeth- stood very well, the world of, let’s say, to achieve a cer- don’t seem to make much mention of Holger, maybe cially his first album with the Mothers of Invention, er. And this is Ambient, and this is why the DJ’s are tain secret in music. We work both on the Ambient side because of his post-punk connections. It was these last ‘Freak Out’, there was something that was really some- interested in both fields. I’m sure about that. and that is something where our imaginations met in areas which rounded the interview. The interview how fresh. I liked that very much. the world that really sounds. We didn’t end up in phi- Do you think it has potential for various situations. seemed to work quite well. There were questions which Today? losophy, we really ended up in music. Brian Eno released ‘Music For Airports’. Czukay seemed a bit non-plussed by, however he con- tinued, responding in humour and patience to my rel- Completely uninteresting. How did the two records come about, what was their And places. I find that makes a lot of sense. That’s atively long list of points I wanted to put to him. origin? very interesting. I’ve come across a phrase that Can were the most This last section therefore began with questions intuitive realisation of Stockhausen’s dream of Universal We just came together actually and there was always Is that something you want to make, to imagine a about Eastern Europe. music. Does this make sense to you? something installed in the studio. I mean it was our stu- place? dio, here in Germany, and I prepared the recordings All that I heard from Russia, they all do the same mis- I understand that somehow. Yes, I didn’t have a particular place in my mind, like and David tried, we all tried out something. After try- takes, which they have done here too. But I’m sure there Eno has had in mind an Airport, but actually I would And Stockhausen? ing, there was talking, and there was suddenly a are so many people living there, and so many fresh say the albums with David and me, is your own room moment of silence, and that moment of silence was powers about. I mean somehow, I like him as he’s a very strong and your own flat... make this music so soft and put it especially emphasised by this hidden instrument which character, and sometimes we meet. He’s standing for a just somewhere in the corner and it works like perfume. Are you hearing anything from the rest of East sounded somewhere in the corner like radio from far very different world of music which I respect very high. Europe? away – ah – a tone from the organ just very soft. It filled What about your videos? And his music is still excellent. He is, I think, the great- the whole studio in such an atmosphere that the music Sometimes I hear something and I hear some est inventor in this century when it comes to the music, This is one of my hobbies. This is just another track, comes to you and not you to the music. things that are quite interesting, sometimes. But, sel- the whole pop music and rock music, especially elec- a visual track you could say to the music. I regard visu- dom because you know I don’t listen. When I listen it’s tronic music depends on him. He was the first man to So it was similar to what was happening with Can? als as being another visual track. Actually it could have for me work and I switch off when I’m in a creative make electrons, let’s say, musical. a rhythm track as well as the cutting of the video. You Yeah exactly. mood, and I can’t listen to other things. I especially have good memories of Darmstadt. It don’t have to think so much in terms of having a con- was an exciting time. It’s a long time ago. Somehow The two records you did seem very different tinuing story, this can be just random even, what’s Would you be interested in working with East though I think Darmstadt has lost itself completely. For important is colour, movement, but most important is European musicians? They are in a way very different. They are in a way me as a student, it was a great atmosphere, as it was rhythm, and how music and pictures glue together, very similar. Because the two albums were two years It depends always who it is. I would never say no. I something. how that is done. would always say yes. I want to know who is it, and

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You’ve got a few humdred hours of Can music whole appearance of the music is different. It is far ‘sleeping’. Are you ever going to bring any of it out? more rhythm oriented this time. And songs. Like ‘Cool in the Pool’, something like that. Let’s say I’m having a I’m not so sure. At the moment I’m working on for- song period. gotten rehearsals sometimes. I take only little samples, and parts and samples. I’m working on several albums It makes you feel good. at the same time. Not only ambient although it is a It’s very interesting, ja. quality that will always stay up there. But this time the

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