Holger Czukay: Movies Vinyl LP Holger Czukay

Holger Czukay was sampling before it was cool. The co-founder of CAN’s solo debut album post-CAN finds the bassist exploring wildly varied instrumentation combined with a plethora of film, television, and short-wave samples. Movies places Czukay in the same vein as David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, as both albums integrating sampled vocals and found sounds, including a host African and Middle Eastern rhythms. Czukay takes traditional compositional rules and throws them to the wayside, bewildering the listener from the outset with the funky “Cool In The Pool”. “Oh Lord Give Us More Money” features appearances from most of CAN’s members (including god-drummer Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli and Irmin Schmidt) and seamlessly shifts from loose and exploratory to tightly-wound in a single measure, much like their prior group work. The song almost feels like a cross between earlier CAN (check Future Days) and Station To Station era Bowie. Throughout the album Czukay paints with sound through editing, pulling from sports announcers, mariachi horns, Korean orchestras, warbling sopranos, and Farsi soundtracks. Blurring boundaries between Germany, Iran, and Africa, this album does not disappoint and has been criminally underrated for too long. Czukay drifts away from the seriousness of CAN and opts for more of a Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry sort of freedom. 4 tracks in all. Released by Gronland Records.

• Gronland Records 2018

reviewed by RBG 12/2018