Intuitive Music

Can

Can is one of the most innovative bands from the 70’s krautrock scene and one of the most influential German in rock and electronic music.

Formed in Cologne 1968, the band was formed by Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Jaki Liebezeit (drums), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Holger Czukay (keyboard, bass, drums). The band started rehearsals under the name of Inner Space at Irmin Schmidt’s Cologne apartment to debut shortly later in an improvised happening at Schloss Nürvenich. This gig is documented on the cassette ‘Prehistoric Future’ that shows the influence of rock & roll and especially of the avant-garde composers such as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and especially Karlheinz Stockhausen, to whom Holger Czukay met in 1958 when he attend to one of his music lectures at the conservatory in Duisburg. Czukay recalled this moment vividly in an interview for Perfect Soud Forever, 1997: “For the first time, I heard electronic music
from a tape. To me, it sounded like flushing toilets in outer space, and the whole audience was laughing. Everyone had probably the same sort of imagination and couldn’t get it together as being music that we were listening to.” “My alarm clocks were shrill ringing and from this moment on I knew I had to stay close to Karlheinz Stockhausen. Maybe he had to offer some more good advice, which I urgently needed to make my way as a composer.”

The band established their first studio in a castle at Schloss Nürvenich, which was loaned to an art collector. They turned the banqueting hall into a studio, covering the peeled walls with hundreds of army surplus mattresses. At the time a black American sculptor called Malcolm Mooney and incorporates to the band as a vocalist. David Johnson, who was also involved as a sound technician, leaved the band by the end of 1968.

In 1969, Can released their debut album “Monster Movie”, which despite being recorded with 2-track technology broke down all the known boundaries in rock music with tracks like “Yoo Doo Right” exceeding the 20 minutes. After the recordings of this album Malcolm Mooney quit the band due to mental problems. He was later replaced in 1970 by Kenji “Damo” Suzuki, a Japanese street preacher and vocalist that they met in Munich’s Leopoldstrasse. Suzuki, who had also been a cast member of the musical ‘Hair’, debuted with Can the same evening that they first met to perform one of the most notable shows in the history of the band.

In December 1971, Can founded the Inner Space Studio in a movie theater in Weilerswist and a year later they got international recognition with the release of “Tago Mago”, an album that features sampling techniques, avant-garde sound experimentation, drum machines. The album also pioneered some of the characteristic rough drum breaks, monotonic simple bass lines, and wild vocals of the later punk rock scene.

In February 1972, Can performed at the Cologne Sporthalle and the event was filmed and later released featuring two tracks for the German TV thrillers “Spoon” and “Vitamin C”. The reputed British magazine “Melody Maker” wrote: “Can are without doubt the most talented and most consistent experimental rock band in Europe, England included.”

In 1973, Can released “Future Days”, which was the last Can album featuring Damo Suzuki after he left the band when he got married with a German girl and became a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. After Suzuki’s departure, Michael Karoli got on charge of the vocals and the band featured several guest vocalists, including Tim Hardin.

In 1974, Can offered in Berlin one of the longest concerts ever in the history of rock music, which lasted nothing less than 12 hours. A year later, they got into multitrack technology to record the album “Landed”, which included one of the pioneer works of ambient music: the track “Quantum Physics”. The Melody Maker magazine named Can “the most advanced rock unit on the planet.”

In 1975, the band signed to Virgin records and moved towards a more conventional style. They reached the UK Charts in 1976 with the pseudo-disco hit “I Want More” and they even appeared at the UK’s Top of the Pops TV show.

Can

In 1977, the band incorporated two new members from Traffic, Rosko Gee (bass) and Reebop Kwaku Baah (percussion), to release the album “Saw Delight”. With this changes, Holger Czukay had the opportunity to quit the bass and investigate in the field of special sounds after having started a series of experiments with the “Weltempfasnger”, a short wave radio combined with other electrical devices like tape recorders and telephones, which became the basis for his solo album “Movies” (1979) and also used in his forthcoming solo projects.

“Out of Reach” (1978) was the last Can album recorded without Holger Czukay, who left the band in May, 1977, during the last Can tour. Can offered their last concert in Lisbon 1978 to an audience of 10,000 fans, and their members focused on solo projects since. In 1986, the band briefly reformed to record the album “Rite Time” (1989) and later in 1991, the band met at the Can’s Studio with original line-up minus Holger Czukay to record the track “Last Night Sleep” for Wim Wenders’s film “Until the End of the World”.

Can’s Studio has been looked after by ex-Can engineer Rene Tinner since 1978 and by 2005 was re-built by Holger Czukay .Parallely to Can, Holger Czukay started a solo career in 1979 with the album “Movies”, having released several albums during the last three decades, some of them featuring his sound experiments on radio waves. He also released the album “Canaxis” in 1968 in collaboration with Rolf Dammers.

After the split of Can, the guitarist Michael Karoli built his Outer Space Studio in France, close to Nice. Between 1977 and 1995, Karoli played in different film and theatre music productions by Irmin Schmidt. He recorded the reggae solo album “Deluge” (1995). Sadly, Michael Karoli died on 17 November 2001 in Essen, Germany, after a long battle with cancer.

Jaki Liebezeit started working as a freelance drummer for numerous international artists in 1978. In 1980, he founded Phantomband releasing a self-titled album in 1984. He also formed the drummers band Drums Of Chaos, and later in 1996 the electronic percussive project Club Off Chaos featuring Dirk Herweg and Boris Polonski. In 1982, Jaki Liebezeit started a series of collaborative works with the reputed jazz bassist Jah Wobble. Both of them released the album “Full Circle” in 1984, in collaboration with Holger Czukay.

Irmin Schmidt has worked extensively for films and television, having produced up to 21 filmscores for directors such as Wim Wenders, Samuel Fuller and Jerzy Skolimowski. In 1981, as well as Michael Karoli, Schmidt moved to the south of France to sets up his own studio and produced the solo albums “Toy Planet”, with Bruno Spoerri, (1981), “Musk at Dusk ” (1987) and “Impossible Holidays” (1991).

Kenji “Damo” Suzuki moved to Dusseldorf to work in an electronics company and in 1984 joined the band Dunkelziffer, which developed in 1987 into the Damo Suzuki Band, featuring Jaki Leibezeit. Suzuki also collaborated in 1988 with Klaus Dinger in the project 1a Dusseldorf (a revision of La Dusseldorf).

Can experimented with noise, synthesizers, non-traditional music and cut-and-paste techniques. A new generation of electronic artists payed tribute to the band in 1997 with the release of the re-mixes album “Sacrilege”, featuring Brian Eno, System 7, The Orb, Carl Craig, and A Guy Called Gerald. In 2003, Can received the Echo Award for lifetime achievement, which is the most prestigious music industry’s award in Germany. Other artists influenced by Can are Aphex Twin, Frank Zappa, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Japan, Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Julian Cope, and Pita, just to name a few.