Holger Czukay

Stockhausen, Can and the radio

Holger Czukay was born on March 24, 1938 in the Free City of Danzig, and died on September 5, 2017 in Weilerswist near Cologne, aged 79, in the former cinema that had also been Can's Inner Space Studio. He played bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion and French horn. He studied at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin from 1962 and under Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1963 to 1966, where he met Irmin Schmidt and David C. Johnson; FACT quotes Stockhausen's advice that sometimes you need to just jump over the wall to find out where you will land, and Stockhausen's piece Kurzwellen inspired his shortwave radio use. In May 1966 he moved to St Gallen in Switzerland to lecture. In late 1967 Schmidt invited him to form a group in Cologne, and in 1968 he co-founded Can with Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli and Johnson, playing bass and engineering most of the catalog.

He mixed shortwave radio into Can's live sound with a single radio and no effects, and told FACT it is basically an unpredictable synthesizer. Wikipedia says his last LP with Can was Saw Delight (1977), though a 2014 interview summary says he left during Out of Reach (1978). Canaxis 5 (1969), made at WDR with Johnson, is credited to him and Johnson, and his solo debut Movies (September 9, 1979, Electrola) was recorded from January to July 1979 at Inner Space, built on electronics and tape loops from collected radio; Pitchfork gave it 8.0, and NME ranked it fifth among 1980 albums. FACT says it anticipated 1980s sampling and was almost certainly an influence on Byrne and Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

After Can

Rome Remains Rome (1987) and Der Osten ist Rot used a second-hand 1950s IBM dictaphone bought for $14 as an instrument; The Fader dates Der Osten ist Rot 1982 where Wikipedia says 1984. Czukay said Virgin gave open creative terms: we never really felt the pressure of making money. He made Rastakraut Pasta (1980) with Moebius and Conny Plank, Phew (1981) with Phew, Plank and Liebezeit, and the Snake Charmer EP (October 1983, Island) with Jah Wobble and The Edge. With David Sylvian he worked on Brilliant Trees, Words with the Shaman, Plight & Premonition and Flux + Mutability. Later records include Radio Wave Surfer (1991), Good Morning Story (1999), Linear City (2001) and 11 Years Innerspace (2015). A five-LP Cinema box on Gronland came on March 23, 2018, and posthumous Gvoon releases followed, including Brennung 1 on March 28, 2025.