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Interview
by SashaS
28-11-2003
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| Can: sonarium beyond cozmiq frontier |
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Can: Primal Intel
Can, people obliged to space
The Can opus enlarges with the release of a double ‘Can DVD’ featuring ‘Can Notes’, a new film compiled by Peter Przygodda (editor of most of Wim Wenders’s films) that uses intimate, ‘behind the scenes’ footage including images from the Can Solo Projects Tour, taken by group manager Hildegard Schmidt between 1997-9.
The DVD also includes the classic ‘Can-Documentary’ alongside the film of ‘The Can Free Concert’ [filmed by Robby Muller, directed by Peter Przygodda] of the show which took place in front of 10,000 spectators in Cologne in 1972. [Both were previously included on the ‘Can Box 30th Anniversary Strictly Limited Edition’.]
The audio CD is 13-tracks of ‘Can Solo Recordings’: three tracks from Irmin Schmidt and Kumo (Jono Padmore) project Masters Of Confusion, one from the Jaki Liebezeit & Burnt Friedman album ‘Secret Rhythms’ plus two from Liebezeit’s ‘Drums Off Chaos’ project as well as four exclusive tracks from Holger Czukay and three live recordings of Michael Karoli’s Sofortkontakt.
The release also features a photo gallery, studio footage of the remix process, complete discography with tracklistings and release dates, a short film made by Brian Eno to mark Can’s Echo Award for Lifetime Achievement and footage from the Awards ceremony itself.
The package also comes with new interviews with the band at the CAN Studio and a Web-link to an exclusive site where photos and interviews can be downloaded and printed out.
It looks like there is a lot of footage of the band; at what point did you decide that it would be good to visually document the band?
“There is a lot of footage,” the band’s manager Hildegard Schmidt informs us, “and the idea of filming the band came on very early. We thought it would be interesting to see the band members being asked questions rather than just reading them. It all started there and we simply continued collecting material.”
“Going into this project,” Irmin adds on, “was a bit strange, especially when it came to remixing the old stuff. Things were created specially for certain instruments, in stereo, and then you are asked if you could create it for 5.1 system. That is against what you originally did and changes the whole nature of a song. It’s like turning a piano piece into a string quartet that, of course you can do, but it may be an idiotic undertaking or turn into a brilliant piece. I do believe that some of our music, such as ‘Tago Mago’, already was aware of its surround, it has a great sense of depth of sound. Unfortunately, we recorded that on two tracks!”
The defining article
Before letting you read more of the Can members’ thoughts, herewith is the briefest of history of Kosmische melodien. Back in the midst of time [1968 - a riotous year in Euro-history] there were three musical things that defined Deutsche music: the renown composer Karlheinz Stockhausen - his 1966’s ‘Hymnen’ was a double album, 113 minutes long, sub-titled ‘Anthems For Electronic and Concrete Sounds’ that took ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’, alongside ten other national anthems and screwed it up and down through variety of electronic gizmos, a total freak-out - was a visiting lecturer at a California university. His seminars were attended by Jerry Garcia (the late Grateful Dead’s mainman) and Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane) and many more psychedelic musicians.
What’s more important is that Stockhausen went to an Airplane show and concluded that this music “… really blows my mind.” In meantime, there was the Essener Sontag Festival in Germany featuring two of the underground groups that most inspired Germans: Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention and Ed Sanders’s Fungs; among the homegrown artists were Amon Düül who’d ultimately be responsible for the name we know this period under, Krautrock, after a track that traslated as ‘Mama Düül and her Sauerkraut band Start Up!”
The Germans called these emerging sounds Kosmische Music (coined by Edgar Froese, the future Tangerine Dream leader) and during its earliest days Czukay was talking to one of his students about his own teacher, Stokhausen, but the young one wasn’t impressed and played the teach ‘I’m The Walrus’ by The Beatles. Czukay was so impressed the Rock’n’Roll had come so far that he called another Stockhausen pupil, Irmin Schmidt, and suggested they form a group with this violinist/guitarist, Michael Karoli [died 17 November 2001]. Thus the birth of Inner Space [later name of their studio] that the original singer would rename The Can.
A year later the then five peace - fronted by an American, a former teacher Malcolm Mooney, who was pushing the band towards The Velvet Underground - released ‘Monster Movie’, the record that certainly defined and put the Kosmische Music on the world map. The rest is, as it is so often said - Can anthology, which you can indulge in, as well as plethora of other material on this DVD.
All three surviving members are present although Czukay and drummer Liebezeit are keeping rather quiet. Facing us is Juno, also silent.
How do you view your back catalogue? Are you very critical of it?
“I’m too critical about it to talk about it,” Czukay displays a mixture of irony and humour. “I think Daniel Miller [their record company boss] will kill me for saying so! Such a back catalogue, sometimes I really… I feel today is an attempt to get me back to Can, again, and somehow I find myself to be back. The light at the horizon, that’s how I feel.”
“I feel we were very critical of our work,” Schmidt brings some serious thoughts to the fore, “and each album was a critical reaction to the previous album. Everything we did within Can was the critical reaction to the one before, and so was our life, as a group and as individuals. What we’ve always been doing is positive criticism.”
Stored future
Can are a German institution that has no parallel in Britain; as much as The Beatles and The Stones defined their time, they’ve not had such a huge cultural impact. Although there is The Beatles’ permanent exhibition in Liverpool, the Can Studio has been taken over by the new German Rock’n’Pop Museum and will be transported to a building next to the museum, situated in Gronau near the Dutch border, early next year. Everything from the former cinema outside Cologne, where such classics as ‘Tago Mago’ and ‘Future Days’ were recorded, including the 1500 mattresses soundproofing its walls and ceilings, will be dismantled, moved and reconstructed to scale. www.rock-popmuseum.de
Back in the day, where you aware of what you were creating?
“Back in 1969, there was this band Organisation that would grow into Kraftwerk,” Czukay decides to explain it all, “and they heard of us. They came over to our studio, we had an open-door policy in those days, and they started playing with us. It wasn’t a band, it was only Florian (Schneider-Esleben) and Ralf (Hutter); soon after they started playing, Mickey (Karoli) said they’d go far because they had an idea what they wanted to do.”
You were renown for playing experimental shows and, according to the DVD, often didn’t plan or set what you were going to play; what was the reaction at the shows?
“Well, it is true, we’d go out and start playing to see what would come, grow out of it,” Schmidt confirms. “It used to be funny because we never reproduced but reinvented songs; audience would be screaming for ‘Spoon’ without realising we had just played it!”
Those were different times, more liberal, public appeared to be more receptive to free-form material, the industry was less structured, in general - not many people knew what was going on but went with it regardless!
“What do you want me to say,” Schmidt becomes a bit impatient, “you know it as well as I do. Times have changed and there is more restrictive expectation on the public’s part.”
Thank you for the music, memories and alles gute!
SashaS
21-7-2005
The ‘Can DVD’ is released 24 November 2003 on Spoon/Mute
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