H to C and Back Again

Holger Czukay / 11 Years Innerspace | Hit-Flop (Grönland)

Further adventures from the true godfather of German electronic music –– though again “electronic” is hardly the gist of what he does. Czukay, former Can bassist / special-sounds maker, is the past, present and future master of music's interior worlds –– exterior ones, too. (The bass and drum sounds here, my god…) See my notes on the man's amazingly fertile imagination and highly influential achievements here:
http://www.bluefat.com/1001/Holger_Czukay97.htm
http://www.bluefat.com/0906/Holger_Czukay.htm
and here
http://www.bluefat.com/1409/Holger_Czukay.htm

Czukay has in recent times been re-doing selections from his post-Can solo albums as well as original tapes from early Can recording sessions. As they're often completely new pieces fashioned out of old ones, Czukay doesn't like to call these remastered-for-vinyl releases on the excellent Grönland label reissues or even remixes or any of that folderol. This latest batch goes yet deeper inside the tones themselves, the tones of each note, a reshaping/refining of each frequency, and, on startling beautiful tracks like the opening "In-Between," a reorchestration / harmonic-skewering courtesy radio-transmission augmentation. He has also created a revised history/condensation of the entire point of Can in his very personal mix frenzy called "My Can Revolt," as well as managed the impossible task of making his Cannaxis 5 music of 1967 even more unutterably moving in "My Can-Axis."

You can never go home anymore, not really; nostalgia has seen better days. So, throughout these two discs' sides, longtime Czukay and Can fans can and will thrill at fascinating new looks at very old but apparently ageless recordings. They might tip their hats to a man who's done so much for all of us, and is still out there doing it, better than ever.
–– John Payne

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