Review

Is this man the most significant linking figure between rock and post-war experimental classical music?
The ever-present Daliesque twinkle in Holger Czukay's eye belies his heavyweight musical status. As a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Czukay is the most significant linking figure between rock and post-war experimental classical music. He went on to become a co-founder of Can, with whom he played discreet bass, although his role in the group was more subtle, shaping and directing their overall sound. Having left the group in the late '70s, in 1980 he went on to make Movies, an astonishing album in which he incorporates film, TV and shortwave radio excerpts into light-heartedly agile funk jams. Czukay anticipated later '80s tendencies towards sampling and world music and here, on “Cool in the Pool” and “Persian Love” (which uses radio recordings of an Iranian singer), he weaves in his sampled elements with effervescent wit and a lateral logic rarely evident in the work of his many imitators.