Previously unreleased music from the archives of Can cofounder Holger Czukay will be released as an album in the new year. Out on March 28th through Grönland Records, Gvoon - Brennung 1 contains 65 minutes of material that's believed to date back to the '90s. The genesis for the release started last year at Berlin dance performance Take Off Sound, when artist Arthur Schmidt, AKA Gvoon, brandished a flash drive and handed it to Dirk Dresselhaus. It is a case of pop cultural archaeology. A search for traces in electronic music. After more than 30 years, lost tapes by Holger Czukay that he once recorded “for free disposal” have resurfaced. A sound meditation from 1997, now available for the first time remastered in the original and in a “version” by die ANGEL (Ilpo Väisänen / Dirk Dresselhaus) and Zappi W. Diermaier from the Krautrock legend Faust.
The works from the Czukay studio are idiosyncratic sound structures that mastering engineer Dresselhaus, alias Schneider TM, describes as “futuristic gems that are musically far ahead of their time.” For an abstract sound structure, “deep and emotional," as he says. A composition that can only be inadequately described as avant-garde or new music. A real Czukay, after all. The genesis of these recordings goes back to the free-spirited 1990s, when Holger Czukay was experimenting with beats in Cologne with younger techno colleagues such as Dr. Walker from Air Liquide and was otherwise very interested in the quiet explosion of digital media.
It was tech pioneer and media artist Arthur Schmidt, alias Gvoon, who introduced Czukay to the (back then exceedingly futuristic) data machine "RealityEngine“, which was used to create virtual worlds. From a full-body tracking system to a mutual prototype of an “internet TV channel“. It showed digitized experimental Czukay videos he equipped with ever more samples and sonic fragments. Later it developed into the contemporary show "Czukay/Gvoon:Magazine” and also into March 1999’s "Can—Solo Projects Live“, equipped with Gvoon’s body tracker technology.
The GDR past of his tech buddy Schmidt, who told him about his time in Stasi Prisons, triggered a creative process in Czukay. He translated this trauma into sound. He offered a musical gift: “Gvoon-Brennung 1“, something Schmidt could use “at some point.“ Just like that. A soundtrack that was handed over as a simple file on a digital audio tape.
It was over 20 years later, when Schmidt set up one of his art works—an original-sized, hermetically sealed Ministry for State Security (MfS) interrogation room—that the “Czukay gift” popped up again. Now it provided a soundscape for this pitch-black, oppressive room with its rubber walls.
This is where Dresselhaus came across the material. It became clear that he was hearing more than just some everyday 1990s recording session. “It feels kind of bluesy in a cybernetic and abstract manner, with a very slow groove that keeps your attention the whole way through,” says Dresselhaus. He describes the mastering process as well as the reworking process of “Gvoon-Version 1“ as a balancing act between respecting the historical material and contemporary/up-to-date studio processing.
(Ralf Niemczyk)
A respectful bow to Holger Czukay's 87th birthday in March 2025.
