Between their founding in 1968 and the fading 70s, Can not only stirred up the local rock scene. Together with "Kraftwerk," they are prominently listed among the influences of giants like David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Johnny Rotten. The musicians of Can did almost everything differently. They refused to follow classic song arrangements, perceived environmental sounds as part of their music, and relied on the hypnotic power of endless repetition. The fact that something like this could arise in Weilerswist certainly has to do with the lack of stimuli in the small town. Outside, it is dreary and gray, making one prefer to stay in the studio, in the famous Can studio.
When you ring, a friendly gentleman opens the door, thoroughly inspecting the visitor with curiosity. It is Holger Czukay, who is once again renting the Can studio after a long abstinence. Czukay was there from the beginning. Can produced eight regular studio albums in this room between 1971 and 1978, which during the visit lies in a comfortably illuminated twilight and still radiates a very special grandeur. The view is free to wander through the expanse of the former cinema hall from everywhere. Nothing is permanently obstructed. Where the screen used to glow, Czukay’s electronic devices now stand. In the middle leans a double bass, just placed there. Next to it lies a certificate on a music stand. "Teenager of 2007" is written on it. Danish fans awarded him this diploma, "for being young at heart."
Indeed, the 69-year-old has retained childlike traits. When he giggles, which he does often, it sounds a bit like schoolboys who have just smeared glue on the teacher's chair. In a special way, the sound tinkerer has refused to grow up, just as Can once evaded musical conventions. He still calls himself a universal dabbler today, continuing the tradition of the early Can days. Back then, one faced the choice of either adding to all the existing arts or approaching the instruments as complete non-experts, relying on the power of inspiration or the magic of a mistake. Czukay had already fared well with that before Can. When he introduced himself to Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Cologne Conservatory, he candidly confessed that he had failed all other exams before. "I'll take him," Stockhausen said.
Nevertheless, Czukay and his fellow musicians had to first break away from Stockhausen to make Can a reality. Stockhausen hated repetition; Can thrived on it. The musicians often spent hours in the studio, playing with and against each other. Czukay was the bassist and the snipper, who liked to record unnoticed moments and then splice them into a total work of art from the tapes. Can became truly famous when the band enriched the soundtrack to the Francis-Durbridge thriller "Das Messer" in 1971, and the musically still mostly conservative audience suddenly became acquainted with the sounds of a group of long-haired individuals. The shaggy ones experimented wildly with the track "Spoon," almost producing ecstatic sounds that built up into an important piece of psychedelic rock with gently fading monotony.
Today, the silence stands out in the studio, which is no longer Can's studio but offers Czukay a playground. No sound penetrates in. It is so quiet that at times the blood in one’s own ear can be heard. He also enjoys this silence, says Czukay. But then he sets off again to search for new sounds. He is still a sound tinkerer, listening to sounds and voices on shortwave, collecting, and processing them into music. He started doing this with Can, capturing a shortwave singer's voice from the radio and then adapting it to the band's rhythm using a Morse key. If you let Czukay talk for a while, he overflows with all sorts of crazy ideas, and you have to look up his age to fully grasp it. When asked how he envisions music in the afterlife, however, he speaks of great silence. "I hope it is very quiet," he says.
