Czukay, Holger

Available on colour vinyl or picture disc! On the Way to the Peak of Normal is the third album by Holger Czukay, released in 1981, mixed at Conny Plank's studio.

After setting the template for sampling and exotic cut'n'paste recording techniques on his debut 1980 album, Movies, former Can member Holger Czukay's second album, On the Way to the Peak of Normal, is the album where his fantastic blend of world music, crackly vocal samples, and incredible improvisational vision came together. However, his sophomore effort carried more avant-garde features than its predecessor, as the album opener and title track demonstrates. The Grönland vinyl issue contains four songs and features the Conny Plank-produced "Witches Multiplication Table," a track whose dark maelstrom of supernatural twitchiness beguiles in a hypnotic manner. This is a must for fans of Can and Czukay.

Holger Czukay's first post-Can solo album finds the bass player exploring prog rock jams with varied instrumentation, song-oriented lyrics, and media samples from film, television, and short-wave. It was the samples that put Czukay in the same category as David Byrne and Brian Eno: an art rocker exploring the early days concurrently with early hip-hop pioneers (or alternately, a white man exploiting the culture of the third world, depending on who you read). On "Persian Love," Czukay backs up clips of an Iranian singer recorded off the short-wave with lilting guitar and keyboard riffs that sparkle like light. The album is all pleasant, playful textures, with little of the darkness that Can dallied with.

Czukay, Holger: Rome Remains Rome [Vinyl LP]

Czukay, Holger: Movies [Vinyl LP]

Czukay, Holger: Moving Pictures [CD]

Czukay, Holger: Rome Remains Rome [CD]