Holger Czukay

Holger Czukay

Born: March 24, 1938
Died: September 5, 2017
in Gdańsk, Poland
Holger Czukay, born Holger Schüring, was a German musician and actor, probably best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. He studied music under Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1963 to 1966. Besides his participation in Can, Czukay recorded several albums. One of his trademarks was the use of shortwave radio sounds and his early pioneering of sampling, in those days involving the painstaking cutting and splicing of magnetic tapes. Cut-up-sounds. Holger Czukay collaborated with a considerable number of musicians, notably a series of albums with Jah Wobble, David Sylvian, The Edge and Brian Eno.

Holger Czukay's body was discovered inside his apartment on 5 September 2017. The New York Times reported that he died on the same day, but the cause of death is still subject to a police investigation.

Movies for Holger Czukay...

CAN and Me
Title: CAN and Me
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 28, 2022
Type: Movie
In 1968, musician Irmin Schmidt and friends founded the avant-garde band "Can", which achieved worldwide fame. Schmidt also made a name for himself as a composer for films by Wim Wenders. In this documentary, the charismatic sound tinkerer looks back on his life and career.
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Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise
Title: Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise
Character: Self
Released: September 28, 2017
Type: Movie
When Conny died at the age of only 47, his son Stephan was just 13 years old. Twenty-five years later, together with co-director Reto Caduff, he went in search of the man he often only experienced behind the mixing desk as a child. At the same time it became the search for the artistic legacy of his father.
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Kraftwerk: Pop Art
Title: Kraftwerk: Pop Art
Character: Self
Released: September 14, 2013
Type: Movie
This is the amazing story of how a group of reclusive Rhineland experimentalists became one of the most influential pop groups of all time - a celebration of the band featuring exclusive live tracks filmed at their Tate Modern shows in London (Feb 2013), interwoven with expert analysis, archive footage of the group, newsreel of the era and newly-shot cinematic evocations of their obsessions. With contributions from Derrick May, Holger Czukay, Francois Kevorkian, Neville Brody, Paul Morley, Peter Boettcher, Caroline Wood and more.
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Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany
Title: Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany
Character: Self
Released: October 22, 2009
Type: Movie
Documentary which looks at how a radical generation of musicians created a new German musical identity out of the cultural ruins of war.
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CAN: The Documentary
Title: CAN: The Documentary
Released: January 1, 1999
Type: Movie
The late-'60s avant garde rock band CAN gets a feature-length tribute with this affectionate documentary chronicling its odd inception and subsequent career. In CAN -- The Documentary, the remaining band members are interviewed amidst culled together archival footage from talk shows, concerts, and television appearances to paint a portrait of a band who always remained happily on the sidelines of mass appeal, mixing street music, jazz, folk, and rock into a sometimes poppy, sometimes abstract stew. The band's influence on such seminal acts as Sonic Youth and Talking Heads is also analyzed.
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Modulations
Title: Modulations
Character: Self
Released: September 18, 1998
Type: Movie
Less a documentary than a primer on all electronic music. Featuring interviews with nearly every major player past and present, as well as a few energetic live clips, Modulations delves into one of electronica's forgotten facets: the human element. Lee travels the globe from the American Midwest to Europe to Japan to try to express the appeal of music often dismissed as soulless. Modulations shows that behind even the most foreign or alien electronic composition lies a real human being, and Lee lets many of these Frankenstein-like creators express and expound upon their personal philosophies and tech-heavy theories. Lee understands that a cultural movement as massive and diverse as dance music can't be contained.
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Holger Czukay - Der Privatsinfoniker
Title: Holger Czukay - Der Privatsinfoniker
Character: Himself
Released: May 23, 1991
Type: Movie
A portrait of the Cologne avant-garde composer and musician Holger Czukay, who called himself a “private symphonist”. In 1968, Czukay, a music college graduate and Stockhausen student, founded the band Can together with his fellow student Irmin Schmidt. In the following years, Can became one of the most innovative music groups of the time. In their music, which was mainly based on improvisation, parts influenced by free jazz mixed with rock passages, repetitive met catchy melodies and dissolved compositional influences from new music with the classical rock schemes. At the same time, Can's music was always groove-based and danceable despite all the complexity.
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Krieg der Töne
Title: Krieg der Töne
Character: The piano teacher
Released: April 19, 1988
Type: Movie
The 12 year old Ina struggle to become a great pianist. Success depends on the music competition "Ein Herz für Mozart". Ina is sent by her mother's command to piano lessons. The piano teacher Holger produces in his free time experimental music from sound collages, but can not prevail with his works in the professional music business. Ina takes a liking to the sound collages of Holger and flees from her domineering mother to him.
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Steel Cathedrals
Title: Steel Cathedrals
Character: Self - Dictaphone
Released: May 17, 1985
Type: Movie
20 minute music documentary shot in two days of November 1984 in, and around the outskirts of, Tokyo, Japan. A large part of the music was completed during that same month and recorded over a period of three days.
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CAN: The Free Concert
Title: CAN: The Free Concert
Released: November 7, 1972
Type: Movie
The experimental German krautrockers CAN's legendary "Free Concert," recorded in Cologne's Sporthalle, Germany, on February 3, 1972. The circumstances of this Cologne show were unusual. Rather improbably for such an experimental band, Can actually scored a chart success in Germany with "Spoon," which would later be tacked onto the end of Ege Bamyasi.
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Can - Live in Soest
Title: Can - Live in Soest
Released: January 1, 1970
Type: Movie
ROCKPALAST FROM THE ARCHIVES WDR HD channel 84 min. - Genre: Rock ('Krautrock') - TV archives Can live in Soest, Germany - Winter 1970 Mixed media show Post-"Monster Movie" period (just before Can masterpieces "Soundtracks", "Tago Mago" and "Ege Bamyasi") Rockpalast archives Band Holger Czukay – bass Irmin Schmidt – organ Michael Karoli – guitar Jaki Liebezeit – drums Damo Suzuki – vocals Songs line-up Sense All of Mine Oh Yeah I Feel Allright Mother Sky Deadlock Bring Me Coffee or Tea Don't Turn the Light On, Leave me Alone Paperhouse