CZUKAY, HOLGER

"The New Millenium"
(2003)

You're going on a drive on a day that never ends, or you're standing all alone on a subway platform at night and you can hear a train coming that will never arrive. Both aspects are essential ingredients of Holger Czukay's new album "The New Millennium".
As a founding member of Can he can look back on 35 years of exceptional work - Can has been presented with an Echo for their life time achievement. This might raise speculations that now it's time to retire, but after listening to the new album you won't believe it, because it sounds so fresh and young.
Holger himself announced the release at the beginning of the year on his homepage www.czukay.com as some sort of a birthday present (He's turning 65 on March 24), where he presents himself in a wide variety of styles that popular music can offer. His autobiography starts out, that he was born as a "real" nephew of Wilhelm Tell in the city of Danzig, close to the neighborhood of writer Guenther Grass. Music has always been the center of his life, going back as far as he can remember. Just as his bizarre humor developed in the second half of his life, his musical development lacked direction in the beginning, which is probably the main reason for his sound being so fresh and contemporary. After his studies with composer par- excellence Karlheinz Stockhausen, he took on a temporary teaching job where one of his pupil's was the Can guitarist Michael Karoli. Both of them left the school together after a short while and met again when Can got off the ground. Actually Holger Czukay's main ambition during his school stunt, was to meet a rich woman, but everything happened differently. After 9 years he left the band for a while in order to concentrate on his solo work, which resulted in his ground breaking debut album "Canaxis". His later releases brought him international acclaim and in Germany he was voted "musician of the year".
The league of artists, Holger worked with through the years is long. It starts out with Brian Eno on to Jah Wobble, The Edge, Conny Plank, the Eurythmics, Davíd Sylvian... the list could continue endlessly. On the new project it's U-She, that put her stamp on his new recordings. She's got a keen sense for his music and as a typical example she will show up and listen to the sounds brewed up by Holger and in the meantime she'll make a few notes before she takes hold of the microphone. The word stagnation or boredom doesn't exist in Holger's vocabulary. U-Shes voice embodies a unique charisma, sort of in the same vein as the legendary Nico, which, as time went by became an essential part of the recordings.
"The New Millennium" is a testimony of the power of Holger's music as a unique composer, which serves as a world wide guiding star for the young generation. When asked why he called the new album "The New Millennium" he just answered: "because it doesn't fit into the old one".

2003. Press information