Label: Tone Casualties Format: CD,LP
Is this what it’s like to wake up with Mr. Czukay every morning? Well, anyway, Holger’s come back and the general consensus is that he’s looking camp as ever. Good Morning Story is a nice wake up call, sampled generously with lots of Can and it shows. Mr. C. claims this to be his first time playing with an ordinary sampler, rather than his own tape-splice constructions, so it seems logical that he would choose what’s already in the cupboard. Probably a million things could be said and comparisons made about the whole Holger-Can connection/dislocation. Instead of treading on the beaten to death path of that dear argument, how about a look at Good Morning Story without regard to the obvious…
This record is kind of simply epic. It effuses a piercing clarity to all those sampled guitar and opening Jah Wobble bass lines, low percussion but with a definite live and virtual Jaki Liebezeit beat. It has a storytelling quality throughout, even humour here and there. U-She‘s voice is rich as velvet. This is a lyrical collection with subtexts right on top and obvious to those who might listen simply and without preconceived notions. All these samples are constructed into actual songs, not just left out there looping and repeating to infinitum (which can get soooo boring). By track 4, “World Of The Universe”, it really stops mattering what was used to make this sample or that and just blends into something pleasant to listen to. Holger’s using his years of experience with sound and creation to make a psychedelic-ish template for self examination. It is not abrasive or so weird as to complicate one’s look inside, but rather like a great canvas to see oneself set against. This music sounds old and new, raw and spacey.
Orchestral and even again with a little sense of humour, “Mirage” is indeed an illusionary vision based on reality and dreams, a transport to another world where Dracula’s pipe organ meets with a Moroccan mystic and the pink noise holds your head still, string twists keep your hands down. The spaceship might be a magic carpet, and the new planet could be Earth. This digression is only proof of how nicely this tapestried, sampled blanket of sound can wrap one up for comfortable ride. I can guess that Mr. Czukay would be the perfect person to create the Muzak™ they would play over intergalactic in-flight radio. Imagine what you like, score recognition of all the Can spots, then surrender to this man, wondrous Holger Czukay, who can most masterfully make vehicles from sounds.
-Lilly Novak-
