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HOLGER CZUKAY "LA LUNA"

Holger Czukay is a founding member of the legendary 'krautrock' band Can.
  The 60+ year oldCzukay has been busy as of late with a 2 disc live collaboration withDr. Walker of Air Liquide and 2 solo studio albums, all for the U.S.based Tone Casualties label. "La Luna" (The Moon, subtitled 'anelectronic night ceremony') is a single 47 minute piece recorded livein the studio in 1996. Czukay uses his extensive cut-up skills to laydown a murky, Ovel-esque loop foundation to which he adds a metronomelike beat and sporadic fills, sonic textures, voices and the like. 18minutes later most everything drops out then it slowly rebuilds withglass bottle like percussion and waves of ambient sound and we're backon track by the 23rd minute. By the 30th minute it all drops off againand the vocals / spoken words of U-She debut with lines such as "laluna ... goddess of the moon". The 38th to 42nd minutes are the mostactive with percussion and noise stuff and the final few minutes bringit all to a close in a beat absent cloud. That's a long 47 minutes. I'mthoroughly unimpressed and utterly disappointed, especially consideringCzukay's background. Most of the sounds are generic and dull and whilethe piece as a whole does change over time, it fails to progress ordevelop much and remains lifeless. The lunar themes just seem sillyhere unlike, say, those of recent Coil records. "La Luna" simplydoesn't have the magic. And Tone Casualties - please, I'm begging you -hire someone with a sense of design to handle the artwork for futureinserts.

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