MOVIES

This album is an absolute landmark. Never before and rarely after has sampling been used on such a scale in a rock music context, and of course this is 1979, samples were not yet available to everyone at the tip of a button. Holger Czukay by the time had build up a huge private archive of recordings from all over the world which he was harnessing here, and after having left Can he spent about a year pretty exclusively working on this if I'm well informed. The songs are packed with such samples hand-woven in, mixed and remixed several times; in "Persian Love" he even creates a totally new melody from an Iranian (?) love song picked up on the radio. The influence of this album was immense; 5 years later samples would be all over the place. In 1980 Brian Eno and David Byrne did another groundbreaking album in this direction, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", which got much wider knowledge and can be seen as the point from which this stuff became really cool and thousands of musicians got into it, but Eno and Byrne had by the time heard Czukay's one and Eno has credited him as a major influence on theirs.

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" was certainly easier to access in the late seventies/early eighties trend to more compact, transparent and shorter compositions, and in this respect "Movies" is still a proper work of the prog era with four tracks, two of which are substantially longer than 10 minutes, with many different parts, twists and turns. Apart from the pioneering use of samples, this album is unique and special in many respects. "Cool in the Pool" is a fun opener, something of a joke actually, but hardly ever has a joke been produced with so much depth, attention to detail and musical innovation. Apart from its easy going (but not simple) melody it is an absolute showcase for how to use sampling effectively, they spring out left and right around you, such a joy! "Oh Lord Give Us More Money" has Irmin Schmidt, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit on it (the latter ennobles all four tracks with his unmistakeable drumming and percussion), and is a 1979 version of Can that is far more convincing than what was produced under the band name after Holger left, or actually since their strongest period ending with "Soon Over Babaluma". The use of samples is more restricted here than elsewhere (mostly concentrated in the middle part that has something of a "sampling solo") and instead we get an intricate progressive piece of music; some of the sampling is probably a re-working of the recording sessions and therefore not quite as "in your face" as on the other tracks. Holger was always obsessed with mixing and the whole piece sounds just marvellous, a multilayered feast of keyboards and guitars with bass and drums swinging as ever in Can. Then the already mentioned "Persian Love", which could be something of a romantic ballad, as which it works to some extent, were it not for the striking effect of the short wave singing hacked to pieces and pieced together again in a totally different way. And once more the chord changes are not a trivial matter either. "Hollywood Symphony" is the longest track, its style and effect are somewhat similar to "Oh Lord...", a bit slower and more contemplative (over most of its distance) with some more focus on the sampling, the variety of sounds, and also with more contrast between the different parts.

Holger himself sings on all tracks but "Persian Love" and he is certainly not a singer, however his humorous and enthusiastic rendering fits the material well. Another aspect that I love about this album and that I have hardly seen mentioned anywhere is that apart from his well known abilities as a bassist his keyboard and guitar playing are not virtuoso but very inventive and original and the mix makes sure they sound great.

Apart from it being such an influence on music as a whole, I have loved this album from the beginning, and after hundreds of spins still I discover new things on it every time. The richness of details is just stunning. Overall, mood-wise this is rather light and positive music that gets its weight from the plethora of things going on rather than from trying to sound serious. In any case it also has an emotional depth that speaks to me, although this maybe requires some digging for all the light-hearted humour. This is my default nomination as a "favourite album of all time". Despite this, one may find things to criticise, particularly (if as a listener not enough obsessed with appreciating all the tiny details) the odd part may seem overlong; and I would have loved loved loved to hear this one with vocals by Peter Gabriel, but you can't have it all, can you?

Still this album is a living creature that continues to grow still 40 years later. It has been number one on my personal list pretty reliably throughout at least 30 of these years.

I should note that Groenland records has published a reissue under the title "Movie!" in 2016 and I haven't checked that one out. You may call me an ignorant but I am hardly ever motivated to check out reissues of albums that I already have and love as they are, and be it my number one album of all time. However, Holger once said that reissues bore him, and that all his "reissues" are actually reworkings with some (at least in his obsessed sound perfectionist view) substantial improvements. So I probably should listen to it to spot the differences and see whether it's even better in some sense. Not sure how much reworking was done on this one, though, because this came at a time when Holger had already largely stopped working as far as I know, and sadly only about one year more to live.