17 Facts About Holger Czukay

Holger Schuring, known professionally as Holger Czukay, was a German musician best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can.

Czukay family resettled to Limburg an der Lahn, and when Holger was in his teens, moved to Duisburg, where he attended the Gerhard Mercator Scientific School and worked part-time in a radio and TV repair shop.

Holger Czukay was expelled from the Berlin Music Academy, but kept pursuing his music studies.

Holger Czukay signed up to Karlheinz Stockhausen's new-music course in Cologne, studying under Stockhausen from 1963 to 1966.

In May 1966, Holger Czukay resettled to St Gallen taking up a lecturing post in music at the Institut auf dem Rosenberg.

Holger Czukay co-founded Can in 1968, where he played bass guitar, and undertook most of the recording and engineering for the group.

Rosko Gee, former bassist of the British band Traffic, joined the band in 1977, with Holger Czukay handling only tapes and sound effects on the album Saw Delight, his final LP with the group before departing for a solo career.

Holger Czukay had been sidelined due to creative disputes and his failure to progress as a bassist, admitting his shortcomings on the instrument which he had taken up "almost by default" in the early days of Can.

Holger Czukay used shortwave as a live, interactive musical instrument, a method of composition he termed "radio painting".

Holger Czukay stated "If you want to make something new, you shouldn't think too far beyond one certain idea".

Holger Czukay continued to work with the former members of Can: playing bass on Irmin Schmidt's soundtrack pieces released in Filmmusik Vol.

Holger Czukay further collaborated with a number of musicians, notably a series of albums with Jah Wobble and David Sylvian, two younger British musicians who shared his interest in blending pop music with experimental recording and sampling techniques.

In 2009, after a problematic time with the record company that had been gradually re-releasing his albums on CD, Holger Czukay began a new collaboration with the Claremont 56 record label, releasing vinyl-only remixes of tracks from earlier albums, as well as some new recordings.

In 2018, it was announced that Holger Czukay's work was being released in a box set, Cinema, including his solo works, collaborations, and unreleased material.

Holger Czukay was married for nearly thirty years to the German painter and singer Ursula Kloss, with whom he collaborated on numerous multimedia pieces.

On 5 September 2017, Holger Czukay was found dead in his apartment, converted from Can's old studio in Weilerswist, near Cologne.

Holger Czukay's death was eventually assumed to have been from natural causes.