Despite coming from a background of rock music, Holger Czukay, Can's co-founder, was a pioneer of German electroacoustic music, although in his solo works he rarely succeeded in transforming his ideas into true art. While his greatest achievement was probably his stubborn determination to mix classical avant-garde and rock music, elevating the latter to "high-brow" music, his most brilliant insight was undoubtedly that of world music, of which he can be considered a precursor and first theorist.

Even before Can managed to produce a record, Czukay had released a highly experimental work, Canaxis 5, destined to remain in the annals of electronic music.

Born in 1938, Czukay had graduated in composition and attended avant-garde courses in Darmstadt, including those of Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1968, he formed Can with Michael Karoli, Irmin Schmidt, and Jaki Liebezeit. With that group (officially as bassist, but in reality responsible for most of the electronic arrangements), he would record some of the most experimental rock albums of the 1970s.

Canaxis 5 (Music Factory, 1969 - Spoon, 1998 - Revisited, 2007), the album he recorded in the summer of 1968 in Cologne with Rolf Dammers, electronically manipulating the sounds all by himself, contains two suites, one per side. Boat-Woman Song is based on a traditional Vietnamese song, taken verbatim, to which Czukay superimposes an alien electronic flow: little by little, the harmony degrades and flows into a distorted chorus of identity-less laments. Canaxis too revolves around a folk song, but here the deformation is immediate and radical: the original voice is multiplied and slowed down, projected against dozens of sound mirrors placed at different angles; that organic lump and the electronic hiss in the background are stretched out of all proportion until they become a static, blurred image that vibrates endlessly. The derivation from Stockhausen's Gesange der Junglinge is obvious.
The CD reissues added Mellow Out, Czukay's first composition (1960).

Canaxis 5 wed electronics and ethnic music, i.e. marked the birth of electronic world-music, and, at the same time, it pioneered "sampling" by blending together loops of manipulated found sounds, mostly exotic music.

Czukay then abandoned his solo career for ten years and devoted himself to Can, who in reality only timidly applied some of his ideas.

After his adventure with Can ended, Czukay finally released another solo album, Movies (Electrola, 1979), a collection of home recordings which, with tracks such as Persian Love, effectively invented the “ethno-techno-dance” of new wave before the Talking Heads.

Czukay also played briefly in SYPH, a band in the “cosmic” vein of Tangerine Dream, which recorded two albums in 1980 and 1981, PST - SYPH (Captain Trip, 1998).

An expressionist mood applied to the cerebral funk of intellectual discos yielded to an album in collaboration with Jah Wobble and Jaki Liebezeit, Full Circle (EMI, 1981), as well as an album with Japanese singer Phew, Liebezeit and Conrad Plank, Phew (Passport, 1981).

The EP Snake Charmer (Island, 1983) was another collaboration with Wobble.

Czukay then composed the “acoustic sound-painting” of On The Way To The Peak Of Normal (Electrola, 1982), another collaboration with Wobble that recycles material recorded with SYPH, and the surreal sketches of Der Osten Ist Rot (Virgin, 1984), which uses tape collages to construct a post-industrial Brechtian cabaret.

After meeting David Sylvian, he developed a vocation for electronic world music and Rome Remains Rome (Virgin, 1986) was born, collecting a dozen rhythmic and sung songs, in particular Hey Baba Reebop (a big band swing detonated by electronics). Czukay even samples the Pope, but the results are not particularly revolutionary.

The two collaborations with David Sylvian, Plight And Premonition (Virgin, 1988) and Flux And Mutability (Virgin, 1989), each comprising two long, pretentious suites, also occupy a prominent place in his discography. Once again, Czukay, inspired by Can, Stockhausen, and Klaus Schulze, explores the relationship between acoustic and synthetic sounds, the obsession of his career.

After meeting David Sylvian, Czukay developed a passion for electronic world music and released Rome Remains Rome (Virgin, 1986), a collection of a dozen rhythmic songs, notably Hey Baba Reebop (a big band swing track enhanced by electronic effects). Czukay even sampled the Pope, but the results were not particularly revolutionary.

Two collaborations with David Sylvian, Plight And Premonition (Virgin, 1988) and Flux And Mutability (Virgin, 1989), each comprising two long, pretentious suites, also occupy a prominent place in his discography. Once again, Czukay, inspired by Can, Stockhausen, and Klaus Schulze, explores the relationship between acoustic and synthetic sounds, the obsession of his career.

At least Plight is worthy of Czukay's past: the track revolves around an imposing, very static cosmic hum of keyboards that lasts from beginning to end, over which sudden gusts of violins, electronic ‘drops’ reverberating in the vein of Pink Floyd's Meddle, flute trills, and so on rise; the nebula is populated with sounds that turn to infinity, slowly changing and fading, with hisses and rumbles slowed down to an exasperating languor; free flows of chords; long, reverberating sidereal organ chords; even slower, exhausted piano notes; an “ecclesiastical” tolling of the organ seems to reawaken the harmony, but it is only an illusion.

Even more minimal is Flux, with light percussion, languid waves of electronica, jungle-like horn verses, and sparse guitar chords, all scattered haphazardly and left to float amorphously, weightlessly, intangibly. More mystically new age is Mutability, , played only by Sylvian (keyboards and guitars) and Liebezeit (flute), a more organic sound “continuum,” a hair's breadth from Kitaro's Zen chanting. All tracks have trance, meditation, and transcendence as their primary reference points.

Premonition (perhaps more Sylvian's brainchild than Czukay's) is much less successful: the events that compose it are more banal (percussion, found voices, piano chords, layers of synthesizers, dissonances) and more disjointed; they fail to merge into a single flow.

A Big, Bright, Colourful World and A New Beginning Is In The Offing are even more influenced by Czukay's Teutonic genius (in addition to Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, another member of Can, and Mark Stockhausen, son of the composer, also play on them).

It is typical of Czukay's method the way Radio Waves Surfer (Virgin, 1991) was created: Czukay and his friends improvised live in the studio and then, almost one year later, Czukay assembled the album by cutting and pasting what he liked. It is also typical of Czukay's music that the result does not sound very interesting.

Moving Pictures (Mute, 1993) returned Czukay to his art of "acoustic sound-painting", but the 20-minute Rhythms of a Secret Life, while a terrific lesson on making music out of an audio collage, is, again, hardly a piece of art.

Clash (Sideburn, 1997) is a double-CD live collaboration with Ingmar "Dr Walker" Koch of Air Liquide, a pointless summary of tape manipulation, sampling, techno, world-music and abstract electronica.

Good Morning Story (Tone Casualties, 1999), Czukay's first album in six years, is an embarrassment. The ethno-ambient drones of Mirage (22 minutes of Muslimgauze-like doodling) and the ethno-funk of Dancing in Wild Circles have been obsolete for at least ten years. The lounge music of Invisible Man, drenched in dub and western twang, is not exactly revolutionary.

La Luna (Tone Casualties, 2000) is a single 47-minute improvisation recorded live in the studio in 1996.

The New Millennium (Fuenfundvierzig, 2003) is a collaboration with vocalist U-She.

Time And Tide (2007) collects La Luna and Time And Tide (2001), a progressive suite with mellotron and female vocals.

Holger Czukay died in 2017.