Irmin Schmidt: interview in The Spectator

Irmin Schmidt is interviewed in The Spectator about the new Can live series. On how they got started as a band:

We didn’t even intend to become a rock group,’ says Schmidt. ‘I wanted a few musicians around me who came from totally different traditions of contemporary music. I came from the European classical music tradition, but there was another tradition that created jazz and rock, which basically has its roots in America and Africa. I wanted to bring these contemporary traditions together using people rooted deeply in other forms. Jaki started playing in a Dixieland band and ended up with free jazz. Michael was really a Beat guitarist. To bring together a melting of these traditions, you cannot plan it! You had to just spontaneously create something with those musicians. That is how the group was formed.

Irmin Schmidt: Week-End Festival mixtape

German avant-garde pioneer Irmin Schmidt contributed a mixtape to the Weekend-Fest series, handpicking compositions that struck a nerve and became part of his musical vocabulary.

1. Charles Ives – The Unanswered Question
2. Karlheinz Stockhausen – Gesang der Jünglinge
3. John Zorn / Kronos Quartett – Forbidden Fruit
4. John Cage & Sun Ra – Empty Words and Keyboard
5. Giacinto Scelsi & Michiko Hirayama – No. 1
6. Henry Cowell – Ongaku for Orchestra
7. Harry Partch – Cry from another Darkness
8. Koki Nakano – Train-train
9. Lennie Tristano – Turkish Mambo
10. György Ligeti – Atmospheres

» Irmin Schmidt on Wikipedia

Irmin Schmidt: interview in the New York Times

Irmin Schmidt is interviewed in The New York Times about the new Can live series. Thanks to English fan Andrew Hall, who stuffed the recording gear down his huge pants, the German Krautrock pioneers were preserved in full improvisational flight. Schmidt explains their modus operandi:

When we went onstage, we didn’t even know beforehand what we would play. We just reacted to the atmosphere, to the acoustics, to the public, to the whole environment spontaneously, and started playing something, which we had never played befor. We didn’t talk to each other onstage at all. Everything we had to say to each other, we did with our instruments.

Words about music (460): Irmin Schmidt

photo: Steve Gullick

When I founded the group I was a classical composer and conductor and pianist making piano recitals, playing a lot of contemporary music but also Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven and everything. And when we got together I wanted to do something in which all contemporary music becomes one thing. Contemporary music in Europe especially, the new music was classical music was Boulez, Stockhausen and all that. I studied all that, I studied Stockhausen but nobody talked about rock music like Sly Stone, James Brown or the Velvet Underground as being contemporary music. Then there was jazz and all these elements were our contemporary music, it was new. It was, in a way, much newer than the new classical music which claimed to be 'the new music'.

Irmin Schmidt

Can: "The Singles" 3LP, stream "Shikako Maru Ten"

German Krautrock pioneers Can never had a hit, but they released quite a few singles during their career. The new compilation The Singles (out on June 16th on Mute - 3LP and CD) collects the band's 7" releases:

This unique document is the first time the singles have been presented together and shows the breadth of their influential career, from well loved tracks like Halleluwah, Vitamin C and I Want More to more obscure singles such as Silent Night and Turtles Have Short Legs.

The tracks are all presented in their original single version, many of which have been unavailable for many years and not presented outside of the original 7" release.

Irmin Schmidt: stream "Beauty Duty" from the "Electro Violet" 12CD box set

photo: Steve Gullick

Electro Violet, a 12 CD box set collecting the solo output of avant-garde musician Irmin Schmidt will be released on December 4th (digital) and January 8, 2016 (CD). Schmidt, founding member of the seminal Krautrock pioneers Can, became a respected soundtrack composer for film and theatre, and a groundbreaking electronic solo artist after the band folded in 1981. The box contains a disc with previously unreleased soundtrack material.

Stream Beauty Duty from the Master Of Confusion album, a collaboration between Irmin Schmidt and Kumo (electronic composer and programmer Jono Podmore).

Irmin Schmidt: "Electro Violet" 12CD box set

photo: Steve Gullick

Electro Violet, a 12 CD box set collecting the solo output of avant-garde musician Irmin Schmidt will be released on November 20th. Schmidt, founding member of the seminal Krautrock pioneers Can, became a respected soundtrack composer for film and theatre and a groundbreaking electronic solo artist after the band folded in 1981. The box contains a disc with previously unreleased soundtrack material.

The Electro Violet box comes with an 80-page booklet, featuring new liner notes from Max Dax and Irmin Schmidt. Each album is presented in an individual gatefold sleeve with the artwork, entitled Bärenkuss 5, coming from longtime friend and Berlin artist, FRANEK.

Electro Violet is a joint release of UK label Mute and Can's own imprint Spoon Records.