CZUKAY & URSA MAJOR: 21ST CENTURY

Ursa Major is the singer U-She, here collaborating with Hokger Czukay for the third time (plus some contributions to other Czukay releases, namely Linear City and Clash). The last one was called "New Millenium" and this one is now "21st Century"; you'd be surprised that such creative personalities as Czukay & U-She come up with two album titles like these in a row. This is supposed to be music for the new millenium/century, yes, we got that. Compared to "Time and Tide" and "New Millenium", "21st Century" is the most consistent album, or one could also say the least diverse. I think they tried to concentrate more on what they do best; there are hardly any attempts to write conventional songs here, and rhythms are lighter than on New Millenium and less like techno-beats. The new songs give Holger's sound experiments quite some space and U-She works much with repetitions of fairly simple mini-tunes, at times reminding me of Damo Suzuki's improvisations. The sound is dominated by digital keyboards, drum computers and samples and has some meditative free flowing feel to it. Don't expect much enlightenment from the lyrics... "Every day is a new day, you shouldn't try to run away"... well, well. It shouldn't hurt too much, I guess. To be honest, I could do without most of U-She's contributions here. The music is rich and attractive as ever; Czukay's creativity and musicality quite obviously hasn't run out of steam just yet. Unfortunately it's now 2015 and I think he hasn't released anything new in the meantime. I saw him live at the Roundhouse in 2009 and much what he did there was originally mixed and partly created just for the gig, and boy was it good - I guess he's still sitting on quite some interesting unreleased material. He is well over 70 now and I'm a bit worried that his website hasn't been updated since 2011, but apparently he still has his hands in some re-issues of remixed Can and Czukay-material from the 70s and 80s, so I'd still hope for some new music to be released at some point.

In any case, it's easier to get into 21st Century than into the two predecessors, but it's not as diverse and not just as surprising as those (at least not if you know them already when getting to this one), so it's three stars this time.

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