LA LUNA

First, a personal note: like many fans I prefer the music of CAN's mischievous short-wave radio painter when he's in a more lighthearted mood, composing Odes to Perfume or Persian Love songs. But there's something oddly hypnotic about this minimalist curiosity: an unbroken 47-minute "Electric Night Ceremony" recorded live at Holger's Lab on May 17, 1996 (and yes, I checked: there was a full moon over Cologne that night).

Don't expect the soothing environmental ambience of a Brian Eno album, however. Czukay's tone poem was built around a sinister mechanical pulse not far removed from the dystopian rhythms enslaving all those subterranean workers in Fritz Lang's 1927 film classic "Metropolis". He then goes to creative lengths to put a human touch on his automaton bleepfest, adding ephemeral layers of pirated radio signals, odd percussion accents, random vocal interruptions and so forth.

As usual Czukay is playing the studio like a musical instrument, and was apparently so mesmerized by the effort that he forgot his trusted French Horn. There isn't much room here for comic relief, but when High Priestess U-She (real name Ursula Kloss; Holger's muse since the end of the last millennium) approaches the electronic altar and starts muttering about "the Mother of the Universe", it's hard not to imagine Holger's tongue lodged firmly in his cheek.

There's actually a lot happening over the album's uncut three-quarter hour length, at a level of perception audible only with both ears wedged between the speakers. For better or worse, this is one of those experiments that needs your full attention to appreciate, but is best enjoyed when only half-heard as background radiation.