CYCLOPEAN EP

From the Mute press release:

Can’s legacy has never felt more apparent than now, and Cyclopean brings together two giants from this legendary band, Jaki Liebezeit and Irmin Schmidt alongside long time collaborators Jono Podmore (Kumo / Metamono) and musician and producer Burnt Friedman.

As you might expect from the line-up, the four tracks are profoundly original and bursting with imagination. The title provides a metaphor for the music: Cyclopean forms are beautiful, massive and intriguing structures that interlock, intersect and connect seemingly contradictory components. Heavy, yet light, powerful, subtle, intriguing and playful. There’s also a flavour of the ancient in this music – an artefact from a sophisticated pre-culture perhaps. Extraordinary instrumentation – rubber band guitar, theremin, prepared piano – is unified through the monumental and unique drum patterns, as the characters of the four players are at once individually unmistakably and irrevocably intertwined.

The release of the Can album The Lost Tapes this year has brought a wealth of new recognition and plaudits to the legendary band, and as befits members of a band who constantly challenge, innovate and inspire, an entirely new project was born when Friedman, Liebezeit, Podmore and Schmidt got together at Studio Les Rossignols, France, in May 2011.

The four members of Cyclopean have worked together previously: Friedman and Liebezeit’s Secret Rhythms IV was released in 2011 on Friedman´s label Nonplaceand is the most recent of their releases together which began in 2002; Podmore and Schmidt’s collaborations have included two albums released as Schmidt & Kumo as well as more recent work on The Lost Tapes and Podmore has also worked with Liebezeit in the past.

After Can disbanded Liebezeit and Schmidt stayed close and continued to work together, notably on Schmidt’s opera Gormenghast, which Podmore also worked closely on.

Cyclopean is the first time that Friedman, Liebezeit, Podmore and Schmidt have worked together.