HM-Brow

2008 (Irmin Schmidt & Kumo). Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the experimental rock group whose music has inspired hundreds of popular acts over the last 30 years from Talking Heads and Public Image Limited to LCD Sound System and Kasabian, has once again teamed up with breakbeat pioneer Kumo on Axolotl Eyes. The duo originally got together in 1997 when Psychomat recording artist Kumo was drafted in by Schmidt to work on his operatic version of Gormenghast as a co-producer and programmer. As a result of that collaboration, the duo started work on Masters of Confusion, their 2001 debut LP. Kumo has since been appointed Professor of Popular Music at the Koln Musikhochschule (Cologne University of Music) where he runs regular practical workshops ranging from dub to music business, composing for film to house music. Schmidt and Kumo's latest album of electronic experimentalism features Kumo's shimmering grooves, subterranean bass, theremin and violin providing the perfect foil for Schmidt's peerless and enduringly adventurous playing. Unlike their 2001 debut - which was largely put together by extrapolating snatches of music featured in Schmidt's opera Gormenghast - Axolotl Eyes is very much a studio recording. With several tracks featuring Ian Dixon on trumpet and vocalist Paul J Fredericks, Axolotl Eyes also marks a return to the extended improvisation followed by painstaking editing methods pioneered by Can. "I went off to a small studio in Cologne and created the seeds that we could develop together," Kumo says. "We then distilled the ensuing hours of material into seven songs." Opener Kick On The Floods rapidly evolves into a churning sea of ghostly, filmic melancholy lightly shaded by menace, while Drifting Days, Crime Pays kicks in with a melody that could grace any classic detective series underpinned by subtle atmospherics. A classic Schmidt & Kumo moment. The mysterious and dense Umbilicus Clear was inspired by sounds from outer space (www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio) and Raketenstadt melds the vocals of Paul J Fredericks with industrial strength synths, drifting melodic fragments and trumpeter Dixon summoning the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie.