In 1998,
Brian Eno
,
Can
co-founder
Holger Czukay
, and
J. Peter Schwalm
(of
Slop Shop
) took the stage for a one-off improvisation during the opening of
Eno
's Future Light-Lounge Proposal multimedia installation at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. The archival release
Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen!
(named after the dishes served at the event) edits the three-hour performance down to a single hour. Joined by
Schwalm
's bandmates
Raoul Walton
and
Jem Atai
, the musicians primarily use synths, sequencers, and samples, generating a stream-of-consciousness flow of ideas in real time.
notoriously disdains live performance, and has seldom appeared on-stage since he left
Roxy Music
, but he seems comfortable in this context, which plays like an informal jam session rather than a typical concert consisting of rehearsed material. It's never clear exactly which artist is doing what --
Czukay
is referred to as the "soloist," while
are presumably responsible for the more rhythmic elements. The record unfolds at an unrestrained, free-form pace. "Sushi" slowly fades in, introducing distorted noises, chiming percussion, tapes of mysterious voices, and most surprisingly, choppy Amen breakbeats, which interact with live drumming and sporadic flashes of dubby bass. It feels close in spirit to a jungle-era revisit of
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
, but far more loose and fluid. "Roti" is low-key avant-funk interrupted by more garbled voices and intrusive synth effects. The dazed, rippling echoes of "Wasser" are the closest the album comes to fitting into the ambient category, at least until scattered drumbeats pop up near the end. "Reibekuchen" is more of a detached, almost illbient jam with plenty of eerie samples threaded throughout a lazy, drifting groove. The concluding "Wein" is shorter and more collage-like, with filtered, stop-start beats bookending a haze of sampled environmental sounds and radio interference.
documents a once-in-a-lifetime formation of accomplished experimental musicians, but it doesn't come off as a grand artistic statement, just a casual exploration of unusual sounds. ~ Paul Simpson