n the perma-retro that constitutes contemporary life, the 80s is a montage from Wall Street (1987) St Elmo’s Fire (1985) and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985): a sequence of wet-gel, shoulder pads and designer suits backed by bombastically upbeat music. Even 80s revisits like Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Black Mirror’s San Junipero (2016) don’t go far from the format. We don’t often speak of right-wing utopianism – more of its “cold stream” realism – but the enduring fantasies of the 80s exemplified just that. For all both Wall Street and Wolf of Wall Street’s acknowledgement of 80s’ corruption, cruelty and volatility, it is the class-A rush of acquisition, consumption and social contract-busting that stays with the viewer. And the same is true of book and film of Bonfire of the Vanities and even American Psycho.
Read moreNine Snapshots of Holger Czukay
Holger Czukay.
It’s about time. Not the obvious reaction when one of your heroes dies. But Holger Czukay was all about time. Not just in the sense, as Can’s bass player, of playing in time, though few could better that Czukay (just listen to “One More Night”), but in the sense of sequencing time: ordering and shaping it, as an editor. Between the two approaches, his two roles, Czukay created a sense of time speeding up, time slowing down, time as an elastic, malleable essence. Working against the regulation, the containment of capitalist time. But Holger Czukay is all about time in another sense. Due to both forming a band late – in his thirties – and dying relatively late in musician terms, Czukay’s life spanned a huge stretch of history and culture.
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