Holger Czukay - Rome Remains Rome

by Maarten Schiethart

published: 17 / 4 / 2025

In our Re:View section, in which we look back at albums from the past, Maarten Schiethart praises the reissue of German musician and Can co-founder Holger Czukay's 1987 solo album 'Rome Remains Rome'.

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This reissue of Holger Czukay's “Rome Remains Rome” sees the maverick musician, co-founder of Krautrock group Can, and sampling pioneer in fine form. The record was first put out on Virgin in 1987, and was then reissued in 2017 after Czukay’s death earlier that year. The recording features his lifetime comrade Jaki Liebezeit on drums and a young Jah Wobble [Public Image Ltd] on bass. Czukay had by this point – he was nearly 50 – mastered original, wacky and always uplifting surreal music. His 1979 record “Movies” counts as a classic and certainly prompted me to not take many of the musicians in the 1980s too seriously. Born in 1938, Czukay grew up during post-war West Germany’s era of rapid economical growth known as the Miracle on the Rhine (das Wirtschaftswunder). His real family name was Schüring, and his nom-de-plume Czukay is a reference to his family’s earlier name when they lived in Danzig, today known as Gdańsk in Poland. The young Czukay was taught by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. After co-founding Can as a bassist in 1968, he in a sense broke loose less than a decade later, pursuing a solo career with one humorous surreal album after another. Can's drummer Jaki Liebezeit stayed on board with him, and even their respective graves are in today immediate distance of one another. Czukay worked with a host of famous names (including some I quite dislike) yet his own music almost instantly puts me in a zany zestful mood, and “Rome Remains Rome” is no exception. His wit never ceased to surprise, and his sheer enthusiasm shone on the musicians whom he invited to his Can Studio in Cologne. On this record, the opening track “Hey Baba Reebop” is a play on polka music, but immortalized in rock and roll, now with an irate party touch. It’s followed by “Blessed Easter”, a recording of Pope John Paul II's Easter message set to freeform jazzy kraut-something. The mockery continues on “Sudetenland” with choral Gregorian-like harmonies over inventive rhythms, with lyrics by Czukay and Wobble, indecipherable words that simply add to the joyful disorientation. Side two kicks off with another bouncy ditty, the flashing fun of “Hit Hit Flop Flop” and a prototypical Czukay Wit Wonder, and next is a pastiche of cinematic spaghetti western music and ballroom vaudeville where Czukay manages to make a trumpet sound like a tipsy elephant, entitled “Perfect World”, which suits his career in music most appropriately. With Holger Czukay ever eager to point out the whimsical side to everyday life, “Rome Remains Rome” is pure entertainment from this ground-breaking musician.