Brian Eno, Holger Czukay & J. Peter Schwalm - Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen! (2024)

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Brian Eno, Holger Czukay & J. Peter Schwalm - Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen! (2024)

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Snipped from a near-mythical three-hour live performance in 1998, 'Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen' has been a long time coming, finding Brian Eno and his regular collaborator J. Peter Schwalm up against Can bassist Holger Czukay, who dilates the duo's jerky d'n'b, electro and dub soundscapes with live energy.

25 years later, Eno, Czukay and Schwalm's legendary extended improvisation is finally being released. The performance was staged outside Bonn's Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, where Eno had been working on a multimedia installation. Schwalm had assembled some rough sketches, roping in his Slop Shop bandmates Raoul Walton and Jern Atai, and the outfit ate sushi, roti and reibekuchen (German potato pancakes), hence the title. But the performance is notorious because not only was it a very early internet live stream (we can only imagine the buffering issues), but it was apparently cut short when the local police shut off the power - as if three hours wasn't long enough.

This excerpt prunes the session to an hour, and it's very much of its time, with bitcrushed breaks and garbled, static-muddled samples splayed over plodding, dubby basslines. Czukay does his best to provide some animation, but at times his bass sounds at odds with Eno and Schwalm's psychedelic slop. Worth a listen, all the same.