Led by avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, Cologne in West Germany
became the home of futuristic, experimental music in the early 1960s, laying the
down the foundations for electronica and inspiring the likes of Neu!, Kraftwerk,
and Tangerine Dream. Holger Czukay, a student of Stockhausen, formed Can with
jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit, young guitarist Michael Karoli, and keyboardist
Irmin Schmidt, who had just returned from New York where he had come across Andy
Warhol, The Velvet Underground, and psychedelic art-house rock & roll. Rejecting
their classical and jazz backgro...