Photo credit: Robin Maddock
Today IRMIN SCHMIDT has announced details of a new album, Requiem, set for release on vinyl, CD and digitally on April 24th, 2026 via Mute / Future Days Music (Spoon).
Requiem is an album of exquisite balance between human-made and nature-produced sounds. The album, presented in two sections, sees Irmin Schmidt playing prepared and unprepared piano alongside environmental recordings of the sounds of nature that surround his home in Southern France.
Listen to an excerpt of Requiem HERE.
“In nature,” Schmidt explains, “I find so much music, and that becomes a kind of dialogue.” After hearing a nightingale sing in his garden that he felt compelled to record, Schmidt began to build up these sounds - recording water, bird and frog noises and his local surroundings – in a form of personal ritual. The piano that accompanies his environmental recordings – prepared and unprepared – was spontaneous and, in the tradition of Can’s recordings, some of these spontaneous compositions were edited at a later date, with the help of long-time collaborator René Tinner.
Schmidt, who will be 89 years old in 2026, explains that Requiem is a meditation on remembrance, on loss and commemoration. The slow melding and manipulation of these environmental and piano recordings creates a liminal space that allows the listener to embark on their own journey of contemplation.
The preternatural, meditative movement between Schmidt’s piano and recordings brings both present and distant memories into view, their symbiosis creating one of Schmidt’s most affecting and inspiring works to date.
After an extensive classical education as pianist, conductor and composer, Irmin Schmidt, who studied under Stockhausen and Ligeti, co-founded Can in the late 60s, combining classic new music with rock and jazz. Outside of his work with Can, Schmidt has released over a dozen solo albums and written an opera, Gormenghast, based on the novels of Mervyn Peake. The opera, which originally premiered in 1998, was recently performed at the Linz Opera in Austria. For his contribution to art and culture he was awarded the highest honours in France, the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in Germany, the Bundesverdienst Orden. In 2018 Faber Social published Can – All Gates Open, a two-part book – the first section is Can’s biography, written by Rob Young, and the second section is Can Kiosk, a collage of diary entries and interviews edited and written by Irmin Schmidt. His new album, Requiem, follows 2018’s 5 Klavierstücke, a piano work using prepared and unprepared piano and 2020’s Nocturne, a live album documenting his Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival performance followed.
Requiem will be released on vinyl, CD and digitally on April 24th, 2026 via Mute.
Pre-order Requiem HERE.
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