re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

Kenji Suzuki (January 16, 1950 – February 9, 2024), known as Damo Suzuki , was a Japanese musician best known as the vocalist for the German Krautrock group Can between 1970 and 1973.

Born in 1950 in Kobe, Japan, he moved to Europe in the late 1960s where he was spotted busking in Munich, Germany, by Can bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Can had just split with their vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and asked Suzuki to sing over tracks from their 1970 compilation album Soundtracks.

Afterwards, he became their full time singer, appearing on the three hugely influential albums Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Future Days (1973).

Suzuki's free-form, often improvised, lyrics were largely indiscernible, leading many critics to think they were sung in no particular language.

After leaving Can in 1973, he abandoned music and became a Jehovah's Witness. Having left that organisation, he returned to music in the mid-1980s and began to tour widely. Over the following decades Suzuki recorded a large number of albums under different aliases, which he later grouped as "Damo Suzuki's Network".

He was first diagnosed with colon cancer when he was 33 years old; a disease that his father died of when Suzuki was five years old. He was diagnosed with colon cancer again in 2014 and given a 10% chance of survival. He died on February 9, 2024, aged 74. The documentary Energy explores Suzuki's battle with cancer and relationship with his wife.