Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Krautrock

Two instances of this genre have already appeared in threads on this Forum in 2007.
First, JFs review of Holgar Czukay's Movies album in Mojo
Second, BBC Radio2's interesting and well made programme about Bowie and Berlin broadcast on Tuesday. Foxx is very eloquent and well-informed on this subject and its relevance to his own work.

Made me realize how much of my musical taste has developed from this seed, and how fascinating the whole period between 1970 and 1980 was.
Just thought I'd post a link to one of my favourite websites:

http://www.krautrock.com/

and see how the discussion develops.

I feel I can now be more comfortable declaring my hand as a fan also of 'Cabaret' music, as written by Brecht and Kurt Weill among others, which also issues from the decadence of Berlin, but 50 years earlier.
Makes me feel that a similar love of chanson and torch music is not so crazy after all. :p

Interesting site.

My interest in Krautrock began of course with Bowie and the song Heroes as heard on the Christianne F film, very moving. The period from Station to Station to Cat People/Baal is very Germanic. Yep he did the Baal thing and covered an old favourite Moon of Alabama.

Kraftwerk´s music was also one of my first buys. I then bought the 4 Neu albums plus the 5 La Dusseldorf ones. Then Michael Rother´s solo output and the 3 Harmonia albums. All these rank among my favourites.

Recently I´ve acquired the Cluster albums from the beginning to Begegnungen II, Zuckerzeit being my favourite.

Oops I forgot, I have a 3 volume compilation of Can, which includes 2 tracks from Movies. Flow Motion is also in my collection. I Want More is brilliant.

Both Wolfgang album´s I have. That of Flur aka Yamo and that of Riechmann. The 3 Karl Bartos albums are also in there.

Other German music in my collection: Alphaville, Marian Gold, Rainer Bloss´Drive Inn 3, Atlantic Popes, all 3 Astrea Redux, Propaganda and Claudia Brucken´s solo album.

Probably left someone out..sorry !

From Krautrock to Synth Pop...Fehler im System????

Chris C

PS Any other Recommendations...Tangerine Dream, Faust ?

Bowie turned me onto Krautrock, too. In fact, he turned me onto pretty much everything, including Foxx and Ultravox, that I currently love.

I'm especially fond of Cluster's work. So peaceful and quirky but with a dark undercurrent.

I really like Krautrock. I love the experimental/improvisational, jamming for hours aspect of it. Grabbing the 'now' moment & letting it take you to far off Cosmic planets & alien shores.

Julian Cope's book Krautrock Sampler is an excellent guide to Krautrock. Especially that it is written by a fan. It is very hard to get hold of now. The copy I have is borrowed from a friend. He in turn has borrowed my Can book by Pascal Bussy which is another superb book.

It's good to read John's article on Holger Czukay's Movies. It is a good album & it was the catalist that inspired many artists to experiment with radios, but I prefer Holger's RADIO WAVE SURFER, it resonates very deeply within me. Probably in the same way that Movies does for John.

What about DAF? Robert Gorl and Gabi Delgado's solo work is also rather nifty. As well a little known band called 'The Unknown Cases'.

DAF certainly and an influence on Depeche Mode!
DAF in turn were influenced by Suicide.

Wolfsheim also deserves a mention. I need to get into them at some point. Just own a couple of MCD's from them. Peter Heppner truly has an amazing voice.

Chris C

There is an extensive article on 'Krautrock' in the February 2009 edition of Record Collector (Issue 359)

Includes interviews, anecdotes and the like from members of key bands from the period, inc Can, Faust, Harmonia and Kraftwerk

For many years I never knew it was called Krautrock - I never knew that I was 'into Krautrock'...

I bought Kraftwerk albums because...well, because they were Kraftwerk. I bought Tangerine Dream albums as a teenager because in that banal teenage way;

I thought it would be fun,
It would make me look 'diff'runt...innit',
They were so deeply unfashionable and very cheap to get hold of.

I got into Can because of Czukay/Sylvian, I got into Cluster because of Eno - I arrived at Krautrock from so many different entry points that I didn't know that I was there.

This was all helped enormously by charity shops in the 80s. They seemed to have such a '70s Deutsche Hippy/Commune Musik...it's crazy sh*t man, ja?' stockpile that they could've melted the vinyl down and built some sheltered accommodation with it.

And that's how a lot of Krautrock got into my collection - it was called '70s ambient', 'Space Music' etc etc - no one wanted it, no one had a name for it and no one liked it - except me in my little bubble.

This whole rare/hard to find/greatest albums of all time stuff seemed so sudden in the mid 90s - around the time 'Krautrocksampler' came out. Then it was catalogued, discussed, checked in, reviewed etc etc. It was as if the world had suddenly noticed.

Weird.