Best Krautrock titles ever

I've been meaning to look into this genre so thanks for these Thorsten, I have some Kraftwerk and Tangerine dream but was thinking of looking a Can and others, also there is this album thats might be of interest on the Soul Jazz label I going to get as a start of my Krautrock collection.





Dean...

Hi Thorsten,

Krautrock has become a broad church, but I'd consider Jane, Frumpy and Eloy as Prog that happened to be made in Germany. Nektar are closer to what Man were doing at the time (and weren't even German - though I'll concede they were produced in Germany). Novalis would just about squeak in for me.

La Dusseldorf are quitessential krautrock though, and if you like that then Viva and Individuellos are up your street as are the three Neu! albums, the Harmonia albums Musik von Harmonia and Deluxe. They and (of course the Kraftwerk) all share that motorik sound. The Cluster albums Sowiesoso, Zuckerzeit and Grosses Wasser also just about creep into this category, though they can be more ambient (Eno was a fan).

All the Amon Duul 2 from Phallus Dei through to Made In Germany can be recommended and if you like Eloy you may appreciate the later ones as Eloy sound a bit like later Amon Duul 2 that have taken a turn to the prog side.

By the way I really like Eloy and have most of their albums, and if you like Ocean you'll like pretty much everything in the sequence Power And The Passion through to Time To Turn is in the same vein as Ocean.

Everything that Can did up to (and just about including Loaded) is amazing to some degree or other, though not all of it is comfortable listening.

Still on the weirder side of krautrock there's Ash Ra Tempel, which mostly centred around the hypnotic guitar work of Manuel Gottsching (who's solo work is excellent) plus on the earlier albums Klaus Schulze. and the even weirder Faust. (and if you're going to start with them then I'd recommend Faust IV).

If you like the proggier side of krautrock, try the early Agitation Free albums which are more western influenced - Malesch, 2nd and the live At Cliffs Of River Rhine are very good, the rest are post-break-up odds and sods (or just plain bad).

Again on the prog end of krautrock are Grobschnitt, though my favourites are the Solar Music live albums (a sort of Deutsche Dark Star) rather than the more popular Rockpommel's Land and Jumbo.

Oh, and Novalis Sommerabend is even better than their first (the one above).

There's folk-krautrock too - Hoelderlin for example...

Then there's the Berlin school of electronic music -- Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, which is a whole thread in itself.

I'm conscious that I've managed to both ramble and merely skim the surface of a wonderful genre (no matter how you define it). Most of the above groups deserve much more detailed attention and I've missed out loads (e.g. the acid-fried Cosmic Jokers albums and a pile of wonderful Popol Vuh albums and soundtracks - definitely worth a thread of their own!). I 've also committed the cardinal sin of not posting any pictures. :-)

Amon Duul 2 is one of my favourites. Check also this one..

Gary, thanks for that overview my wallet is shaking already.



Dean..

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Shaw:
Hi Thorsten,

Krautrock has become a broad church, but I'd consider Jane, Frumpy and Eloy as Prog that happened to be made in Germany. Nektar are closer to what Man were doing at the time (and weren't even German - though I'll concede they were produced in Germany). Novalis would just about squeak in for me.

La Dusseldorf are quitessential krautrock though, and if you like that then Viva and Individuellos are up your street as are the three Neu! albums, the Harmonia albums Musik von Harmonia and Deluxe. They and (of course the Kraftwerk) all share that motorik sound. The Cluster albums Sowiesoso, Zuckerzeit and Grosses Wasser also just about creep into this category, though they can be more ambient (Eno was a fan).

All the Amon Duul 2 from Phallus Dei through to Made In Germany can be recommended and if you like Eloy you may appreciate the later ones as Eloy sound a bit like later Amon Duul 2 that have taken a turn to the prog side.

By the way I really like Eloy and have most of their albums, and if you like Ocean you'll like pretty much everything in the sequence Power And The Passion through to Time To Turn is in the same vein as Ocean.

Everything that Can did up to (and just about including Loaded) is amazing to some degree or other, though not all of it is comfortable listening.

Still on the weirder side of krautrock there's Ash Ra Tempel, which mostly centred around the hypnotic guitar work of Manuel Gottsching (who's solo work is excellent) plus on the earlier albums Klaus Schulze. and the even weirder Faust. (and if you're going to start with them then I'd recommend Faust IV).

If you like the proggier side of krautrock, try the early Agitation Free albums which are more western influenced - Malesch, 2nd and the live At Cliffs Of River Rhine are very good, the rest are post-break-up odds and sods (or just plain bad).

Again on the prog end of krautrock are Grobschnitt, though my favourites are the Solar Music live albums (a sort of Deutsche Dark Star) rather than the more popular Rockpommel's Land and Jumbo.

Oh, and Novalis Sommerabend is even better than their first (the one above).

There's folk-krautrock too - Hoelderlin for example...

Then there's the Berlin school of electronic music -- Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, which is a whole thread in itself.

I'm conscious that I've managed to both ramble and merely skim the surface of a wonderful genre (no matter how you define it). Most of the above groups deserve much more detailed attention and I've missed out loads (e.g. the acid-fried Cosmic Jokers albums and a pile of wonderful Popol Vuh albums and soundtracks - definitely worth a thread of their own!). I 've also committed the cardinal sin of not posting any pictures. :-)

How nice of you...will check Amon Düül 2 for sure....

Anyone´s Daughter is great too.

KRAAN
GURU GURU
BIRTH CONTROL

Faust - Wumme Years box set.

Can - Tago Mago

Thorsten:

In this broad church, would you also include Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk although the music is heavily based on synthesizers?

So, playing the game :-)

My top krautrock (self-limited to 1 album per artist/band)

Amon Duul 2 – Yeti



This could quite easy be Dance Of The Lemmings, Carnival In Babylon or Wolf City… this one has some blasting rock moments (Youtube Arshangels Thunderbird!) on the first part and some very good improve on the second.

Can – Tago Mago



Could easily be Monster Movie, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days, Soon Over Babaluma…this one has some amazing rhythms (spot the Happy Mondays rip-offs). There is some noise terrorism that takes a little getting used to but worth it.

Neu! – Neu! 75



Their third and most consistent. Looking forward to hearing what Neu! 86 sounds like. Dinger and Rother were from an early version of Kraftwerk, Dinger going on to La Dusseldork, Rother to Neu! and Harmonia.

Tangerine Dream – Logos



Once again this could have been anyone of a dozen (or more!) wonderful albums and according to Julian Cope anything this late in their career doesn’t qualify as krautrock, but the heck with him . By this stage of their careers they’d discovered sweeoing tunes and this is jammed with four glorious ones.

La Dusseldorf – Viva



Motorik with a dash of punk (before punk). Geld! Geld! Geeeeeeld!

Harmonia – Deluxe



Their second – a mixture of motorik and ambient.

Kraftwerk – Autobahn



Could have been any of them but this one gets the vote because of the impact Autobahn itself had on me.

Ash Ra Tempel – Join Inn



Close between this (their third) and the first S/T – a side of Gottsching’s guitar-led improve and a side of Schulze’s synthy noodlings. It’s better than I make it sound, honest.

Manual Gottsching – E2-E4



A kind of krautrock Tubular Bells. Gottsching plays everything as instruments build in to a single hypnotic track.

Klaus Schulze – X



My favourite because he relies less on sequencers here. Another close thing though with the likes of Mirage and Body Love etc.

Popol Vuh - Einsjager and Siebenjager



Popol Vuh tended to vary between the many haunting and atmospheric soundtracks for Hans Werner Herzog and more orthodox krautrock such as this. For the soundtracks try either Aguirre or Nosferatu.

Agitation Free – 2nd



Krautrock meets Jessica-style Allmans. Atlanta-am-Spree. Shouldn't work, but does.

Cluster – Sowiesoso



A delightful combination of beats and ambience.

Faust – IV



Faust’s most commercial but still far from conventional. Faust are never dull even if sometimes the aspirin calls if you’re not in the mood.

Holger Czukay - Canaxis



This is an astonishing album, released in 1969, one of the first to incorporate world music samples (a Vietnamese boat woman singing). Utterly haunting. Just edges out his other ground-breaking album Movies.

Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen



Unmistakeably Rother, but slightly more mellowed from his Neu! days.

AWESOME, Gary....Thank you.

Some great music recommended by Gary and others on this thread - some albums I would add are



I don't profess to understand what Floh De Cologne are on about; although a German friend translated some text for me and they seem fairly political, but I just love the sound. Please let me know what this all means.

Also check out BAP (Wolfgang Niedecken)

Some other favourites of mine




City's Am Fenster is available in English as City, but the original vinyl copy in German sounds superb to me.

I have all the Amon Duul II albums up to Vertex, but the early ones are the best - I bought them when the first came out so I can safely say I loved their music for over 40 years. To me, they are absolutely essential recordings.

Hope this is of interest

ATB Rotf

Hi ROTF,

If you haven't already tried it, have a listen to Nada Moonshine # - it shouldn't be good but it's much better than the Pyragony > Vortex sequence.

And forgot this:

Grobschnitt - History Of Solar Misic 1



As I mentioned before, Solar Music was a long improvised piece (though very accessable) that was their equivalent to the Dead's Dark Star and they performed it live throughout their life as a band.

All performances are different and I haven't heard a duff one yet. This is the first volume of three collected by their mad drummer Eroc and released for the first time. It's a double and you get two live and one studio version. Terrific stuff!

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Shaw:
Hi ROTF,

If you haven't already tried it, have a listen to Nada Moonshine # - it shouldn't be good but it's much better than the Pyragony > Vortex sequence.

Thanks Gary - I'll check those out.

Not quite your Kraft Werk

Wolf City and Viv la trance by Amon Duul II must be up there somewhere!

SteveT

quote:

Viv la trance by Amon Duul II

Wonderful record

My favourite AD2 record is Tanz der Lemmings.

Hmmmm....Little Tornadoes.

Terrific riff...and if you weren't tripping to start off with, you were by the end. Think it gave Julian a bad one.

What is the definition of "krautrock" ?

Is it the general term of all german rockbands* between 68 and the early seventys ?

Is the Berliner Electronic school( TD and K.S.) rock ?

Is Krautrock a progrock genre ?

What is "Krautrock" ?

Wikipedia says this easily

"Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scene that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain."

Good question, and a difficult one to answer definitively.

My own understanding of krautrock is the music that seemed to have more or less spontaneously erupted across Germany from 68 onwards and that rejected outright the American and British ideas of what rock/pop music should sound like.

So (for example) Can, Amon Duul (1 and 2), Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze all sounded like nothing else on the planet when they started out - and nothing like each other mostly.

The fascinating thing about krautrock is that there is no defining sound - most of these bands knew almost nothing of what the others were doing. The nearest there was to a "scene" was Berlin.

It's for this reason that I personally don't include Kraan, Jane, Eloy (and several others) as krautrock no matter how good I think they were, because they were based firmly on Anglo-American models of progressive rock.

Where it gets complicated is where the whole thing ends. Perhaps one definition of where it ends is where it stops being innovative and starts becoming mainstream - even when that particular part of the mainstream was invented by krautrock.

An example of this might be Tangerine Dream who, along with Schulze, invented the Berlin EM school. Julian Cope would argue that everything TD did after Phaedra (or maybe incuding Phaedra, I can't quite remember) wasn't krautrock as they'd stopped being experimental. I disagree with his cut-off point - I think TD stopped being krautrock about the toime they stopped being almost exclusively improvisational as a live band in the latter 70s.

That school is going stronger than ever, though mainly in the UK and Netherlands. The music being produced today by Radio Massacre International, Redshift, Free System Projekt, Brendon Pollard (and many others) is as good as anything produced back then but mostly doesn't add anything new to the genre to any great degree(my opinion), so maybe isn't krautrock any more!

So I think krautrock as an innovatove movement peters out in the mid-70s with honourable exceptions such as Faust, Cluster...

Oh, and krautrock wasn't exclusively German. Check out the French band Pole and other works by Philippe Besombes.

Or Swiss...

Brainticket - Cottonwoodhill



An album of repetetive, but deeply grooved organ riffs with mad spoken vocals here and there that combine to make an extremely enjoyably (if rather psychotic) experience.

Fully FAR-OUT.

hey Gary, thank you for the detailed response.
I think in UK or Us the people have more interest on krautrock than in Germany self