The Krautrock Thread

yes modern Krautrock indeed!!! if you like things more electronic and even more motorik gotta check out:

Knowing your taste I'll recommend their most inaccessible album, Guillotine and also Forest  which is one of their most drugged-out records (and being mostly acoustic).

Sorry for the lack of reviews. It's a big discography and I'm only one guy taking a shot at it.

^^^^ Oh, how I envy you for seeing Circle live...

As you can see by my signature I'm a huge fan of Circle. I'm also a big fan of minimalism so that's why their music gets me hooked. I have to admit that I sometime spend weeks or even months without listening to them, but when they release a new album (they've released 7 in this year alone) or just want to listen to them again I get the Circle mania and I listen to their albums nonstop!

I was previously watching a Circle video down at  video.google.com and after it finished I quickly grabbed their debut and started playing it. I'm listening to it right now. The video isn't that interesting, but it made me want to play some of their albums again.

EDIT:
Here's a better video of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWftvvaVok
That song is from their Sunrise album, their most heavy metal influenced album they've made. More punkish and less spacey.



Edited by chamberry - November 20 2007 at 14:27

Cheers Rottenhat.

Raunio is a freak of an album. You should check out  Guillotine which is their weirdest, druggiest and most experimental album to date. There are some seriously disturbing songs in that album as well as 10+ minute hypnotically rhythmic songs.

ahahah maybe at most Can. 

Krautrock, as a musical genre tag, needs to die.  In its initial usage the term was largely geographical by nature, and had little if anything to do with musical style.  It was applied across the board to motorik trance-rock, noisy avant-garde-isms, jazz-rock fusion, heavy acid rock, folk-rock, progressive rock, space rock, and proto-ambient music; the only unifying characteristic was German origin. 

Don't get me wrong, I love and enjoy a lot of this inspiring music; I just think that the label needs to be discarded.  One can look at American or British rock genres and point out certain stylistic similarities; if someone were to lump all Anglo-American rock music-- progressive and otherwise-- into a single category we all know what would happen.  There would be a tremendous outcry from the various camps (progressive, metal, psych, alt/indie, etc.), wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc.  Just look at how subdivided "progressive rock" is... Why can't the German bands be interfiled with their counterparts from the rest of the world?

Edited by nightlamp - December 21 2007 at 19:30

Hmm...Krautrock as an offensive term?  I would be offended if called a Kraut by a stranger, so can well understand the initial outcry from some way back then...but not all German bands, or indeed fans, were offended.  There is a sense of alternative coolness some Germans feel when allowed to embrace a term in irony given to them in compliment by the English-speaking world.  It is a sense of recognition.

It certainly is interesting: Punk, Funk, Grunge, Gothic et al are genre names that represent an image.  Ambient, Progressive, Alternative, Folk are genre names that represent a style of music.  Kraut is...well...Kraut is either a cabbage or a disparaging term for a German person.

However, a lot of non-German peoples are interested in this music...and most non-German people can normally speak a bit of, or a lot of, English.  The term "Krautrock" is English-friendly, and is to-the-point.  Unlike "kosmische Musik", which sounds like it was invented by clever Englishmen, rarely used as it is by Germans.  Half the bands mostly sing in English anyway and would probably prefer "spacecake music" among dozens of other possible terms. 

The term "Krautrock" is useful in that it makes it easier to identify and discuss a scene: in my eyes Krautrock describes late 60's to mid 70's West-German experimental and avant garde music (not just rock) incorporating one or more of instruments such as: bass, guitars, keyboards, organs, drums, samplers, tapes, feedbacked mics etc.

I think for bands that originated from the 80's onwards that sound like Krautrock can not be classified as Krautrock simply because the scene is missing.  Krautrock was of its time and did not describe a style, or even genre, of music...but a localised scene within an era of time.


For the record I am still discovering music from this fascinating scene, so far my favourite albums are:

Can - Tago Mago (good fun vibes, groovy, likeable vocals)
Harmonia - Musik von Harmonia (infectious & evocative instrumental drives)

Am looking forward to checking out both Amon Düüls, Ash Ra Tempel and Neu!.

I would steer clear of the first Klaus Schulze (Irrlicht) unless you're a music history buff, there is nothing here apart from a drone that lasts one hour.

nightlamp wrote: Krautrock, as a musical genre tag, needs to die.  In its initial usage the term was largely geographical by nature, and had little if anything to do with musical style.  It was applied across the board to motorik trance-rock, noisy avant-garde-isms, jazz-rock fusion, heavy acid rock, folk-rock, progressive rock, space rock, and proto-ambient music; the only unifying characteristic was German origin.  Don't get me wrong, I love and enjoy a lot of this inspiring music; I just think that the label needs to be discarded.  One can look at American or British rock genres and point out certain stylistic similarities; if someone were to lump all Anglo-American rock music-- progressive and otherwise-- into a single category we all know what would happen.  There would be a tremendous outcry from the various camps (progressive, metal, psych, alt/indie, etc.), wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc.  Just look at how subdivided "progressive rock" is... Why can't the German bands be interfiled with their counterparts from the rest of the world?

You just lumped them all together in a single category - "all Anglo-American rock music".

I think everyone realises the wide range of differences within a genre (see the recent progressive metal split). Nobody's trying to say that Can sounds the same as Faust or that Amon Duul sounds like Neu! However, I haven't heard many non-German bands of the 70s that sound like Krautrock.

There's something about Krautrock bands which, to me, groups them together in a way similar to Italian Symphonic Prog bands, where there are enough differences to list them separately from other symphonic prog. 

Maybe it's a good idea to shout out a Krautrock-related review we've just done on this thread.

I've just wrote up one for Musik von Harmonia (which only had 2 reviews previous to that).


Let's beef up the reviews for the kosmische komische Musik they and we affectionately call Krautrock