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Underground > Radio & Music >

Krautrock

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14:04 / 05.07.04

BTW, there is an interview with ex-Can vocalist Damo Suzuki in this month's Wire.It's a fascinating interview, gives some good background on the group. Damo is apparently now on his Never Ending Tour which he says is going to last for the rest of his life, playing in a variety of diferent cities, improvising with groups of differing musicians (or "sound carriers" as he calls them) on each night. He comes over as endearlingly eccentric, a bit like your mad hippy uncle.

He's playing in London on July 14th at the Bull & Gate and tickets are only eight quid! Anyone fancy it? (PM me to avoid the threadrot)

16:08 / 05.07.04

Neu2 is meant to be the dodgy one, Riz. Apparently they ran out of studio time, and having next to no budget, remixed the same track twice by playing it at differing speeds. This takes up the second side.

Yeah, it goes completely wonky in the second half.. track 5 (I think) is a bit from earlier in the album speeded up to comedy chipmunk speed and I think another bit is the same thing slowed down, and there are tape glitches and silences and stuff.. ah, those wacky Germans. Hilarious the first time round, but I'm not sure that sort of thing makes for good repeated listening.

The first track is still ace though - it has a killer motorik beat and lots of lovely ambient-ish heavenly sounds.. most of the first side sounded pretty good too in fact.

Did anybody else hear that absolutely brilliant programme on Radio 2 last week, in which Paul Morley (who I believe has written a book along similar lines) outlined an alternative history of pop music wherein "Stockhhausen is Chuck Berry, Can are the Beatles, Throbbing Gristle are the Sex Pistols"? It was a great cliff-notes guide to all manner of weird-rock and electronica, concentrating heavily on krautrock stuff. Definitely I pretty amazing thing to hear on Radio 2 on a Tuesday evening, and it sent me straight down to the library with a new enthusiasm to try and check out some of the stuff mentioned..

21:24 / 26.02.05

For the CAN lovers, I found some infos in the new Sonic Seducer (german music magazine), issue 03/2005, page83:

All 14 albums got remastered and get republished these days. They are startting with Monster Movie, Ege Bamyasi, Tago Mago and Soundtracks.

The critic writes that the CDs are SACD compatible, but I don´t know, what SACD stands for.

01:35 / 27.02.05

SACD=Super Audio Compact Disc
This tells you about it...

07:27 / 27.02.05

Aha, thanks.

"SACD also has copy prevention features at the physical level, which for the moment appear to make this format nearly impossible to pirate"

I always wondered about the pirate/ninja discussion. Now, I know, I´m a pirate...

"...especially given the inconvenience of not being able to make backup copies or transfer the music to a portable digital audio player."

What kind of people invent such a format?! It´s totally useless, if I can´t get it on my mp3-player. Do they really expect people to sit at home for listening to their records?

My opinion: SACD = no future.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:40 / 29.11.06

Surprisingly, my first post to this thread, especially given that I was one of the people who interviewed Michael Rother in the radio show mentioned in the first post.

This just seemed an appropriate place to mention the passing of Peter Leopold of Amon Duul II on 8th November. How very sad. I met Peter once when I interviewed ADII for the radio show, and he was a nice, genial man who enjoyed his pint of Guinness at Heathrow Airport while the other members chatted away.

Not sure where this info came from originally, but I got it via the Faust email list:

"Just thought you might like to know that Amon Duul II's Peter Leopold died on the 8th November. He will be sadly missed, one of the great krautrock pioneers have lost their driving force.

The last time Peter appeared with ADII in the UK was for the Progeny 2 concert at the London Astoria in 2004.

A memorial service was held for Peter in Munich last week, where the remaining members of ADII sang a song for him."

I missed that ADII gig in London, and the one before it, both for really silly reasons - something I regret, especially now I guess I won't get to see them live again.

Auf wiedersehen, Peter.

lord nuneaton savage

14:33 / 29.11.06

Oh, I didn't know about that.

Time to put on "Yeti" extra bloody loud then.

05:41 / 30.11.06

I love my weekly fill of Krautrock! The woebot link will keep me entertained for a while thanks. There are a couple of bands who I would put in this category that I have not seen mentioned here.

One German band I do get a heap of inspiration from is a now defunct act called Couch who have 4 albums out, I can only track two of them down so far, which is a shame. I have "Fantasy" and "Profane" which are on my regular playlist and have been for 3 ears now. It's all instrumental too which I like. For me it exemplifies "Krautrock" to a tee. It's repetitive nature and clockwork beats are awesome to drive to. Each track starts out with small riffs & beats and crescendo's into a wave of noise that swirls around the head for some time after. Here is a review of the album Profane.

Ganger is a Glasgow band that relies on steady rocking beats with constant repetitive guitar riffs with soft female vocals. It has my kind of up-front big in-your-face drum production with constant riffage from twin guitars. There is a nice review here. Ganger's only album "Hammock Style" ruled my world constantly for about 6 months in 2002.

There is a band in Brisbane here called Del Toro who I would put in this category too, but it is a bit of a Mexican mix Krautrock. They are a 3 piece(with occasional trumpet) Instrumental act with a girl drummer! Yeah! Oh I have a pic of them in action too. I'm not sure how fine the line is between post-rock and krautrock? huh? wha? meh...

Lastly, Flux is the name of a release by James Plotkin from OLD and Ruth Collins. I risk being entirely off the beaten track here by lumping them in with Krautrock, but after listening to the album countless times, I think James had a week or two on Can and Neu before recording this. One of my latest finds which I play again and again. Patterns in Traffic is repeatable again and again. Plotkin's highly tuned riffage, Mick Harris programmed beats and Ruth Collins spoken word over the top keeps my feet tapping all album, well on the tracks that have beats, there are a couple of ambient bits in there too.

This would have to be one of my favorite genre's of music, it's building intensity, repetitiveness and timings make me come back to these artists more than most. I just wish more were doing it.

Happy Krautrocking!

09:20 / 30.11.06

Julian Cope did a Krautrock night at the NFT a few years ago. Plenty of Amol Duul (both versions), Can, Popul Vuh, members of Kraftwerk performing with Neu! I imagine a lot of it is on YouTube now.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:31 / 30.11.06

Actually, it was Kraftwerk when Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother were members, shortly before they formed NEU!.

There's a great recording of Kraftwerk live on Radio Bremen 1971 where their first track in particular sounds more like Sabbath than the pioneers of Techno.

11:00 / 02.12.06

Suticase Rider, thanks for those links, I'll check them out.

Joy Division Oven Gloves

01:51 / 15.05.07

I've also been after Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler for a while but all the second-hand english language copies I've seen are stupidly expensive. Does anyone know of another good history/critical treatment of Krautrock I might be able to lay my hands on?

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:32 / 15.05.07

another good history/critical treatment of Krautrock

I'd actually disagree that Krautrocksampler is very good at being either of those; Julian Cope is super-enthusiastic about the subject, but never really does much more than give a personal take on the matter. Which is fine, as far as it goes, and it's an enjoyable read - but the book only really assumes any position of authority on the subject by default.

As far as other books go, the Freeman bothers' Crack In The Cosmic Egg is a good place for discographies and the like, but not much more than that. The link is to a limited online version of the book, and apparently there is going to be a CDROM at some point; but while it's comprehensive, it's also quite out of date, though of course useful for historical purposes.

Similar in scope is Dag Erik Asbjornsen's Cosmic Dreams at Play, which is equally encyclopaedic - and offered for sale via one online shop for $500, second hand!

Other useful books are on individual artists: Stephen Iliffe's Painting with Sound - the life and music of Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a lovingly-produced biography and discography for the ambint/techno pioneer of Cluster fame, with every one of his extensive releases, solo or otherwise, reviewed and illustrated. Andy Wilson's Stretch Out Time 1970-1975 does the same in excellently readable style for Faust, with several chapters putting them in the context of other Krock bands of the era as well as the wider political landscape of post-war West Germany and of avantgarde and rock music in general.

Pascal Bussy has produced several books: Future Days: The Can Story (with Mick Fish) which I've not read, as well as the earlier Can Book which I seem to remember was pretty good; and Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music, which I may have a copy of but remember nothing about... and I've yet to read Wolfgang Flur's autobiography of his years in the band, Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot; maybe it's about time to do so.

German TV produced a mammoth TV series on the subject last year, apparently packed with rare footage and interviews, but I've not seen it.

Joy Division Oven Gloves

18:56 / 16.05.07

Huggles Angriff! Vielen Dank!

I get your point about Krautrocksampler's default authority - I've not seen anything else offering an overview of Krautrock. Andy Wilson comes across as very articulate and not afraid to be critical of his subject in the radio interviews you linked to so I think I'll start with his Faust book. I don't know their stuff very well but I like that he offers a social and musical context, which is really what I was after.

07:18 / 17.05.07

There are several places around offering PDFs of Krautrocksampler. You should be able to turn one up easily enough. It's an enjoyable read.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:41 / 17.05.07

Alternatively, if I can find my copy you're welcome to borrow it.

15:07 / 18.05.07

Any other fans of Einsturzende Neubauten out there?

Saw them live recently. TEH AWESOME.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

15:10 / 18.05.07

Oh yes, indeed, though I'm a little unsure that they fall within the terms of this thread per se. Perhaps you'd like to start a new one on EN?

16:09 / 18.05.07

YWIMC...

Bows...

Joy Division Oven Gloves

14:21 / 20.05.07

PDFs of Krautrocksampler

You know, I never once thought of putting the title and pdf into a search engine. How unbelievably stupid. Thank you, I found one straight away.

Alternatively, if I can find my copy you're welcome to borrow it.

That's very generous but it would only end up running the tea/coffee/fag ash gauntlet that has knackered quite a few of my books. I really appreciate the offer though, thanks.

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