Krautrock

[Serge]

I think there may have been a thread before, but I hope no-one minds me starting a new one. I was turned onto krautrock by a combination of my dad having 'The Faust Tapes' and Julian Cope writing 'Krautrocksampler'. At the time the book was published - 1995, I think - it was almost impossible to get hold of most of the music, at least in the record shops of my home town, with the internet not being an option then. So I had to make do with Cope's descriptions of the records, which, allied with the one krautrock record I could hear (the aforementioned 'Tapes') made me think that this must be the greatest music ever made. Possibly the fact that this music was so hard to get hold of was part of that, but having tracked down most of the Top 50 in the book (and many others besides), I'm definitely of the opinion that whatever was going on in Germany in the period from 1968-1980ish was something amazing, something that's continuing to exert its influence on music today, while for the most part still sounding like it could have been recorded yesterday.

Although Cope pretty much dismisses them in his book, my favourite krautrock band has to be Kraftwerk. I know that their later music doesn't fit into some people's conception of krautrock, but that was only ever a (British) name for a whole range of music that didn't follow one style. (Neu! sound nothing like Faust, who sound nothing like Tangerine Dream, etc.) Anyway, Kraftwerk. Although I do like their earlier albums (especially 'Ralf Und Florian'), their run of albums from 'Autobahn' to 'Computer World' (with the 'Tour De France' single as a postscript) forms part of my Holy Trinity with the works of David Bowie 1969-1980 and Scott Walker 1966-1977. I always find it hard to single out any one album. I'd say 'Trans-Europe Express' probably edges it, but 'Man Machine' and 'Computer World' aren't far behind.

Neu! come next for me, though that includes the whole family tree of Harmonia and La Dusseldorf and the closely linked Cluster. The three Neu! albums are seen as classics now, but for a long time they were in a black hole of unavailability which allowed people like Stereolab (who I like) to get away with appropriating bits of their sound and passing it off as new. (Or neu.) 'Neu! 75' is my favourite, and opening trach 'Isi' is a contender for 'Best Side One, Track One Ever'. Harmonia's 'De Luxe' is a fabulous and magical album, and still not well known enough. I used to work with a Spanish krautrock freak who taped me the two Harmonia albums, and I actually paid £25 for an import version of 'De Luxe', so taken was I with it. I love the first La Dusseldorf' album (especially 'Silver Cloud'), but am not so keen on 'Viva' which I find a bit too cheesy. Clusters records developed from the early epic soundscapey ones to the later sugar coated tinkly melody ones (key album 'Zuckerzeit's title translates as 'Sugar Time'.) Roedelius and Moebius managed to continue in this vein into the eighties, collaborating with Eno along the way and releasing a slew of solo albums, including Moebius' records with legendary German producer Conny Plank, one of which had my all time favourite album title, 'Rastakrautpasta'! Someone recently reissued a Roedelius album from the late seventies called 'Jardin Au Fou' which I was completely unaware of, and which is utterly gorgeous.

Can are probably pretty well known, though it's a shame that Cope pretty much writes them off after 'Ege Bamyasi'. Sure, the first four albums are absolutely monumental out-there slabs of greatness, but even a lesser Can album beats most other people on a good day.

Faust are, as Cope (him again) points out, one of the most mythical bands that ever lived. After years of listening to their original four albums ('Faust', 'So Far', 'The Faust Tapes' and 'Faust IV') when I finally saw a picture of them, it was a shock to realise that they were actually human beings with long hair and beards. Their records - particularly 'Tapes' - still sound like they could be beamed in from another world.

Klaus Schulze is a favourite of mine, for the albums 'Irrlicht' and 'Cyborg'. 'Irrlicht' really is the sound of planets moving in deep space, it's incredible. It's the music that's inside Doctor Frankensteins head. Schulze was also an early member of Tangerine Dream, though he'd left by the time my favourite of their albums, 'Zeit', was released. He also appeared - without his knowledge or consent originally - on the fabulous Cosmic Jokers albums alongside members of Ash Ra Tempel who are one of the few krautrock bands I don't have any records by, though I do own Manuel Göttsching's epic 'E2-E4'.

I've just scratched the surface of what I could say about krautrock here. If this thread takes off, I'm sure I'll be drooling on a lot more about it, as I am, as you've probably guessed, a bit of an obsessive. (Or as Copey says, "I'll be honest. I really like krautrock.") I wish Julian Cope would republish that book, especially now that most of the albums are freely available (and many of them on vinyl again as well!), but for some reason he seems to be set against it. There is a new book coming out later this year by Black Dog Publishing, but that's likely to be more of a coffee table kind of thing.

I'm sure there are many fellow Heads on here who are into this stuff (and I didn't even mention Walter Wegmüller's mighty 'Tarot') so here's the thread to rant and rave about it!

[Famous Mortimer]

Top post Serge!

I discovered them at Uni. I had gotten into Trumans Water and other experimental-leaning bands, and in my first few weeks at Uni met up with a couple of local guys who ran a tape label. I have them to thank for lots of the great music in my collection. Anyway, they did me "Tago Mago" by Can and "Faust IV" by Faust first, and we just went from there.

What you say about the era is interesting, and I've no real idea why it happened. I don't know if the spirit of the student protests in 1968 helped kickstart a lot of musicians, but it seems they just sprang up.

Can first. I sadly agree with Cope on this one – I've heard "Soon Over Babaluma" and it sort-of sounded like the earlier albums but without any of the invention or spark that made them so great. Again, don't know why, but I really struggle to listen to anything past that point myself. "Tago Mago" is still one of my favourite albums ever though, just the sheer scale of the imagination contained, the ideas all over the place, the mixture of styles...it's really really good.

My favourite Kraftwerk album, sorry, Kraftwerk (I've been trying to get people to bold usernames and stuff for a bit, too) is the bootleg of their performance at the Tribal Gathering in 1997, which I listened to on the radio when it was originally broadcast and hunted down for years before the internet bootlegging age. It's the perfect mix for me of their old sound and the myriad bands they influenced. In fact, I'm going to go home after work and put it on. In terms of their proper albums, I think they're pretty much all brilliant, apart from their later stuff like "The Mix".


My Neu! Knowledge comes from their first three albums, which I adore, but in terms of the family of bands which you mentioned I know nothing. Something to explore there maybe.

Faust though, eh? When I am an old man, and I write my space-blog entry about the ten best gigs I ever went to, Faust at the Royal Festival Hall, providing a new soundtrack to the film "Nosferatu", will be up there among them. I took two non-fans along, and by the end they were itching to get home and order some of their albums..."Faust IV" is still my favourite of theirs, but I'm not sure they ever made a bad album. I still remember the nasty charity shop I found "The Faust Tapes" in, for 50p.

What else? Oh yes, I saw Tangerine Dream live as well, years ago. I don't recall them being particularly good, but this is long long after they'd stopped being interesting (my first exposure to them was them doing soundtrack songs for 80s US teen films, as I recall). You didn't mention one of my favourites, Amon Duul, and I don't even base my love for them on that one of the (Amon Duul 2) albums was called, translated, "God's Cock".

So yes. You've inspired me to go home after work and slap some krautrock on. And I'll have a listen to some of the other stuff you recommended.

[another Mr. Lizard]

I'm a fan - and have shopped at Ultima Thule in Leicester a few times too (is that still open?).

'Neu! 75' is one of the best albums ever, doing 'ambient' at roughly the same time as Eno and also, astoundingly, pre-empting the Sex Pistols by a year, on the same record.

The recent 'Brand Neu' compilation (an odd various artists thing featuring the likes of Oasis and Kasabian) shows just how far and wide their influence has spread - as you said, Serge, the unavailability of their stuff for years allowed a few interlopers to nick the Neu! style. Bowie openly admitted it. Fujiya & Miyagi are the act who have come closest to recapturing the Neu! glory days - very impressive.

I've got one or two Kraut rarities that I ought to mention, alongside most of the classic material, but will have a browse through my cd racks when I get home before posting any recommendations. 'Cluster II' is worth an early nod, though - an album that sounds like the Tardis taking off, for forty minutes.

[Gradual Decline]

Great stuff guys. I'll add some current favourites to the list for folk to check out:

Wolfgang Dauner (Quintet)
Sergius Golowin
Eroc
Grobschnitt
Michael Rother
Zippo Zetterlink
German Oak

[Johnny Townmouse]

I'm a fan - and have shopped at Ultima Thule in Leicester a few times too (is that still open?).

I moved to Leicester a year ago and on first arriving I went to Ultima Thule to check it out. It was closed, and now 18 months later after repeated visits I am yet to find it open, although I did shockingly see it open one time from a bus.
I would assume that they don't do a lot of passing trade, and do most business by mail order.

[Johnny Townmouse]

I suppose I would consider myself to be a fan of Krautrock, though I do find it a weird term. There seems to be so many bands included in the 'field' of krautrock that bear little or no resemblence to each other, whilst at the same time certain bands that could be included, are not.

Faust for me are the masters, though I often find myself enjoying Can and Neu!
My entry into krautrock comes from a love of british noise music in the late 80s and early 90s, plus a love of the weirder ends of experimental and avant-garde music. I used to spend far too much time in the Reccommended records shop in Stockwell and would buy and listen to whatever I could. The Krautrock stuff took some time for me to really get into because it lacks some of the punk sound aesthetic that was present even in some of the more extreme music I listened to (Swans, Whitehouse, Einstürzende Neubauten, Naked City etc...even Nurse with Wound, Foetus and Negativland ). After listening to a lot of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and getting into the sonic soundscapes of Zoviet France and Thomas Köner, I worked backwards to find Krautrock anew, immediately sounding less ambient and more rhythmical than I remembered it.

If I have breaks from listening to those bands, and then come back to me, I am always surprised by how influential their sound is. Isi by Neu for me is particularly seminal - I am constantly hearing that kind of sound in music, particularly in the likes of Stereolab, David Holmes, Chemical Brothers etc.

[Little Hoover]

I'm was only fairly introduced to Krautrock fairly recently, it's both a blessing and curse, when you realise, there's a whole genre of music you hadn't heard of, as it's just so daunting to figure out what sort of stuff you like best, and which bands you'd most like to seek out. But it was a real "why has nobody ever told me about this stuff before" moment when I started to discover it. I'd always been a huge post-rock fan before discovering it, and I found krautrock kind of delivered in areas, where it felt like the post-rock genre had been limiting itself to me, and causing me to get a bit tired of it.

Like others, Can and Neu are some of my favourites, although nobody's mentioned Guru Guru yet, but are also an example of having a very long and seem to have changed their lineup frequently, so it seem only the original drummer has remained for all their albums.

I have found I tend to prefer the stuff that seems to be more guitar driven as opposed to more synth based stuff like cluster.

Don't Faust hate the term Krautrock, I mean the term Kraut is slightly racist isn't it?

[Famous Mortimer]

Don't Faust hate the term Krautrock, I mean the terms Kraut is slightly racist isn't it?

Faust made a song called "Krautrock" (as you probably know, sorry), so I'm thinking they maybe tried to reclaim it or something. It is a bit racist, I suppose, but I figure as I'm a fan of all those Germans, it's not as bad. Or something.

[Gradual Decline]

Yeah, we can always use the term 'Kosmische Musik' as a genre reference.

[NoSleep]

Besides, when I went to see Faust in 2006, the nearest they had to a German in the band was Zappi, an Austrian (I think this came to light when a friend of mine spoke to him). Aside from that there were three Frenchmen and an occasional supplement of an English(wo)man or three, not counting the numerous brass players (who, I think were drafted in for the UK stint of their tour, anyway - so were probably all Brits).

Nice thread... I'll join in later. I think I've already said my bit on Krautrock in the "where to start" thread, or similar. Nice to see Faust getting the props and love they deserve, even over Can.

[The Boston Crab]

My Neu! Knowledge comes from their first three albums, which I adore, but in terms of the family of bands which you mentioned I know nothing. Something to explore there maybe.

'Musik von Harmonia' is one of my favourite records full stop. It's got that krautrock 'drift' in spades but is positively buzzing with melody and vitality. It gets better and better as well. As someone who prefers Neu!'s ambient/melodic side to the more vocal-led brash stuff, this is a more consistent album than even Neu! 75, which is an instant go-to glory record for me.

[Serge]

Yeah, the term 'krautrock' is slightly dodgy - it's a typical mid-'70s british music press bit of racism. The German music press of the time should have called anything british 'Limeyrock', I guess! I like the term 'kosmiche', but in fairness it only really applies to about half of the acts, the more epic instrumental spacey stuff - despite the fact that I still think they sound like they come from another planet, Faust aren't really 'cosmic'! My pet hate at the moment is people reissuing anything german and using the word 'kraut' - the most recent offenders being the usually great Finders Keepers label, who put out two albums of strange german soundtrack music and repeatedly used the word 'kraut' on the sleeve - an obvious attempt to try and snag the attention of any krautrock fan. I have german friends who are slightly younger than me (I'm late thirties), who are unaware of the term 'kraut'.

There are a few more things I want to go into, but I'll have to come back later, I'm on my lunchbreak at work and it's time to get back to the coalface.....

[another Mr. Lizard]

Well the thread has inspired me to dig this old favourite out - one of my past purchases from U.T., as it happens




One that should appeal to the more, erm, 'laid-back' Krautheads out there. David Tibet is a huge fan, which probably tells you everything you need to know.

Besides Cope's book, wasn't there one by the U.T. guys too? 'The Crack In The Cosmic Egg', I think.

[Famous Mortimer]

While I remember, I'll big up my main men Popol Vuh. They did loads of great albums, lots of soundtrack stuff (Aguirre, Wrath of God and so on) and if you've not heard em, give em a go.

Oh, and fans of this sort of thing could do worse than check out the brilliant blog at http://decrepittapes.blogspot.com/

[Squink]

Yeah, the term 'krautrock' is slightly dodgy - it's a typical mid-'70s british music press bit of racism.

Nah, that's totally wrong. It was never racist in intent. It was a jokey term that struck a chord and ended up in widespread usage. People in Germany use the term "krautrock" all the time. If they don't have a problem with it, I don't see why anyone else would. I even bought a copy of Tago Mago from the krautrock section of a record shop in Berlin many years ago.

[Serge]

It is still a bit dodgy, 'kraut' was never exactly a term of endearment was it? But,as has been mentioned, the mighty Faust took the term and used it as the title of the opening track on 'Faust IV' and turned it round. And, as I say, younger German people that I know were unaware what the term means.

Popol Vuh were a band I forgot to mention. 'In Den Gärten Pharaos' is up there with 'Irrlicht' and 'Zeit' in the epic soundscape stakes, especially 'Vuh', which took up all of side two (in old money). And their first album, 'Affenstunde' has a title which translates as 'Monkey Hour' apparently. Fantastic.

Guru Guru I could never get into, really. 'UFO' is ok, but I can't really see why Copey raves about it (I have the same problem with some of the bands in his 'Japrocksampler'.) I know he wanted to limit his selection to 50, but I'm surprised he didn't find space for Agitation Free, whose 'Malesch' is pretty darn good too. I know he's not really into jazz, which explains the omission of Embryo.

Like Famous Mortimer, I am also a fan of Kraftwerks live shows, and the 'Minimum Maximum' double CD from two or three years ago has become a firm favourite. It's a shame that Florian has left the band, but it would have been an even bigger shame if it had happened thirty years ago. And buying 'The Faust Tapes' in a charity shop for 50p is entirely in keeping with the fact that when it was first released, it retailed at 49p, the then price of a single. My dads copy somehow ended up in my collection a few years ago, though I have the CD too, which still doesn't end the debate about what most of the track titles are! (Not that it really matters - I have it on my Ipod as 'Side One' and 'Side Two', it was made to be listened to all the way through.) Has anyone heard the Faust And Tony Conrad album? There was a great 30th anniversary edition I picked up a few years ago, containing the original two epic mantras plus extra tracks.

I've never made it to the Ultima Thule shop, despite having grown up in the Midlands. As I say, a lot of the best stuff is more freely available now, which is great. I have to agree with another Mr Lizard about 'Cluster II' though - it would soundtrack a (good) 'Doctor Who' episode perfectly!

I don't know much of Michael Rother's solo stuff, except for 'Flammende Herzen', which contains the wonderful 'Feuerland' and 'Karussel', the latter of which would fit in on a Cluster or Roedelius album. The two albums that Cluster made with Eno are pretty good (and of course, they cowrote 'By This River' on his 'Before And After Science' album), plus the two 'Begegnungen' compilations.

That SAND album looks good. The only possible downside to Copes book is that it sets up imaginary parameters for what is and isn't krautrock, so if a band isn't in the book, it's not proper krautrock, which I'm sure Julian would be the first to argue against. I've never owned the 'Crack In The Cosmic Egg' book, though I did lovingly finger it in a bookshop many years ago....!

Funnily enough, talking of influences, I heard an album today that's released on Monday on Soul Jazz records by a band called Subway, which wears its krautrock influences firmly on its sleeve;one track is even called 'Harmonia' for flips sake. Last years 'Eine Kleine Nacht Musik' album was cut from the same cloth, as was Death In Vegas' 'Satans Circus' from a few years ago. There was even a great track on there called 'Sons Of Rother', though naturally Copey went one further by naming a track 'Michael Rother' in his Jehovahkill days. I always thought that Fujiya And Miyagi did it quite badly, especially on their more recent album, which showed them following the template too closely and without bringing anything new to the mix at all. Primal Scream have their fair share of krautrock rip offs - 'Kowalski' has the 'Halleluhwah' drums from Tago Mago and 'A Scanner Darkly' is definitely a nod to Neu!

Oh, and mentioning the Halleluhwah drums, one last thing: Jaki Leibezeit - The Greatest Drummer That Ever Lived.

[buttgammon]

Oh, and mentioning the Halleluhwah drums, one last thing: Jaki Leibezeit - The Greatest Drummer That Ever Lived.

Absolutely. Aside from the obvious Can tracks, he played on the brilliant Brian Eno song 'Backwater' and in doing so created one of the most amazing backdrops of drum sounds I've ever heard. His drums on that track are quite subtle as it's the plodding piano which really draws your attention but the more I listen to it, the more fantastic I think his contribution is. The hi-hat on that song is perfect.

The band Subway are excellent too. I've heard a few of their tracks on Soul Jazz compilations and though I wouldn't necessarily consider them a Krautrock band as such, the Krautrock influence on their music is clear and they're certainly one to check out for Krautrock fans. I particularly like a very repetitive electronicky song they did called 'Satellites'.

[Roy*Mallard]

I could go on endlessly about Krautrock, but i won't cos everything i love has pretty much been mentioned here.

My fave Krautrock album ... if not my fave album outright (certainly in my top 3) is Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate - two long, plodding tracks that you can listen to and use as background music. Stunning album.

Ash Ra Tempel - Join Inn is fantastic - you have a rocky, improv side (featuring some incredible drumming from Klaus Schultze) and then a quiet ambient-ish side. Also well worth hearing is 7 Up, their album with Timothy Leary.

Edgar Froese - Epsilon In Malasian Pale and Aqua - similar to Phaedra type Tangerine Dream works that also seemingly influenced the late period material of Coil. Note: don't buy the recent cd issue of Epsilon cos Edgar re-recorded some bits of it and it sounds nothing like it used to - in fact he ruined it - shame really, as the original cd release has been long deleted. Go look for the original recording on a blogspot somewhere.

Brainticket - yep, they weren't German - Dutch, in fact - but their album Cottonwoodhill is incredible, and certainly a little krauty.

Xhol - Motherfuckers GMBH & Co KG - psychy and uncouth - well worth hearing.

Faust were/are stunning and it's worthwhile picking up their later albums too - in particular You Know Faust, Rien, Nosferatu and Patchwork (sort of Faust Tapes 2, tho not as good, but a very good album certainly). Recently picked up the Faust Impressions dvd - some of the videos are poor, but the music is first rate.

Can - well, i can listen to Can up to '75's Landed - horrible lyrics, but the music is still really strong. My fave would be Unlimited Edition - such a great ragbag of styles.

Amon Duul II - i don't know what it is, but i have never 'got' Amon Duul - Yeti is their best, but Wolf City is pretty great, other than that ..... Oh, i really did like AD I's  Psychedelic Underground - tho some of that early stuff is poor.

Guru Guru - love UFO, Hinten and Kanguru, but after that it's all diminishing returns - be careful!

La Dusseldorf - i actually prefer Individuellos over the first 2 - it's mainly keyboard led, but works for me every time. Thomas Dinger's album Fur Mich is in the same style as Individuellos, and is pretty nice.

Never been a huge Cluster/Kluster fan however, there's a lot by Dieter Moebius that i apreciate - Rasterkrautpasta (another use of the word kraut there) of course along with Tonspuren and his collaboration with Gerd Beerbohm called Strange Music, which has been likened to My Life In A Bush Of Ghosts and PIL doing krautrock - fair assessments. Oh, i really love the Cluster Eno albums - seek them out.

Cosmic Jokers - personally, i love the Sci-Fi Party and Gilles Zeitchiff albums most of all.

Ok, i'll shut up now.

[Funcrusher]

Put me down as another Krautrock liker. Can are my faves and probably my favourite band of all time. The post '74 stuff doesn't really interest me, but any suggestion that 'Future Days' isn't a masterpiece is just mad, and 'Soon Over Babaluma' is great too- their creative force is waning a little bit, but it's still amazing and has a sound all of its own.

I think all the obvious suspects have been named already, but I could add "E2-E4" by Manuel Gottsching, the ultimate proto-house/techno record.

[Serge]

Ash Re Tempel are another gap in my collection, though I like what I've heard on the web.

Funnily enough, 'Future Days' is the one Can album I could never get into. Having said that, I really need to get around to getting some of the remastered Can CDs, all of mine are the older reissues which all sound a bit quiet. Going back to Jaki Leibezeit, there's a great bit in the Can documentary where they're talking about the fact that drum machines are programmed to make odd little mistakes every now and then to give them a 'humanizing factor'. Someone says, "Jaki doesn't have that." There's some great footage in that documentary; there's a clip from an old TV show, where they're being interviewed while sitting on a staircase, and Irmin Schmidt is fantastic. The look on his face is pure Punk, years ahead of its time.

Brainticket are great, 'Cottonwoodhill' is absolutely demented! Having recently got into Magma, I should also try and check out other European music from the same era, if anyone's got any recommendations, I'm always interested!

I love 'E2-E4', which is, as Funcrusher says, another one of those incredibly influential albums. (Just ask James Murphy...) Lindstrom And Prins Thomas have certainly lent an ear to that too, I would have said, as well as most of the other 'nu-balearica' crowd.

Another recent track I should have mentioned showing an influence is 'Sea Within A Sea' by The Horrors. Their album is pretty likely to be my album of the year this year, and that track is the undoubted highlight. The moment when the keyboards come in halfway through.....fantastic.

[Famous Mortimer]

Can I widen this to discuss all the Rock In Opposition stuff (although that was mainly French)? Univers Zero were really really good.

PS. I will discuss it more than by just saying that, if other people want to.

[Roy*Mallard]

Funnily enough, 'Future Days' is the one Can album I could never get into. Having said that, I really need to get around to getting some of the remastered Can CDs, all of mine are the older reissues which all sound a bit quiet.

Future Days is superb - not as enthralling as previous albums, but by that time they had really gelled as a group and it's, in my book, a perfect album.

Yep, you really need the remasters to totally appreciate them - i bought the Japanese remasters with replica vinyl sleeves - they were just too damn sexy to resist.

[NoSleep]

Can I widen this to discuss all the Rock In Opposition stuff (although that was mainly French)? Univers Zero were really really good.

PS. I will discuss it more than by just saying that, if other people want to.

That could really do with its own thread, if anything. Faust are really the only band that fit into both categories, in part by association with Slapp Happy/Henry Cow (Faust are the backing band on Slapp Happy's Acnalbasac Noom, for example), but also by the difference in the content and intent of Faust's music in comparison to other Krautrock bands.

[Serge]

Another thing which is nice at the moment is that a lot of stuff is getting reissued on vinyl. I've managed to get hold of the three Neu! albums, Harmonia's 'Deluxe', 'Cluster II' and 'Zuckerzeit', the first Faust album (pressed on clear vinyl in a clear sleeve as it was originally) and Can's 'Tago Mago' and 'Ege Bamyasi' in the last year or so. All albums I already owned on CD, but managing to get hold of them on their original format is great!

[Famous Mortimer]

Thanks to the bigging up on here, I listened to and thoroughly enjoyed Cluster 2. It's surprisingly modern-sounding...I mean it could have been made by some experimental electronica band last month, as opposed to some German guys, whenever they made it.

Then I listened to some normal guitar band (Frodus?) who may have been great, they just sounded rubbish in comparison.

[The Boston Crab]

I promise promise: Musik von Harmonia

[Serge]

Although I just prefer 'De Luxe', I'd say both the Harmonia albums - well, all three including the live album which came out a couple of years ago - are essential. The Neu!-Cluster end of krautrock is definitely my favourite, Klaus Schulze's 'Irrlicht' notwithstanding.

[Ginyard]

Klaus Schulze was a big influence on me when I was younger. I ended up buying a whopping great modular synth from a company called synthesizers.com last year because I wanted to be able to pull off the moog step time sequence stuff he and Tangerine Dream did so well, for a danish tv drama I was scoring. Its this sort of morphic tweaking that I really enjoy, where the sequencers drift so occasionally some interesting polyrhythms float in and out here and there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUCYq2qLxJc&feature=related

[Serge]

That's a great clip! Any epic synth workouts do it for me, even stuff like 'Oxygene'. 70's synths = Heaven for me.

Has anyone seen the DVD that came out last year about Kraftwerk and associated krautrock things? Apart from the fact they don't cover Neu! much (strange, considering Neu!'s roots in an early line up of Kraftwerk), it's a pretty interesting documentary, though I wouldn't advise watching all three hours in one go, as I did. Klaus Schulze is interviewed, as is Conrad Schnitzler. There was also a DVD by the same people a few years ago covering Bowie's Berlin years, which had Michael Rother and Moebius being interviewed. I actually saw Moebius in East London earlier this year, when he was over here with Cluster. It didn't strike me who he was at first, I recognised him, but thought it was just someone I'd seen around. The penny only dropped later when I realised I'd seen his face in the Bowie documentary.

[ajsmith]

That's a great clip! Any epic synth workouts do it for me, even stuff like 'Oxygene'. 70's synths = Heaven for me.

Has anyone seen the DVD that came out last year about Kraftwerk and associated krautrock things? Apart from the fact they don't cover Neu! much (strange, considering Neu!'s roots in an early line up of Kraftwerk), it's a pretty interesting documentary, though I wouldn't advise watching all three hours in one go, as I did. Klaus Schulze is interviewed, as is Conrad Schnitzler. There was also a DVD by the same people a few years ago covering Bowie's Berlin years, which had Michael Rother and Moebius being interviewed. I actually saw Moebius in East London earlier this year, when he was over here with Cluster. It didn't strike me who he was at first, I recognised him, but thought it was just someone I'd seen around. The penny only dropped later when I realised I'd seen his face in the Bowie documentary.

I saw (most of) it (until my DVD packed in circa The Man Machine): it was a very interesting watch for a neophyte (me) to the genre, although it did seem to be more a history of Kraftwerk with a few detours: a bonus to see cartoonist/Alan Moore compliemnt Savage Pencil (Edwin Pouncey) in there too. am now going to investigate if Kraftwerk the kind of band you can get cheap on 2nd hand vinyl.