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Unsung Forum » Krautrock: Love it or Hate it! |
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Lord Lucan 2702 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 12:38
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Twaddle sometimes just sounds more mystical if it's left in a foreign language though! Heheh.
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Lord Lucan 2702 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 12:45
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Yes, it's very good, very strange stuff. Kinda like Cluster with Roedelius's pastoral tendency taken out of it. Calling it Krautrock is a bit misleading really too, as it's mainly synth driven stuff. The CD must be find-able somewhere on the web I'd have thought. Worth the investment too, as you get the Moebius/Plank album Material, which is almost as good, included.
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Stevo 6664 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 13:01
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I've always wondered how popular Krautrock was at the time. After reading that record shops in backwater(? hope that ain't contentious) places had large sections devoted to it it looks like it must've been on a large footing. I like a lot of the stuff I've heard mainly because of its transcendent qualities, what i like seems not to get bagged down into the same overly self important ego trip that prog gets stereotyped with. A lot of what I like seems to be based on the same modal impro type stuff I like about the San Francisco stuff I'm into + freejazz and stuff. I always wonder to what extent you can call stuff krautrock -like is everything that was put out by a band normally categorised as KR automatically going to be KR. Or is it that trancey impro stuff particularly? and what about national boundaries, surely other countries had some similar stuff coming out at the same time, (I know they did, I have bits of it) what do you call that? I think I need to get hold of a lot more of it, but then I always do. Stevo Np Tim Buckley I Just Dont Work Right in the Morning http://www.timbuckley.org
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Fatalist 1123 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 14:01
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For a different view from the usual about how popular Krautrock was at the time, go here: http://www.furious.com/perfect/krautrock.html And then indulge yourself here: http://www.phinnweb.com/krautrock/index2.html As to what defines Krautrock, this kind of chimes in with something I've been thinking about lately ie. that there seems to be an 'acceptable canon' of bands that always get referenced (great though some of them are), while other innovative German rock acts of the time get sidelined. OK, I'm talking with an emphasis on 'rock' here (as is my wont!), but how about: Frumpy - yes, stupid name, but they were one of the few German bands of the 70s to actually sell records at the time in their homeland. Not a recommendation in itself, but check out 'Frumpy 2', which contains the awesone 'Good Winds' - ace organ/guitar soundclash, plus Inga Rumpf is one of the most brilliant singers I've heard Night Sun - intelligently heavy in a way that most bands of the time seemed incapable of, but also excellently sinister in places - 'Got A Bone Of My Own' is genuinely unnerving (Conny Plank production too) Hairy Chapter - yep, another stupid name, but the way they chop up the prevailing UK blues rock thang with very quiet acoustic passages (particularly on 2nd album 'Can't Get Through') brings to mind a combo of King Crimson and the Groundhogs 2066 and then - mad heavy prog. Only one album ('Reflections'), which I've only just got hold of, but suffice to say I drunkenly fell asleep to it last night and then had a jumping-out-of-bed-like-a-big-girl nightmare (These last three are all available on the excellent Second Battle re-release label incidentally) And while I'm on the subject of scary proto-rock, has anybody else here heard that Icecross album, made in 1973 by some very wrong men from Iceland??? Bloody hell...
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necropolist 1689 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 14:08
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wella wella, i was looking at them sites last night, andf was considering posting them up for peoples comments too.
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Popel Vooje 5373 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 14:11
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For me, despite the obvious derivations of my username, it's a mixture - like most genres. The first division contains a number of extremely fine bands - Can, Faust, early Amon Duul II, Popol Vuh, Guru Guru and especially the whole Dusseldorf axis (Neu!, Harmonia, La Dusseldorf and of course Kraftwerk). However, one or two of the other acts Julian recommends I would take issue with (especially the Cosmic Jokers, whose name I feel is appropriate as they seem like the noodly jokers in the pack to me - not that they were a real band as such anyway). However, my exploration of the second and third tiers of Krautrock came to an abrupt halt after a friend of mine who works in a second hand shop compiled me a CD of German bands NOT covered in "Krautrocksampler". Useless, derivative & dated kak, all of it. Worse even than English prog rock (which I know has many fans around here, but I am not one of them). Also, I feel that almost all of the Krautrock bands - even the good ones - had past their creative peaks by 1976, if not earlier. So, as with just about any other genre of music, I'd say there's some great stuff there, but some discrimination is necessary.
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Mr Altres 140 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 15:42
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I love loads of stuff by these bands but these are my favourite by each artist. Zeit - Tangerine Dream Ash Ra Tempel - Ash Ra Tempel Amon Duul II - Wolf City Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra Can - Tago Mago Guru Guru - UFO Neu! - Neu! Holger Czukay - On The Way To The Peak Of Normal The Cosmic Jokers - The Cosmic Jokers Klaus Schulze - Blackdance Conrad Schnitzler - Conal Kluster - Eruption Edgar froese - Epsilon in Malaysian Pale I know some of these aren't exactly Krautrock in the purist sense, but they are all great albums.
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Popel Vooje 5373 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 16:03
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Regarding the question of how popular it was at the time, just about everyone on the scene who's been asked seems to think that with a few exceptions like Kraftwerk and Neu!, it was more popular in Britain than in Germany.
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Lugia 970 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 16:19
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As for my faves, there's really too much of it to practically list here. Loads and loads and loads and loads and loads. I should also note that anyone who's listening to this stuff and getting big into it NEEDS to listen to Karlheinz Stockhausen's work from "Gesang der Jünglinge" up thru "Trans". Especially that first piece, "Kontakte", "Telemusik", "Hymnen" and the free-music-type noisefun of "Kurzwellen". Stocki's music is a critical element in all of what came out of the Krautrock scene in some way or another. However, there have also been some Krautrock and kraut-related things that have elicited some real cringes from me over the years... Jane...nonononoooo...picked up the first album on the basis of Conny Plank producing. Ugly prog-metal, with screechy vocals, all of it going approximately nowhere very fast. Album has perhaps one of the ugliest covers known to god and man, also, which was part of why I picked it up optimistically in the first place. But no...it just mirrors the bleah-ness of what's inside. I have heard that later albums of theirs are even worse, which makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Kraan...got "Let it Out"...and aside of the rather interesting "Die Maschine", it's all feh-delic jazzrock junk that seems to have nothing to do with that one track. Had about the same effect on me as accidentally buying the 'Gong' album "Gazeuse" after getting very into the whole PHP Trilogy stuff. Ash Ra Tempel: "Seven Up"...might've seemed like a good idea at the time, particularly if 'at the time' included being jacked up on a couple thousand mikes of White Lightning. Seems like a very BAD one now. Even if the charges they sent Tim Leary back to prison on were trumped-up and total Nixonian poop, you could've easily held up his vocals here as a valid excuse to have him locked up. Later Guru Guru. Early Guru Guru good, later Guru Guru...ahh...is this even the same band? Same planet? Did someone put lameness drugs into the studio water cooler? Mr. Neumaier, please pick up the white courtesy clue-phone... Novalis...ok, here's where I start getting ambivalent. Their first self-titled album is either one of the best arguments either FOR or AGAINST prog. It all depends on how you look at it. They do some amazing half-side-long workouts...but then again, they do some amazing half-side-long workouts. They base one piece off of a symphony by Bruckner...but then again, they base one piece off a symphony by Bruckner. They adapt lyrics from the German mystic/romantic poet Novalis...but then...well, you get the point. After that first album, which I say is worth getting just to see what I'm talking about here, there were some personnel changes and the usual 2nd-string German prog lameness settled in. Avoid. Liliental...a one-off Conny Plank-produced Kraut 'supersession'...in theory. In practice, the resulting album has some amazing ambient bits...and then some INCREDIBLY craptastic moments, particularly when they start veering off into Vegas lounge stylings. See my review of this elsewhere on the site for details. Eroc...there are some Kraut critics who really dote on his work. I found it aimless and tedious as hell. Very self-indulgent twaddle. I never got past "2", which was the only Eroc thing I ever picked up, mainly on the basis of said critics. Tritonus...ack, ech, ugh, bleah...unlike Novalis, this is definitely an argument AGAINST prog. Album cover, as I recall, has a hilariously disco-looking blue-painted nude girl on it, and while one long synth-driven track, "Mars Flight", is interesting, it's a situation sort of like that Kraan album above...everything around it just drags it down. I'm sure there's others to avoid, but the trauma of having encountered them is blocking their memory from my mind.
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silogut 432 posts |
Sep 02, 2004, 16:35
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yeah strange although it does support the contention JC makes in Krock Sampler that the term KrautRock is a strictly subjective english term. Maybe its just part of ongoing fascination with all things germanic. Just look at the extent the 2nd world war is covered in accademia. AS for the Krautrock sampler, I just can't help returning to that book every once in a while. All that strange lp cover art and exotic descriptions just makes me want to hear all of the music
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