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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Krautrock must haves
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Shamanic Freak'n'Roll
Dec 16, 2003, 16:14
Well, in reply to the original question, I came up only with the *more obscure* German releases pre-supposing everyone was already familiar with the KRS and the AOTMs here, which are obvious essential Third-Eye openers in conjunction with their contemporary wizards Ziggy, Sabbath, Beefheart, Funkadelic, Hawkwind, Magma, etc and far superior to the decaffeinated-in-sound / domesticated-in-attitude prog rock in England of the time, perhaps due to the fact that countries like Japan and Germany after the war were a total balls-up for decades to come, both socially and historically, whereas the 'winners' drank tea or self-complacently erected statues after the victory. It is easy to see how much more interlinked music and the revolutionary politics of 68 were in those two countries. Even the jazzy-tinged albums by bands like Xhol Caravan were always far more freaky than the meaningless dilettantism of post-1971 Soft Machine.

Most of the more obscure worthy German releases are 20 to 30 one-off albums of the type of High Tide, Cromagnon, Hapshash, Ceremony, Mahogany Brain, Harvester, Tractor or Granicus in the rest of the world, you know, bands that never got recognized because they vanished after one release, but which are far more rewarding than, say, Hawkwind's 32nd overrated release.

And there it should end. Because during the Krautrock reappraisal of the mid-90s lots of German bands like Wallenstein, Embryo, Jane or Birth Control started to sell and confuse people. But those are not the bands that I am hailing here (unless you like conventional 70s rock).
I'd say stick to the KRS releases and get the one (or two) record by Gila, Virus, Hairy Chapter, Brainticket, AR Machines, Sand, Mythos, Dzyan, Between, etc or the few I mentioned in my earlier post. A good complementary guide to the KRS is the Freemans Top 100 although the whole book itself does NOT discriminate so ignore it or photocopy the last page. Or Krautrock.org which is essentially the same but adding a couple of later excellent albums by K.Schulze or T.Dream. Both include the 60 or so records that Cope recommends both in the Krautrocksampler and here in the Album of the Month.
Anything German outside those guides is very dubious. I must have tapped into about 500 German bands, 90% are shit (same rates as anywhere else, really).
But the worthy stuff is up there among the visionary best.
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Krautrock must haves (Stevo)
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