A Little History of Krautrock Rising

The Rattles

The Witch 45

The Rattles had even produced West Germany’s first international hit, “The Witch”, but the groups still sounded like everyone else.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Hymnen

During all this fighting, it was casually overlooked that the German national anthem was only one of over 10 national anthems on Hymnen, and the mistreatment only appears on Side 2, along with the Russian anthem and a whole group of African anthems.

Amon Düül I

Psychedelic Underground

Amon Düül recorded (or over-recorded, to be more precise), one enormous session, which lasted so long that three of their LPs - Psychedelic Underground, Collapsing and the double-album Disaster - all came from it.

Amon Düül I

Collapsing: Singvögel Rückwärts & Co.

Amon Düül recorded (or over-recorded, to be more precise), one enormous session, which lasted so long that three of their LPs - Psychedelic Underground, Collapsing and the double-album Disaster - all came from it.

Amon Düül I

Disaster

Amon Düül recorded (or over-recorded, to be more precise), one enormous session, which lasted so long that three of their LPs - Psychedelic Underground, Collapsing and the double-album Disaster - all came from it.

Amon Düül II

Phallus Dei

Amon Düül II, the musical half of the commune, had seeorded an amazing free-flowing LP called Phallus Dei, for te British Liberty label.

Can

Monster Movie

But when Monster Movie was released on Music Factory Records in August 1969, the tiny 500 pressing sold out immediately and changed the whole W. German rock scene.

Tangerine Dream

Electronic Meditation

The archexperimentalist Conrad Schnitzler completed the T. Dream line-up to create the awesome and freeform acid-blitz LP Electronic Meditation. This was truly the Kosmische music they had dreamed off.

Floh de Cologne

Fliessbandbabys Beat-Show

On the LP Fliesbandbabys Beatshow, Floh de Cologne eyed an impenetrable wordy structured garage music, like an weapable Mothers of Invention, a bierkeller Fugs.

Guru Guru

UFO

Their debut album UFO was a spaced menage a trois of Joy Division, Deep Purple and a more Kosmische version of Neil Young’s experimental feedback frenzies on Arc.

Organisation

Tonefloat

And one of the most bizarre releases of early 1970 was RCA Records’ Tonefloat LP by the quintet Organisation.

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk

Led by Ralf Hutter & Florian Schneider, later leaders of the huge international group Kraftwerk, the group’s roots began at the Renschied Kunstakadamie where the duo had studied Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk 2

Unreleased recordings from that time reveal them to have been in a constant state of flux. Kraftwerk 2 would open with “Klingklang”, an ever changing 17-minute experimental mantra with a Stockhausen-inspired beginning.

Kraftwerk

Autobahn

And the group was to change beyond all recognition after their huge 1974 hit album Autobahn.

Amon Düül I

Paradieswärts Düül

album Paradieswärts Diiiil was an amazingly beautiful freefolk epic, somewhere midway between an acoustic “White Light/White Heat” and a Teutonic 1968 Red Crayola playing the 13th Floor Elevators.

Witthüser & Westrupp

Trips & Träume

He took the far-out buskers Witthuser and Westrupp and turned them into an absolutely inspiring Gothic chamber space-folk thing like mixing Neil Young’s On the Beach with Frank Zappa’s Straight records releases, Tim Buckley’s free-form album Starsailor, and also his earlier Happy Sad and Goodbye and Hello LPs.Where the chapter names the act

Popol Vuh

Affenstunde

The first album had already been released by Liberty Records by the time Kaiser became involved, and that album Affenstunde (“Monkey Hour”) was already sending shockwaves throughout the German Music-scene with its use of Moog synthesizer in a (gasp!) nonclassical setting.

Popol Vuh

In den Garten Pharaos

The whole of Side 2 of In Den Garten Pharoas was igh magic of “Vuh”. And I do not say high magic lightly.

Cluster

Cluster (Philips)

This duo was the schizophrenic mixture that had recorded one bizarre LP for the poor Phillips records.

Cluster

Cluster II

For their first Brain album, Cluster 2, Möbius and Roedelius were joined by the producer/engineer Conrad Plank.

Neu!

Neu!

Over the years, those two engineers alone would be responsible for the combined sound of Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Guru Guru, Kraftwerk, and Ash Ra Tempel, a formidable weight to carry around.