The Krautrock appreciation thread

 

Cottonwoodhill and Psychonaut

 

I like to think my taste in music is pretty wide (AMM to ZZ Top)...

 

I think that you are getting these mixed up a bit ...

 

If you want out in the open "weird'ness" and experimentation, then Faust is it ... a good primer. You could do that drunk on a studio with some friends, except that you and I would sit here and think that it is stupid to try and do it. There is, for all intents and purposes, no musical value in most of it, and the collages and creativity shows something of what was left of the artistic theater and film scene in that time ... Peter Handke and Wim Wenders kinda started that school of craziness and in a way they did not let go. Wim Wenders mellowed out in his films but his weird edge (experimental edge) never really left.

 

AD2 and Yeti, along with Dance of the Lemmings, is rock at its best within an improvisation context. Only GuruGuru does better in a rock context, that is more free form and not a "guided" meditation or jam. It is really well focused and total improvisation by almost all the musicians and yet they are together. In many ways this is the part of the 60's theater and film scene that never was developed. I think that people could jam on a theme, but never really take off and try different things. Yeti is by far one of the best examples of that ... and concludes with a song that suggests that Sandoz had some to do with it, although I kinda doubt it ... I'm not sure you can get that many musicians so well focused and support each other and create such a monster piece of focused music. Not even in jazz, can you finx this, other than possibly Egberto Gismonti in his early days, but he is alone for the most part! This is pure rock, at its most primeval and potent.

 

Can and Ege Bamyasi. I think that this album is more about Damo's vocal talents than it is about Can and its music. And it appears they did a couple of different things, from funk, to a ballad to some jive ... done by Germans, not Black musicians! In that sense it was experimental, but it was a trend that had started with Tago Mago, and ended with Future Days ... which had the last of its funk'y material. The rest of Future Days was more keyboard and trip oriented and the sad thing about doing that would be that the ability to have Damo involved was probably more difficult as he did not do the little things that Shakti Yoni (Gilly Smith) did with Gong, for example, or Flora Purim was doing in some Brazilian stuff, that might have extended his stay with Can. Like he did not know or had heard what some girls had done with Ash Ra Tempel adding a touch of sex'iness to it, or in the case of Gong, adding femininity that is solid and not imaginary ... as in woman ... not fantasy! I really think that Damo could not re-invent himself, and it is clear in the material he is doing these days with his own friends and band. It's a time warp!

 

Musically, Can continued for 2 more albums with less and less participation for Damo, and while no one talks about Soon Over Babalooma and then Landed, they are both fabulous albums and show a band maturing like so few can. I have a feeling that by the time that the second side of Soon Over Babalooma was being done that Damo had left and Irmin Schmidt and the rest of the band took it into an electronic time trip, a beautiful transition of plain rock into space rock and electronix that are really pretty and smooth beautifull textured by the drummer. For Can this was interesting, as the song that made them famous was the hard rocking "Mother Sky" ... and it was at that time, when funk was hitting mainstream music big time in the FM radio waves.

 

So if you are looking for a bit of experimentation and not "music" per se, Faust is good. If you are looking for rock progressions, I would say AD2 is excellent. If you are looking for a band's transition, take Can all the way from "Movies to Landed" ... and enjoy an incredible set of musicians and time and place!

 

But to thrown them back to back to back like that ... without having any idea what this was all about and the time itself ... I would think it is going to confuse you a lot and I'm not sure that you can gain much appreciation from that after the listens.

 

I want you to appreciate artistic work at its best. And in tune with the other arts around them and then some, which is something this board and the majority of people are not working on enough  ... a lot of these arts and music were not ... just "prog" in any musical sense ... they were a part of the feelings of the time and people wanting to expand and do something else, and that included film, theater and many other arts ... it's not about one "style of music" (there were hundreds of "styles"), or any single music definition or element ... they, almost all, did have something in common ... longer cuts and a desire to learn from the experience of taking a piece of music further than is normally done ... and that, my friends, is the definition of prog. Not anything else.

The main album that got me seriously into this genre was Agitation Free's "Malesch". 

It depends a lot on taste as to what might get your interest and attention, as "Krautrock" encapsulates a variety of creative styles. I mentioned a few more of my favorites earlier, though there's a load of great material that came out of that scene!

Celestial Ocean is more listenable for some. Its more electronic and ethnic with much less rock. My favorite is Psychonaut. There are songs or instrumental passages I could point out, but I imagine its mostly just a matter of taste.

 

Agitation Free, is more of a "concept" than it is about its music. It's very German in that respect.

 

It was about the influence of eastern music and trying to play eastern music with rock instruments. As such, it has a heck of a lot less to do with "krautrock" than it does with the hybrid mix of eastern and western music.

 

I really think that if you are going to listen to this because "it is krautrock", you are going to miss the point and enjoyment of this music ... it's not krautrock in the essence of what AshRa Tempel had done in early days which was totally open free form, or Guru Guru had also done, and Klaus Schulze was doing with electronics as was Tangerine Dream ... in essence, the only way this group could stand out, even though they are connected to all those bands above (played the same clubs and apparently Chris Franke's family was one of the producers/sponsors in that club ... !!! ) would have been to do their own thing and mix their eastern/Egyptian/Greek music to their concept.

 

Funny ... it was also an academic endeavor ... the information on Wikipaedia even says they were paid by the Goethe Institute, which tells you that this was a scholarly adventure of some sort ... I don't think they would have gotten a grant if they had said they wanted to do "rock'n'roll" or "krautrock" ...