Kraütrock
For those who were there in 1971, the shock of seeing Faust's
eponymous debut LP remains starkly etched in the mind's eye. You
could see right through it! Not only was the vinyl transparent,
but it came packaged in a plastic representation of an X-Ray print
of a hand.
The next brain warp came when the needle dropped onto
the vinyl, unleashing an utterly bizarre, anarchic music that
sounded like a collision of two cars carrying The Velvet
Underground and Pink Floyd.
Those responsible
weren't from London, New York or San
Francisco. They were Germans who'd played their first gig in
Hamburg. To disillusioned hippies who felt that the 60s dream had
died at Altamont, this LP - plus releases by Tangerine Dream from
Berlin and Can from Cologne - seemed to suggest that the 1970s
might finally be kicking into gear.
Kraütrock didn't take off in the UK for a while. Although the
nightclubs of Hamburg had been a proving ground for 60s British
beat groups, Germany wasn't really considered to be at the
forefront of rock music until John Peel began playing lengthy
ambient instrumental pieces from Tangerine Dream's fourth album, Atem,
in 1973. His patronage led to a Virgin Records deal and UK tours -
and Kraütrock became a widely recognised genre.
In essence there were two types of Kraütrock: Can,
NEU! and
Kraftwerk were in the metronomic beat vanguard, while Tangerine
Dream, Ashra and others provided cosmic ambience, sometimes
entirely free of beats. In all cases the music was a fusion based
on similar elements - a mix of psychedelic rock with avant-garde
electronics, symphonic aspirations, free jazz improvisation, funk
grooves and ethnic flavours.
Or as Kraütrock spokesdruid Julian Cope wrote in his 1995 tome
Kraütrocksampler,
it was "a kind of Pagan freak-out LSD
Explore-the-God-in-you-by-working-the-animal-in-you Gnostic
Odyssey". Got that?
The rewards of Kraütrock can be immense, but always remember
that one listener's masterpiece is another's torture-hour of
headache music or tedious long-hair jamming. Under no
circumstances should you buy anything with Tangerine Dream's
Peter Baumann singing on it!
The other rule of thumb; if you
like the more melodic stuff, avoid the early 70s. On the other
hand, if you want to freak-out, things were getting mellow by
1974.
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