"These bands had places to go and signposts were distracting!"

July 4, 2022 6:43 AM

Krautrock/Kosmische (A guide by Sasha Frere-Jones for Shfl)
posted by box (11 comments total)

I remember listening to many of these artists/albums after discovering Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and searching for more (or less) of the same. That 'Cluster & Eno' album was a favorite.

Interesting that Frere-Jones mentions 'kosmische' as a style (something I learned from the article) but left out the fact that there was a record label 'Cosmic Couriers' (AKA Kosmische Kuriere) used by a number of these artists/bands for their early releases. I recall using the label as a kind of guide to decide if I should buy something from artists/bands who's names I didn't otherwise recognize. Not always a guarantee but at least a reasonable pointer.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:59 AM on July 4, 2022

Two other record labels from that period I recall now as being worth exploring: Brain and Ohr ('ear'). Also later there would be IC or Innovative Communication, Schulze's label, which might still be in existence.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 7:09 AM on July 4, 2022

Mostly solid list but I think I vastly prefer Can's Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi over Delay 1968, which is interesting but not as polished. I think I prefer vocalist Damo Suzuki over Michael Karoli but Soon Over Babaluma is pretty good though. Neu! is a desert island disc for me. I could probably list to Hallo Gallo forever on loop...
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:16 AM on July 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Other overviews of krautrock worth a read are David Stubbs' Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany, and, of course, Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler (which arguably kickstarted the rediscovery of this milieu). Krautrocksampler is out of print (I think), though there are bootleg PDFs floating around.
posted by acb at 7:37 AM on July 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler

The author of the article links to a list of the Cope's recommendations and it is pretty clear they were influenced by Cope's Krautrocksampler.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:44 AM on July 4, 2022

Mostly solid list but I think I vastly prefer Can's Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi over Delay 1968, which is interesting but not as polished. I think I prefer vocalist Damo Suzuki over Michael Karoli but Soon Over Babaluma is pretty good though.

ummm, yeah, it's a pretty broken guide to so-called Krautrock that features no albums including the vocals of Damo Suzuki. Rather like a guide to 70s hard rock that chose to skip Jimmy Page.

Lots of great stuff regardless, but seriously ...
posted by philip-random at 8:22 AM on July 4, 2022

I've always preferred the less solemn output from the people in this slightly over serious scene.
The Synthesist by Harold Grosskopf (Ash Ra Tempel drummer among other things) is an absolutely joyous bit of moog wrangling with terrific motorik drumming.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:36 AM on July 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Nice to see some non-canonical picks on this list but seriously the Can choices are inexplicable... Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi would have made more sense... and Irrlicht rather than Cyborg for a Klaus Shulze pick, though it's not so representative of most of his output, and Kraftwerk 1 rather than 2, though maybe that's just me.

Some other things I would have added:
Anima-Sound 'Musik Für Alle'
Annexus Quam 'Osmose'
Baba Yaga 'Collage'
Bröselmaschine 'Bröselmaschine'
Jürgen Karg 'Elektronische Mythen'
Limbus 3 'Cosmic Music Experience'
Sand 'Golem'
posted by remembrancer at 10:07 AM on July 4, 2022 [5 favorites]

I definitely need to dig into this list, as Krautrock is a big blank void in my knowledge, but just for the sake of adding something to the conversation, A few years ago, I stumbled across Agitatin Free And have really been enjoying these albums. Definitely less electronic that a lot of what’s mentioned here, but very much in the vein of instrumental and free-form.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:56 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, the Bureau B label has a lot of krautrock/kosmische-adjacent music (mostly from Germany), including both rereleases of artists from back in the day (including Faust/FaUSt, Roedelius, Cluster, Conrad Schnitzler, Harald Grosskopf and such) and contemporary acts influenced by krautrock. Two contemporary krautrocky artists I can recommend from their are Die Wilde Jagd (which is somewhere between post-rock and electronica, though with a distinctive krautrock influence) and Camera.
posted by acb at 8:14 AM on July 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

and Camera.

previously

Just motoriking along …
posted by philip-random at 8:20 AM on July 5, 2022