Michael Rother with Erlkönig

Krautrock in the 1970s had many faces. It could be experimental, spacey, punky, noisy, hypnotic, melodic... Michael Rother was one of the few musicians who could switch from one mood to another and create music that explored almost every possible direction, and never sounded out of place. As a member of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Harmonia he was a key figure in krautrock.

But let's not forget his solo work. It was (well, is .... he's still active) more melodic and accessible and (obviously) focused on his delicate guitar work. Rother's mother played Chopin on her piano when Michael was a kid and you can hear it in his playing.

Einstürzende Krautrock?

 

Some will claim that Einstürzende Neubauten play industrial music or avant-garde. But if you know a bit about krautrockers from the late 1960s, early 1970s, you will recognize much of what they did in the works of the Berlin band. 

Einstürzende Neubauten are unique: no one comes even close to their sound. And their music has also evolved a lot, from the apocalyptic noise at the start of their career to the poetic tension and sense of space in their current work. The masters of noise are now masters in silence - or dynamics, if you wish.

Sure, they are a product of their time and place: a band that could only have started in the split city of Berlin as it was in the sombre early 1980s. But that doesn't mean their work came out of the blue.

In an interview with The Quietus, Neubauten leader Blixa Bargeld admitted that Kraftwerk, Neu! and Can were his main influences.

"My English was rudimentary, and my Germanic tradition did not have much to do with how to write songs, which you can very much see in the Deutschrock groups, they didn't know how to write songs", Bargeld told The Quietus.

"They always tried to find a way around the singing - first Can had Malcolm Mooney, then he left and they picked up this street musician Damo Suzuki who hardly spoke English and found his way around the actual singing in a way that was ingenious and fantastic."

Read the full interview here.