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.

Kosmischer Läufer A Cosmic Hoax?

One of the most discussed "new" krautrock releases this year was supposed to be an old one: Volume One of Kosmischer Läufer. It is said to be the music composed by one Martin Zeichnete to be used in the training of East German athletes in the 1970s.

In an "interview" released by the record company Unknown Capability Recordings, Zeichnete says he was inspired by the krautrock music which he heard secretly listening to West German radio. The idea was that similar hypnotic music would help the DDR runners stay focused during training and improve their performance.

Don't believe the hype. The story's great, but there is every reason to believe this is a hoax.

Das Buch der neuen Pop-Musik

I mentioned him before: Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser. For some he was the guru of krautrock, for others a crook. Whatever, without him cosmic music would not have been so cosmic.

Before he got known as a record label boss and producer, Kaiser worked as a journalist. At the end of the 1960s he published a range of books about rock music. They're all out of print and it's unlikely they will ever be reprinted, if the rumours about Kaiser's mental state are true.

You can imagine I just felt lucky when I bumped into a Dutch translation of the originally German Das Buch der neuen Pop-Musik (De nieuwe popmuziek in Dutch).

I don't believe it has ever been translated to English. Kaiser was German but a regular contributor to the Dutch Aloha magazine.

See the pic of my copy - which clearly has remained unread since its publication in 1970.

Gila - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

 

One of the lesser known early krautrock bands was Gila. Their leader and guitarist Conny Veit doubled in Popol Vuh for a while and this left its marks. In fact, the second Gila album Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (released 1973) features nearly the same line up as Popol Vuh in those days, with Veit, Florian Fricke on piano and Daniel Fichelscher on drums and bass. The fourth member was Veit's singing girl friend Sabine Merbach.

You can listen to the full album above. 

Serpentina Satélite - Space Rock From Peru

South America is certainly not the most likely place to produce any krautrock. But listen to Serpentina Satélite from Peru and your opinion changes immediately. They describe their music as freak 'n' roll and that's what it is: space rock in the best Ash Ra Tempel tradition.

In case you don't know: Freak 'n' Roll is also a song by Ash Ra Tempel. Well, I'm not sure if the early Ash Ra Tempel really had songs: they were cleverly built up 20-minute improvisations that were more psychedelic than almost anything else that ever got the label psychedelic.

Ton Steine Scherben Singer Destroys Table

Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was a journalist, producer and multiple record label owner (Ohr, Pilz, Kosmische Kuriere) before his love for LSD ended his business. It's likely that without him many krautrock musicians would have never had a chance to release an album.

Political rock band Ton Steine Scherben however, didn't like the fact that Kaiser had his activities with Ohr financed by publisher and business man Peter Meisel. After all, Meisel worked for the major label Hansa and had made himself a name in the horrific world of German schlager music.

Krautrock 21 - A Different Blog

What, another krautrock blog? Yes, sir! But this one is a little different.

A lot has been written about krautrock and I'm not pretending I can add much to the history of the German movement that inspired so many artists. But blogs that connect the sound of the late 1960s-early 1970s with stuff that came afterwards or music that is made today, are rare. Most blogs cover either old material or new releases.