After spending a great
deal of time listening to a large variety of bands labeled
"Krautrock" while reading and reviewing
Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler,
I started thinking about the term and what it really means. Cope,
like many others, criticizes the term as being a lazy British
invention that collected together a disparate set of unrelated bands
under one label. Nonetheless, Cope uses the term extensively to the
point of naming his book after it. He and others have claimed that
the term was derived from Amon Düül's first album,
Psychedelic
Underground (1969), which contained a track titled "Mama
Düül und ihre Sauerkrautband spielt auf". By the time
Faust
titled a song "Krautrock" on
Faust IV in 1973, it
was already done in a spirit of jest and parody.
Plenty of other terms
were used in and outside of Germany for the various forms of "new"
music coming out of German-speaking countries around the late 60s and
early 70s, but the most common one (in Germany, at least) was
"Kosmische Musik", i.e. "cosmic music". Cope
cites
Amon Düül II's debut album,
Phallus Dei, and
Can's
debut album,
Monster Movie, both released in 1969, as the
first rumblings of this movement. Whether those two albums really
represent that term well is questionable, but the core of the idea
was music that was progressive, forward-looking, future-oriented, and
perhaps psychedelic and drug-induced. Then and now, Kosmische could
mean proto-ambient music or it could mean trippy guitar jams.
[The first pressing of "The" Can's
Monster Movie.]
Part of the problem is
that these two terms, Krautrock and Kosmische Musik, are not
necessarily the same thing. Krautrock is often used as an umbrella
term for all German rock bands of the era, and Kosmische sometimes is
as well, but this is rather confusing and ignores the nuances of both
terms. It would seem that originally they did mean two different
things, albeit with substantial shared ground. In fact, if I may
indulge in the art of organization and categorization, I would say
that there are at least six distinct styles or trends or genres of
music that came out of Germany in the Krautrock era. Here's how I
might break it down:
1. Space Jams,
Psychedelia and Acid Blues Rock: This may be the largest
grouping, but what unites it is a predilection for long guitar-based
jams. Bass and drums go without saying, and keyboards are often
included as well. Vocals are optional. These songs usually "rock"
in some sense, perhaps owe something to jazz or the blues, and often
have a psychedelic, trippy, "far out, man" aesthetic.
Examples include
Guru Guru,
The Cosmic Jokers, Kraan, the first side
of most
Ash Ra Tempel albums, many early
Amon Düül II songs, much
of Agitation Free, and maybe even Annexus Quam. Xhol Caravan is
perhaps a soul-derived variant of this, and Embryo might be a
particular jazzy version. These bands excel in energy and virtuosity
and usually have good grooves. The downside is that they are
sometimes lacking in substance and prone to self-indulgence.
2. Progressive Rock:
I'm using this category for bands that sound like they may as well
have come from the British prog rock scene – except that the vocals
are distinctly accented and sometimes even deliberately bizarrely
intoned. I'm talking about "progressive" in the sense of
bands like
Yes,
Genesis, and King Crimson: complicated song structures, intricate
arrangements, bombastic sound, exploratory vision, and so on. The
German bands in this vein aren't necessary derivative, but this is
perhaps the closest grouping to any segment of mainstream
Anglo-American music. I would include bands like Jane, Birth Control,
Grobschnitt, and later
Amon Düül II. This music is usually full of
surprises and a good mix of intellect and fun, but can also be
over-the-top and excessive.
3. Experimental,
Academic, and Sound Collage: This might be the earliest variety,
arguably descending from Karlheinz Stockhausen's compositions such as
Telemusik in 1966 and
Hymnen in 1967. Most of these
bands come from an art school background and liked experimenting with
sound and unusual methods of sound production. The "studio as
instrument" cliché could easily be applied here. Much of this
music is arrhythmic, and all of it is instrumental. This is
pre-synthesizer, but in the heyday of tape loops and studio
ingenuity. Unconventional instrumentation (for rock music, at least)
such as flutes, violin, bells, and glockenspiel are common. Good
examples are Kluster, early
Cluster, early
Tangerine Dream,
Organisation, and early
Kraftwerk.
Autobahn is right on the
line and perhaps the last prominent example. This is music that can
easily be derided as overly "academic" in the sense of not
being particularly listener-friendly. There is a lot of creativity
and a wealth of ideas, but only a minimal attempt to address these
traits to the interests of a conventional listener.
4. Ambient and
Cosmic Soundscapes: Although
Brian Eno might be credited (correctly or otherwise)
with spurring the genrification of ambient music, I would argue that
Komische bands were the initial instigators. (Note that Eno did not
disagree and in fact recorded albums with
Cluster and
Harmonia in the
70s.) These bands preferred long, slow moving, spaced out sonic
explorations. Most of these bands are instrumental, most used
synthesizers and electronics, and only occasionally did they dabble
in rhythm. The best of the bunch include
Tangerine Dream, Cluster,
the second side of most
Ash Ra Tempel albums, Klaus Schulze, Cluster, and Harmonia.
Popol Vuh also fit here, although they also ventured into
more "world music" directions. Note that most of the major
players of the third category migrated to this style in a matter of a
couple years. Much like later, more widely accepted variants of
ambient, this music is too easily regulated to "background"
status, and often suffers under the strain of focused listening.
Nonetheless, as "mood music" they usually succeed in
establishing a nuanced, textural playground.
5. Space Folk:
This might be the smallest subset, at least as far as my knowledge
goes, but I think they deserve a unique space. These acts play some
version of folk music, where vocals, acoustic guitars, and various
forms of hand percussion are central. This is more than just standard
folk music in that there are psychedelic tendencies, extended song
structures, and sometimes even a jam atmosphere. Bands that belong
here include
Amon Düül (in particular
Paradieswärts Düül),
Witthüser & Westrupp, Hoelderlin, and the second half of
Amon Düül II's
Yeti (which are improvisations that in part
include members of Amon Düül). For fans of folk and psychedelia,
these bands represent a unique variant of conventional folk music.
Prog- and hard rock-oriented types may be put off by the overly
hippie-like aesthetic and the relatively subtle energy.
6. Innovative Rock:
This is the hardest group to pin down and typify. I think these bands
are what really drove the British idea of the existence of a unique
German genre of music (i.e. Krautrock). These bands could perhaps be
described as progressive or psychedelic, but they don't really sound
anything like Anglo-American prog and psych bands. These bands are
loosely "rock" groups in some fashion, but often have jazz
influences. They are usually rooted in conventional rock
instrumentation, but seem to favor keyboards and electronics. The key
is that the music is almost always rhythmic and driving, with a very
strong propulsive energy and a certain restlessness.
[Edit 2021.01.27: This describes the characteristic "motorik" beat.] It's no surprise
that the punk and post-punk movements clearly owed a lot to these
bands. I'll admit this category is something of a catch-all for bands
that don't easily fit elsewhere, but I think that's actually the
point: these are musicians that really transcended their antecedents
and their surroundings and made something truly
new. The
difficulty of ascribing existing titles to the style is perhaps why
Krautrock became such a pervasive term. The key bands here are
Can,
Faust,
Neu!,
Kraftwerk (from
Autobahn through
Trans-Europa
Express), and
La Düsseldorf. I might also include some more
overtly electronic acts like
Wolfgang Riechmann and later-period
Kraftwerk. I think the bands in this category are practically
faultless and thus represent the best of German music from the
70s.
[The
inner sleeve of Kraftwerk's Trans-Europa Express.]
It's hard for me to
hide that I think the bands in group #6 are the best of the lot. They
have been my favorites since I first started looking into these
various movements, and they still are now. That's not to say I don't
like bands from the other divisions, but I tend to find them a more
mixed bag. There are exceptions, such as Harmonia, whose blend of
ambient, experimentation, and pulsing rock I find delightful, and
Paradieswärts Düül, which
I find surprisingly beautiful. Conversely, Julian Cope seems
to enjoy an odd mixture from each group except #2 (the straight prog
groups). We mostly agree about the strengths of #6, but we disagree
on many of the other details.
More important than my
preferences, though, is the nature of the categorization. There is an
inherent problem with making a rubric such as this in that the
divisions are somewhat arbitrary and overlapping. These groupings all
share plenty of attributes, such as nontraditional song length and an
explicit sense of looking to the future or outside of the norm. These
supposed divisions are really spectra within a multidimensional field
of possibilities, and most bands don't fit perfectly under any single
label. Some bands are particularly challenging: Can skirted many
styles all at once, and both Cluster and Kraftwerk made several
distinct changes over their careers. Then there's Ash Ra Tempel,
where the two sides of their albums are consistently divergent.
[Cluster's Sowiesoso.
This is the cover of the CD reissue, which was the back cover of the
original pressing, but I actually prefer it to the original cover.]
So does "Krautrock"
just mean "German music that rocks", i.e. groups #1, #2,
and #6? Does "Kosmische Musik" equate with the
proto-ambient music of group #4, or does it also include the cosmic
rock of group #1? Or does it stretch to include anything vaguely
cosmic, spacey, other-worldly, or "far out" (presumably
groups #3 and #4, but possibly also #1, #5, and #6)? I think it is
problematic to call all German music from this era "Krautrock"
(why not just call it German music and drop the slur?), but at a
minimum I do think the sixth category deserves some special
recognition – bands like those really didn't exist anywhere else.
The problem with
"Krautrock" and "Kosmische Musik" is that they've
been used so many times to mean different things, sometimes
overlapping and sometimes explicitly distinct. I propose that we
either drop those terms or decide on specific meanings for them. In
the meantime, we should group these artists by their actual styles,
as I have, or perhaps by the historical associations they had with
each other, be that based on record labels, geography, or some other
metric. I would like it if we called all of this music "progressive
German music" and perhaps restricted "Krautrock" to
group #6. We could call group #1 "German cosmic rock", #2
"German prog rock", #3 "German cosmic experimental
music", #4 "German cosmic ambient", #5 "German
cosmic folk", and #6 "German innovative rock". Maybe
then we would have terms that actually mean something consistent!
One final note: the
Freemans'
The
Crack in the Cosmic Egg lists, in
addition to all the bands I've mentioned and plenty more I haven't, a
few bands from the late 70s Neue Deutsche Welle movement.
[Edit 2023.01.07: link dead; see here for an archived version.] This is
somewhat surprising only in that it seems hard to find fans of both
Krautrock and NDW. Much like punk and post-punk in England, NDW
consciously rejected much of what came before, or at least digested
it into bold new forms. The problem here is that the Freemans' choice
of NDW bands is rather inscrutable. They list Din A Testbild but not
Einstürzende Neubauten;
D.A.F., Der Plan, and Pyrolator but not
Abwärts, S.Y.P.H., or
Palais Schaumburg; and Nina Hagen (probably
just because her band was once part of Lokomotive Kreuzberg) but none
of the other various German punks like Mittagspause, Male, The
Wirtschaftswunder, or
Fehlfarben.
I consider these aberrant inclusions in such a list to be
unwarranted, as the punk/NDW scene was really quite a different
movement.
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