Krautrock


Krautrock is a broad genre of experimental rock that developed in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s among artists who blended elements of psychedelic rock, electronic music, and various avant-garde influences. These artists largely avoided the blues influences and song structure found in traditional Anglo-American rock music, instead utilizing hypnotic rhythms, tape-music techniques, and early synthesizers. Prominent groups associated with krautrock music included Neu!, Can, Faust, Kraftwerk, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, Amon Düül II, Tangerine Dream, and Harmonia.
The British press originally adopted the term "Krautrock" as a humorous umbrella-label for the diverse German scene, though many so-labeled artists disliked the term. The movement was partly born out of the radical student movements of 1968, as German youth rebelled against their country's legacy in World War II and sought a popular music distinct from traditional German music and American pop. The period contributed to the development of ambient music and techno, and influenced subsequent genres such as post-punk, new-age music, and post-rock.

History

Origins and influences

Krautrock is a broad label encompassing diverse sounds and artists that emerged in West Germany during the 1960s and early 1970s. The music was partially inspired by broad cultural developments such as the revolutionary 1968 German student movement, with many young people having both political and aesthetic concerns. Youth rebelled against both dominant American influence and conservative German entertainment like schlager music, seeking to liberate themselves from Germany's Nazi legacy in World War II and create a new popular culture. Dieter Moebius, of the bands Cluster and Harmonia, noted that "we were a lot of the times on the streets instead of studying. As young people we were not very proud to be German we were all tired of listening to bad German music and imitations of American music. Something had to happen." The movement saw artists merge elements of varied genres such as psychedelic rock, avant-garde forms of electronic music, funk rhythm, jazz improvisation and "ethnic" music styles, typically reflecting a "genuine sense of awe and wonder."
Core influences on these German artists included avant-garde composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Terry Riley, and bands such as the Mothers of Invention, the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd. A significant influence was the work of American minimalists such as Riley, Tony Conrad, and La Monte Young, as well as the late '60s albums of jazz musician Miles Davis. Some artists drew on ideas from 20th century classical music and musique concrète, particularly composer Stockhausen, and from the new experimental directions that emerged in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s. The Quietus noted the influence of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown on krautrock musicians. Moving away from the patterns of song structure and melody of much rock music in America and Britain, some in the movement were drawn to a more mechanical and electronic sound.

Etymology

Until around 1973, the word "Deutsch-Rock" was used to refer to the new groups from West Germany. "Krautrock" was originally a humorous term coined in the early 1970s either by British disc jockey John Peel or by the UK music newspaper Melody Maker, in which experimental German bands found an early and enthusiastic following, and ironically retained by its practitioners. The term derives from the ethnic slur "kraut", and its use by the music press was inspired by a track from Amon Düül's Psychedelic Underground titled "Mama Düül und ihre Sauerkrautband spielt auf". According to author Ulrich Adelt, "kraut" in German can refer to herbs, weeds, and drugs. Other names thrown around by the British music press were "Teutonic rock" and "Götterdämmer rock". West Germany's music press initially used "krautrock" as a pejorative, but the term lost its stigma after the music gained success in Britain.
Its musicians tended to reject the name "krautrock". This was also the case for "kosmische Musik". Musicologist Julian Cope, in his book Krautrocksampler, says "Krautrock is a subjective British phenomenon", based on the way the music was received in the UK rather than on the actual West German music scene out of which it grew. For instance, while one of the main groups originally tagged as krautrock, Faust, recorded a seminal 12-minute track they titled "Krautrock", they would later distance themselves from the term, saying: "When the English people started talking about Krautrock, we thought they were just taking the piss... and when you hear the so-called 'Krautrock renaissance', it makes me think everything we did was for nothing."

Musical elements

Krautrock has been described as a broad genre encompassing varied approaches, though The Quietus noted that most music in the genre, "diverse as it is, shares an interest in electronics, texture and repetition." Shindig! summarized the style as "avant-garde musical collages of electronic sounds, rock music, and psychedelia" which typically featured "improvisation and hypnotic, minimalistic rhythms". Los Angeles Magazine summarized the genre as "where American psychedelica meets icy Germanic detachment". Critic Simon Reynolds described the style as "where the over-reaching ambition and untethered freakitude of late '60s acid rock is checked and galvanised by a proto-punk minimalism... music of immense scale that miraculously avoided prog-rock's bombastics". AllMusic described it as expanding on the musical explorations associated with art rock and progressive rock, but diverging from American and British groups' emphasis on jazz and classical elements in favor of "a droning, pulsating sound that owed more to the avant garde than to rock & roll". According to The Line of Best Fit, some typical characteristics include "steady 4/4 beats, hypnotic, droning rhythms, and shimmering keyboards". Artists used early synthesizers and experimented with tape music techniques. Pitchfork stated that the genre "in its platonic ideal should be basically instrumental; it should seamlessly meld electronics and rock instruments; it should favor long, drawn-over structures over short dynamic shifts, and steady-state rhythms over syncopation". Los Angeles Magazine describes it as a "hypnotic, piston-pumping genre where drummers pounded out tightly-wound beats, bassists thumped pulsing notes, and zoned out singers warbled over it all in an absurdist drone". The Stranger called krautrock an "innovative reconstruction of rock and electronic music".
The "Motorik" beat is the 4/4 beat often used by drummers associated with krautrock, characterised by a kick drum-heavy, pulsating groove, that created a forward-flowing feel. The motorik beat was used by Can in the song "Mother Sky", and by Neu! on their debut album, later being adopted by other krautrock bands. It has been widely used in many different styles of music beyond krautrock. According to XLR8R, the term krautrock is often used by critics to signify the "mesmerizing motorik rhythms pioneered by Can and Neu!", but contested that "they represent merely a tiny fraction of the music that emerged from Germany during Krautrock's Golden Age". Matt Bolton of The Guardian makes a similar point, arguing that "Neu!'s streamlined instrumentals certainly have little in common with Can's eclectic experimentalism, Amon Düül II's improvisational space rock or Faust's cut-and-paste sound collages.

Kosmische Musik

Kosmische Musik is a term which came into regular use before "krautrock" and was preferred by some German artists who disliked the English label; today, it is often used synonymously with krautrock. More specifically, it may describe 1970s German electronic music which uses synthesizers and incorporates themes related to space or otherworldliness; it is also used as a German analogue to the English term "space rock". The style was often instrumental and characterized by "spacy", ambient soundscapes. Artists used synthesizers such as the EMS VCS 3 and Moog Modular, as well as sound processing effects and tape-based approaches. They largely rejected rock music conventions, and instead drew on "serious" electronic compositions.
The term "kosmische Musik" was coined either by Edgar Froese in the liner notes of Tangerine Dream's 1971 album Alpha Centauri or by record producer Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser as a marketing name for bands like Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze. The following year, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's Ohr Records released the compilation Kosmische Musik featuring tracks by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh. Kaiser eventually began referring to the style as "cosmic rock" to signify that the music belonged in a rock idiom. German producer Conny Plank was a central figure in the kosmische sound, emphasizing texture, effects processing, and tape-based editing techniques. Plank oversaw kosmische recordings such as Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Neu!'s Neu! 75, and Cluster's Zuckerzeit.
Several of these artists would later distance themselves from the term. Other proposed names for the style at the time were "Berlin School" and "Dusseldorf School," though none remained definitive. The style would later lead to the development of new-age music, with which it shared several characteristics. It would also exert lasting influence on subsequent electronic music and avant-garde rock.

Legacy and influence

Krautrock has proved to be highly influential on a succession of other musical styles and developments. Early contemporary enthusiasts outside Germany included Hawkwind and in particular Dave Brock who supposedly penned the sleeve notes for the British edition of Neu!'s first album Faust's budget release The Faust Tapes has been cited as a formative teenage influence by several musicians growing up in the early 1970s such as Julian Cope. The genre also had a strong influence on David Bowie's Station to Station and the experimentation it inspired led to his 'Berlin Trilogy'.
Krautrock was also highly influential on the late-'70s development of British new wave and post-punk, notably artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Ltd., Cabaret Voltaire, The Fall, Gary Numan, Joy Division, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Simple Minds and This Heat. Kraftwerk in particular had a lot of influence on American electronic dance music of the 1980s: electro, house, techno and especially Goa trance. Ash Ra Tempel was strongly influential on the later development of 70s ambient as well as post-rock.