Imaginary Sounds Mix 10: Sie schießen ins Kraut! The Early Rock of West Germany

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During the rise of the Canterbury scene in late '60s UK, the British music media began responding to another phenomenon in West Germany. The Germans were changing the possibilities of rock music. They were rejecting American hooks and juke-box lengths to dissect the sound, to draw upon the philosophies and the structures of German greats: everything from the six-hour operas of Wagner's ring cycle to Karlheinz Stockhausen's electronic dabbling. The British press coined the term "kraut rock," though bands such as Faust mocked this term, as the term kraut to describe Germans was negative. It also sort of branded the scene for marketing purposes. But the artists, though diverse in their music, rose out of the post-war ashes. Though they did search inward and toward the Far East, they had little in common with American hippies. This was a generation born out of the ashes of WWII or die Trümmer. Afraid to follow their parents footsteps, they took new directions drawing from the ancients while building on the new avant garde. The result was a kind of explosion of space within musicality. The attention to public image, the marketable length of recordings--these were all irrelevant to the scene. This music was made out of war rubble, with the belief that music can't be defined or explained as it always had been--it was simply a motion, a movement away from precedent without any unified goal. And from this spawned the foundation for later genres such as new wave, industrial, and new age, incredibly predicting the direction of music post-1970s.

1. La Düsseldorf - Düsseldorf
from the album La Düsseldorf (1976)
2. Faust - Picnic on a Frozen River
from the album Faust So Far (1972)

3. Harmonia - Veterano
from the album Musik von Harmonia (1974)

4. Can - Moonshake
from the album Future Days (1973)

5. Moebius - Countramino
from the album Tonspuren (1983)

6. Amon Düül II - Kanaan
from the album Phallus Dei (1969)

7. Neu! - Super
from the album Neu! 2 (1973)

8. Manuel Göttsching - Glorious Fight
from the album E2-E4 (1984)

9. Guru Guru - Samantha's Rabbit
from the album Guru Guru (1973)

10. Kluster - Caramel
from the album Zuckerzeit (1974)

11. Ash Ra Tempel - Look at Your Sun
from the album Schwingungen (1972)

12. Tangerine Dream - Sequent C
from the album Phaedra (1974)

13. Popul Vuh - Abschied
from the album Hosianna Mantra (1972)

14. Cluster & Eno - Wehrmut
from the album Cluster & Eno (1977)

15. Kraftwerk - Ohm Sweet Ohm
from the album Radio-Activity (1975)