Welcome to the Summer of Krautrock!
To orient the reader/listener, I’ve created this helpful Krautrock Chronology covering the key years/albums.
Repetition is not generality… generality expresses a point of view according to which one term may be exchanged or substituted for another. By contrast, we can see that repetition is a necessary and justified conduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced. Repetition as a conduct and as a point of view concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities. Repetitions, echoes, doubles and souls do not belong to the domain of resemblance or equivalence; and it is no more possible to exchange one’s soul than it is to substitute real twins for one another. If exchange is the criterion of generality, theft and gift are those of repetition. ~ Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1968)
In the cultural imagination (the Anglo one at any rate), Krautrock conjures up one of two things.
Brian Eno, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop’s 1976 sojourn to Germany and the resulting albums:
Iggy Pop: The Idiot, Lust for Life (released 1977).
David Bowie: The so-called “Berlin Trilogy” – Low, “Heroes” (released 1977); Lodger (1979); and the film/soundtrack Christiane F. (1981).
Brian Eno: Before and After Science (1977); Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978); with Cluster: Cluster & Eno (1977), After the Heat (1978); with Harmonia (as Harmonia ’76) Tracks and Traces (1997, but recorded in 1976).
Of particular note here is Bowie’s nod to Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk) on “V-2 Schneider,” and to Neu! In his homage to their song “Hero” with his own “Heroes.”
Or, a kind of crude electro-bohemian aesthetic, perhaps best captured/parodied in Mike Myers’ famous SNL sketches called Sprockets, which used the Kraftwerk song “Electric Café” as the theme.
These, however, offer little more than gestures toward what Krautrock is.
In this essay, and accompanying playlist, I attempt a definition and introduction to Krautrock.
First and foremost Krautrock names a national music: German. To this degree, then, it shares so much with Fado (Portuguese), Samba/Bossa Nova/Tropicalia (Brazil), Flamenco (Spain), etc. Allowing for all manner of “but these are sub-state nationalities with specific regional/temporal contingencies!” provisos, we submit that this is the case for Krautrock too. Krautrock names not simply German music, but a particular kind of music (electronically-infused rock), which developed at a particular time (late 1960s through early 80s—that is, post-war Germany, but a full generation after the war), and in a very particular Germany (the partitioned, “free” West Germany).
Very much, then, of its time and place, Krautrock tracks alongside and ever-so-slightly behind New German Cinema; the new German wave of filmmaking that began following the signing of the Oberhausener Manifesto in 1962 pushing for more independent, creative, and avant-garde voices in film. German filmakers of the era Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta and many others shared, if not a stylistically cohesive genre, a collective spirit of creativity. This spirit of creativity, somewhat ironically, was greatly supported and enabled by the West German state. West Germany of the 60s/70s, a “new” and ever-rebuilding/re-branding state, pinched by the guilt and horrors of its recent martial past, and by the contemporary proximity of the “Iron Curtain,” made extensive use of cultural endowments to burnish a new sense of civic identity. This culminated in the 1974 Film and Television Accord which subsidizes the production and broadcast of German films on national TV.
Krautrock, however, had no state benefactor. Though it does maintain a strong relation with film. Popol Voh is featured prominently in many Herzog films, and Tangerine Dream’s electro soundscapes found their way into innumerable Hollywood films, famously William Friedkin’s remake of The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer (1977) and Michael Mann’s Thief (1981). Can’s second album Soundtracks (1970) is a compilation featuring songs they contributed to films, including one of their best known songs, “Mother Sky”:
Also, like New German Cinema, Krautrock is not particularly “Germanic.” Krautrock’s participants are by and large German. It performs largely via the German language. It is unquestionably tethered to the contingencies of 60s-70s West Germany. Even the name “Krautrock” appears to insist upon the “Germanness” of the genre. And yet, Krautrock does not provide a reliable genre/stylistic cohesion comparable with typical “national” or “folk” musics. Take Germany’s other recognizable national music, Alpine Folk Music with its familiar yodels as an example. In such cases, there’s a clear and well-defined sound, dance, and costume.
My spouse is Greek and since a young age has participated in Greek Dancing—this is a very specific style of dance, accompanied by set gestures, sounds, costumes, etc. And, while this or that national music has its own complications and overlappings with other cultures [I am very definitely NOT making a claim to any authentic, true, or closed conception of culture here], there’s a kind of cohesion that one imagines when presented with the idea of a national music.
Krautrock is not this. Even its status as German is blurry. The Kraut-Prog band Nektar, though formed and based in Germany was made up of ex-pat Englishmen. For all intents and purposes the French band Heldon may as well have been a Krautrock band. The contemporary Japanese band Minami Deutsch openly identifies as a Krautrock-inspired band, see their self-description on bandcamp:
We seem to be slipping away from something like a useful understanding of Krautrock. Let’s return to the name for help, it certainly seems German enough! Here, however, we discover “Krautrock” is not a self-conscious description made by those within the movement.
“Kraut,” as any fan of American WWII films will tell you, is a derogatory name for a “German,” derived from sauerkraut [sour cabbage]. “Krautrock” was coined in 1972 by English music critics to deride the esoteric blend of electronic and progressive rock coming out of West Germany. The German bands making “Krautrock” music at the time preferred their own appellation, Kosmische Musik [cosmic music], which evokes the spacey, electro prog that typifies the Krautrock of the late 60s/early 70s. For better or worse, the name Krautrock has stuck. Faust, in surely one of the greatest artistic “fuck you” gestures directed at a critic, named the opening track on their vital album Faust IV “Krautrock,” a song which exemplifies the genre as much as it appears to parody it – it’s nearly twelve minutes of repetitive noise, beeps and bops.
So, what then is Krautrock? What does it sound like?
In terms of musical genre, Krautrock remains as defiant of categorization as ever. Over Krautrock’s 12 odd years you’ll find traces of progressive rock, space rock, stoner rock, fusion rock, southern rock, electronic music, synth pop, ambient, new age, post-punk, experimental, and eastern-tinged music. This is a large ensemble of sounds that doesn’t fit neatly together.
Let’s start over then. What isn’t Krautrock?
German rock music of the era is perhaps the best way to illustrate what Krautrock is by negative example. Consider Scorpions, easily the most famous German rock band. Despite being very much German, and contemporaries of the Krautrock movement, no one would confuse Scorpions for a Krautrock band.
So, again, Krautrock isn’t simply “German Rock Music.” Though it clearly also is, to some degree “German” and “Rock Music.”
Another way to come at the problem is to consider Krautrock’s development as a sub-category of prog.
Just as in England, the music scene in Germany in the late 60s through early 70s was lousy with prog bands – let’s just say there was a lot of flute. So, what separates garden-variety German prog bands like Guru Guru, Wallenstein, Brainticket, Gomorrha, Rufus Zuphall, Mythos, Out of Focus, etc. from Krautrock?
The experimentation of prog finds a home in Krautrock. The complexity of the compositions and arrangements (borrowing now from classical, now from fusion and free jazz); the ever-increasing expansion of instruments, band members/contributors, and song length are all present in the earliest iterations of Krautrock (Amon Düül II, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, and the first Tangerine Dream albums).
But, as with all our previous attempts at defining Krautrock… “Prog” simply won’t cut it. Krautrock is overdetermined and we need something to separate the staid German prog bands from Krautrock.
To my mind, Krautrock has two essential components: a total, bordering on excessive, commitment to repetition; and the use of electronics.
1. Repetition. Music relishes in repetition. Here’s the contemporary French philosopher Clément Rosset talking about repetition in music:
Interviewer.: Can you explain why Ravel’s Bolero struck you in this way, as a kind of summary of the very essence of life?
Clément Rosset.: At the time, of course, I was incapable of explaining it. Today, I believe that it’s linked to what Schopenhauer describes very well in his two chapters on music in The World as Will and Representation, namely the feeling provoked by the continual repetition of something that remains essentially the same. At the same time, in Bolero what repeats is a very rich melodic theme. Ravel himself was a little offhand about it – “I know it’s rubbish,” he said, “but I had to come up with something.” Repetition isn’t everything, but something still has to be repeated. “Don’t you think the theme has a certain insistence?,” Ravel would ask. It is insistent, it has a sort of authority, and it recounts, to quote Debussy on the subject of the wind, “the history of the world.”
Having said that, I feel the same way about all music in general; music makes me feel as I’ve been given a kind of adequate knowledge of the aims, origins and raison d’être of all things. That is my metaphysical, ontological, materialist principle. Music is not a metaphor for life, it is life in its purest form, the quintessence of life.
If music in general participates in repetition, Krautrock does so to the nth degree.
What makes Krautrock unique is the extent to which it will go. Not satisfied to merely repeat a chorus, or instrumental phrase, Krautrock songs are built almost exclusively around the concept of repetition to the point of exhaustion.
The beat is pure repetition in Krautrock. Eliminating drum rolls, splashes and other flourishes, Krautrock is famously associated with the steady, palpitating drive of the Motorik 4/4 beat. Here’s a classic example from Neu!’s 1972 S/T album:
It’s not simply the rhythm section that repeats in Krautrock. The melodies are also excessively repetitive, often sounding like a tape droning on a loop:
Indeed, what links groups as diverse as the electro-noise of Cluster to the Eastern-influenced progressive rock of Popol Vuh is the commitment to extremes of repetition. Where the former relies on looped, electro-melodic sounds over a simple repetitive drum machine beat, the latter, while using more traditional instruments, layers in echoed guitars, playing simple riffs in repetition alongside droning chants. Using very different elements, both groups work to create a kind of pulsing drone that is at the core of the Krautrock movement.
Check them out:
2. Electronics. By electronics, I don’t simply mean “electronic music” as in some variety of electro/synth-based pop/dance music, though, Krautrock will overlap with these genres at some points.
Electronics here means the “sound” of the music, which from early on will borrow from and emulate the beeps, blips, and boops of electronic machines. In this sense, we can trace the pre-history of Krautrock back as far as the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and his experimental electronic compositions from the early 1950s:
This kind of electronic sound is present in Krautrock from the very beginning. Check out the album Tone Float (1970) by Ralf and Florian’s pre-Kraftwerk band Organization:
The integration of the ever-increasing electronic hum of daily living into music speaks to both the optimism of the post-war era (the “Golden Age” of low unemployment, incredible growth, and the baby boom), but also the increasing sense of alienation and cynicism as capitalism grinds everyone into a drone-like worker surrounded by the ever-present droning hum of machines. It is entirely unsurprising that Krautrock, which hits its peak just as the economies of the Western capitalist nations were faced with massive recessions from 1973-5, would play to this tension of optimism/cynicism.
But electronics in this case doesn’t just mean electronic beeps. It also speaks to the increasing use of electronic instruments and means of recording music (drum machines, moogs and other forms of synthesizers, tape recorders and other effect devices to loop and alter sounds, etc).
And, of course, these electronic elements are used in Krautrock to enhance the experience of repetition.
Please enjoy this playlist by way of an introduction to Krautrock, have a great summer.
Thanks for reading and hopefully listening and enjoying some great Krautrock music. I’ll be further exploring Krautrock all Summer on my Twitter account: @RomulusNotNuma
I would also encourage you to check out last year’s Summer entry on Hard Bop:
And, my twitter thread from the Summer prior on Synth Pop:
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