Best KRAUTROCK album (Taken From Julian Cope's Top 50)

My personal choice at this moment in time will be
Ash Ra Tempel.

I am no good at describing things so here's Cope on the album instead

The classic three man rock line-up taken to the extremes of the planet. Amboss is the mother of all jams without ever having to resort to technical wizardry. It's like listening at a festival from the comforts of your two man tent with the wind catching on each sound and pulling at it like a family of kids around a giant pot of swiss cheese fondue. You've baked your beans black to the bottom of the saucepan and soaked up the sauce with the last crumb of bread. Crashed out from the efforts of the night before you're in a complete daze and world of your own. You know that something great is happening on stage but you can't be bothered to climb out of your soggy sleeping bag to check on it although you can only vaguely see the stage over on the hilltop. If someone asks in ten years time you will say that you were right there up the front leading the crowd in totally numbed approval.

Traummaschine is entirely different and instead of being rock based is serenely Gothic in character. It appears to evolve over time with no real sense or purpose. It makes playful grabs at you and then drags you by your hair backwards through the mire before releasing you by the edge of an oasis pleasuredome. It ebbs and flows between Manuel Gottsching and Klaus Schulze showing us brief glimpses of what will transpire from both of these giant Krautrock figures in the future. You will either love it or hate it.

Next week I'll probably say Neu! 75 or something else.

i would have sex with all these krautrock albums

wait, why Delay over Future Days, Soon Over?

Who knows!

i can't really choose, so i chose yeti. i wouldn't be able to pick a fave can album. my fave neu is first neu though.

carnival in babylon shouldn't really be on there. even though i like it.

I think the great majority of these albums are all pretty worthy. A couple maybe that I haven't got into.

most are great. some i never play. i'm actually not a huge cluster fan. i've never heard the golowin album or trips and traume. or black dance.

The guy who runs that site also added another 100 albums. Which would've been way too many to vote on. But feel free to chat about them. Here's the list
http://pages.unisonfree.net/midsuffolk/Top%2051-150.htm

Drats I got logged out and forgot to sign back in under my krautrock name.
Oh well my normal log-in vote goes to Neu! 75

i don't play my can records like i used to. serious can abuse in my past. faust always sound great. same with amon duul. i keep looking at those harmonia vinyl reissues at the record store and i KNOW i don't really need them and yet i know i'll have to get them. if they are still there.

Do you like La Dusseldorf? People always like the self titled but I prefer Viva.

These are all worthy, except I've never been able to get into Witthuser & Westrupp or Irrlicht.

I have said it before and I will say it again: Amon Duul >>>> Amon Duul II. Paradieswarts Duul might be the best acid folk record ever.

i love both duuls. wolf city speaks to me.

I should give Wolf City and Phallus Dei a chance. I've only ever heard Yeti and I think it's just boring guitar solos. Cosmic Jokers or Ash Ra Tempel is much better jam rock methinks.

xxxpost - scott, if there are any of these you'd like to hear, lemme know (i have access wink wink). that Trips & Traume album is really great. really moody, super german, super reverbed acid folk. ian and i were just talking about it today on the noize board.

i seriously can't decide on which album is the best.

who are Sergius Golowin & Walter Wegmuller?

I'm going with the unlikely choice of Neu! 75. My favorite Can, Future Days isn't on there, and while I relate most to Faust and would pick songs off their albums, can't say I really listen to to something like So Far straight through a lot. Cluster's Sowieso is my other favorite on the that list, and as a Neu! 75 fan, of course I love La Dusseldorf, but Neu! 75 just holds a special place in my heart, ever since I bought that Germanaphon bootleg at Kims Underground (the pre-Other Music store) for like 25 bucks. I think in the end it's their best album and pretty underrated by those who prefer the first two.

jaxon: Golowin and Wegmuller are cosmic folk. I really like the Golowin album. First rule of 70s albums: any reference or chanting to Krishna is going to be good. This doesn't disappoint.

Wolf City and Phallus Dei are BRILLIANT!

x-posts
haha yeah The Neu! albums I have are the old bootlegs I bought in Tower for like £15! in the mid to late 90s. Are the reissues better?

Some of the albums in that guys list I linked to up above are quite good Some are other albums by bands that did make the top 50.
Some are bad (Hairy Chapter)
Some are excellent (A.R. & Machines ,Agitation Free, Gila) that perhaps could've been in the top 50.
and some I've never heard of.
I forget if I liked Broselmaschine and Grobschnitt. I think I did but I honestly can't remember. They certainly won't be my favourites though obviously.

Scott are there any metal bands influenced by krautrock? (I know the 1st Queens Of The Stone Age album was a bit influenced by Josh listening to Can and Neu!)

i know opeth like krautrock. i wish more metal bands were neu fans.

I suppose a lot of the drone/ambient doom bands do like Krautrock but I wouldn't say they sound influenced by it.

best nuevo-krautrock-motorik-neu-jam album i've heard recently is the giant brain album on small stone records. guitarist used to be in big chief, the post-hardcore post-necros band from michigan.

http://smallstone.com/img/covers/SS-067.jpg

as much as I love monster movie I have to give it up for yeti.

I have to let these fight in my head while I sleep. Right now I'm leaning to Harmonia- Deluxe.

i've never heard the golowin album or trips and traume. or black dance.

Scott, do you have an emusic acct? I got the first two of those off them, and I think they have the third too. Definitely they added a bunch of early Schulze this year.

No Future Days, no credibility

Musik Von Harmonia

yeti. yeti. yeti.

I've only ever heard Yeti and I think it's just boring guitar solos.

... you sure you heard it? because that sounds pretty wrong to me. as does this:

Some are bad (Hairy Chapter)

YEAH, IF YOU'RE AFRAID TO ROCK THE FUCK OUT.

i prefer AR & Machines, the later Can albums, or later ashra/gottshing albums that aren't on this list. i think i'm gonna agree w/dan and choose Neu 75.

Scott are there any metal bands influenced by krautrock?

are circle or pharoah overlord metal?

I have a copy of the first Neu! album on vinyl but the actual music on the disc is the first Lucifer's Friend album. Is this a big deal?

billingsgate pressing?

Yup, Billingsgate pressing.

maybe they just had a labelling mishap when they were pressing them? if they did them in batches it'd probably be easy to do. but i've not heard of that before. maybe a bunnybrain could help out with this one.

'Einjager & Siebenjager' - it's just beautiful. Followed by 'Yeti'.

I delved into Krautrock after recommendations from other Hawkwind fans and reading Simon Reynolds' Melody Maker piece where he paired Spacemen 3, Loop, Stereolab to their KR influences.

'it's not about how fast we play, but how vast we play' - Holgar Czukay's quote sums up my ideal KR jams.

I went with Faust self titled, because it blew my mind so much.

i'm going with the unpopular (but most correct) choice of faust iv

i agree that 'faust iv' is amazing. man, i love so many of these albums, and still have never heard the last two on that list.

oddly, my choice is the very first -- very little music to me is as powerful as amon duul mark one, so i just have to go with that.

Viva, IV, Sowiesoso en Neu! are all favorites and contenders but as a whole I love Neu!75 the most. I find myself in a "side A mood" quite often... I'll never forget the first time I heard "Hallogallo" though, streaming from a website one late night during work. All I expected and so much more - I sat there paralyzed for 10 minutes.

'Neu!75' gets my vote, although 'Ralf & Florian', had it been on the list, could have given it some competition.

Neu 2!

I think so.

I voted for "Yeti" from the list provided, though if J Cope had one fucking clue abt which are the best Popol Vuh albums, there'd have been "Das Hohelied Salomos", "Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte" or "Die Nacht Der Seele - Tantric Songs" up there for me to vote for instead.

Hey, did McGonigal name his magazine for that Amon Duul album or something? Damn.

Neu 75

i cant decide between zeit and irrlicht.

also where the hell is cluster 71

I was feeling Krautrocky this morning and listened to Can's Peel Sessions on the way to work.

I've only heard about 20 of these albums. Of those I know I think I'll go with Neu!

Faust IV is unpopular?? That's one of my favourites. Not that I've all that many albums outside the Big 3 (Can/Neu/Faust). I have La Dusseldorf on this PC somewhere I just haven't got round to it yet.

I do like Phallus Dei though.

I wish I hadn't sold my Amon Duul II albums. I am voting for Yeti.

Faust IV was one of the easiest albums to actually find on cd back in the 90s!

Get Space Ritual

Et Cetera video containing a medley of tracks from their s/t LP. Beware: It's very "unlistenable."

http://youtube.com/watch?v=iVl654-UAGY

Is there a German Et Cetera and a Canadian one?

Yes. The German one is much better, from what I've heard.

Search just about anything done by Wolfgang Dauner, Et Cetera's leader. Ouput (on ECM) is especially great.

Output, rather.

So which Et Cetera were people talking about earlier?

The German one. Because this is a KRAUTROCK thread, right?

I didn't realise the german one had a self titled album, I thought they only had one album(after checking AMG). Obviously AMG just didn't list them all.

I used to love Wolfgang Dauner in the late seventies. Not sure what he has to do with krautrock though. He is a piano player coming from jazz. He did some great solo piano albums. I have the impression that krautrock is a rather lazy term as it subsumes many totally different styles. Like for example ambient, world music, new age, electronic music etc.

not to forget jazz, prog, experimental and meditation.

Backing up a bit, I think Louis should probably give up on Can for now. He's not feeling it, clearly. Later, give an ear to the first Cannibalism disc, where you get judiciously edited mixes of halleluwah, Mother Sky, Soup and Aumgn along with a nice selection of the shorter tracks and the full Yoo Doo Right. I prefer the full sidelong versions, but Czukay did these edits and they do have a point to them.

Meanwhile, Louis, I would say you should move over to the Neu-and-fam axis. If you love Super Roots 7 so much (me too) I cannot imagine you will not get something out of these tracks:

Neu- Hallogallo off the first album, Fur Immer off the 2nd
Harmonia- Immer Weider off Deluxe
Neu- first track and "Hero" off '75
First La Dusseldorf album

These are straight up Greatest Hits kind of selections, the Eight Miles Highs and She Said She Saids of motorik.

(to get his interest call them Super Furry Animals or Mansun greatest hits of motorik)

I used to love Wolfgang Dauner in the late seventies. Not sure what he has to do with krautrock though.

True, but with Et Cetera, he deviated into some experimental weirdness that touched on rock, electronic music, raga, and with "Lady Blue," a bizarre spoken-word/psychedelic ballad hybrid.

I have the impression that krautrock is a rather lazy term as it subsumes many totally different styles.

That's a valid point.

dont forget spacerock

I have the impression that krautrock is a rather lazy term as it subsumes many totally different styles.

i don't know about lazy so much as hopelessly broad and far too specific all at once. i wind up having to explain that bands from france/sweden/ameria/whatever are like "krautrock that isn't from germany" unless i want to get into a huge three-hour explanation about how they're not really prog, not really psych, etc.

http://www.suzannedoucet.com/images/zweisteincover2.jpg

i don't know about lazy so much as hopelessly broad and far too specific all at once. i wind up having to explain that bands from france/sweden/ameria/whatever are like "krautrock that isn't from germany" unless i want to get into a huge three-hour explanation about how they're not really prog, not really psych, etc.

I just avoid all such arguments. Not That I know many people into Krautrock mind you. Those I do think Jane are krautrock.

i like wolfgang dauner's oimels lp, its pretty spacejazzy, i never heard any of his others though, isnt it all connected to that black forest jazz stuff

Have you heard that Zweistein album, Am0n?

The Zweistein's pretty good. Wouldn't make it into my top albums list, but is definitely worth a few spins.

yes i've heard it

I haven't. Guess That's one to check out.

it's pretty uninteresting to my ears. very "well, we've got studio time let's do something dudes."

yeah except its not that at all

except it is. let's do this all night!

A decade before the musically unskilled Half Japanese audaciously released their debut full-length as a three-record box set, the equally musically unskilled German group Zweistein pulled off the same stunt, and even topped Half Japanese by having their three-LP set issued by Philips, a major label. Zweistein and their album are one of the strangest episodes in the history of Krautrock, an era where bands in general weren't exactly known for restraint. Though not much is known about this mysterious group, Zweistein was mostly the work of Jacques Dorian, without help from his wife and kids, as well as studio engineer Peter Kramper. They released the single "I'm a Melody Maker b/w "A Very Simple Song," a pair of acoustic folk songs, for Philips in 1970. The resident producer at Philips had the hots for either Dorian's wife or another woman in the group, and she convinced the producer to let Zweistein go ahead with a full-length record. Late at night with everyone except the children under the influence of LSD, they recorded enough material for what would become a grand concept three-LP set called Trip Flipout Meditation marking the three stages of an acid trip. Amateurish and over-indulgent and not very well recorded, the record reveled in excesses, as the group mostly dropped their folk leanings for studio effects, spacey sounds, and long creepy organ tones, and distorted vocal noises, with a crude song thrown in here and there. To make matters worse, the records were issued in an elaborate metallic gold and silver box with a mirror embedded in the front cover. When the record came out, later in 1970, the producer at Philips was quickly fired for the costly fiasco, and in weeks the company deleted Trip Flipout Meditation from their catalog. Whereas some have reviled Zweistein's effort as an excessive mess, others have hailed it as a flawed masterpiece in strangeness. Zweistein never made another album, though engineer Kramper went on to play keyboards and Moog in Amon Düül II and the Amon Düül off-shoot Utopia while the others vanished completely from the music scene.

Is the story behind it better than the music?

totally. it's not worth either "reviling" or "hailing."

They're probably like the krautrock equivalent of the godz. It's a great cover, really freaky & trippy. The music struck me as being proto-industrial in places - IIRC one side (!) of one of the albums is mainly a radio tuned between 2 channels. I kind of wich I still had a copy, even though I probably wouldn't listen to it often.

Eh, I didn't realise one of the guys was in AD later on.

i think you posted the false story:

over the course of several emails, suzanne provided me with a wealth of information about zweistein and she even set the record straight in regards to the conflicting stories about the band. i was fascinated to learn that along with her younger sister diane, suzanne recorded the entire triple-lp over a four month period in various locations including prague and munich. after editing the material on suzanne’s tape-recorder, they brought the material to munich and worked with recording engineer peter kramper on adding studio effects and mastering the recordings. initially the sisters played their finished piece for friends, but it wasn’t long before they decided to offer it to a record label. deciding to call the ‘group’ zweistein suzanne offered the production to phonogram / phillips who having recently inked krautrock acts kraftwerk and cluster to recording deals eagerly accepted the album. suzanne sold herself as the producer and maintained the appearance that zweistein was a separate group. being a very well known pop star and not wanting to harm her career by being attached to such an avant-garde project, suzanne used the pseudonym jacques dorian to disguise her identity. as far as the rumors were concerned, there was no secret love affair between her and the producer as the popular legend insists. furthermore, the phillips producer, the late wolfgang kretschmar who was responsible for signing kraftwerk, was not fired for his involvement. the album sold 6,000 copies and was pulled off the shelves a year after its release. the rights to the album returned to suzanne in 1980 at which time she produced and sold 1500 cassette tapes of the album with a zweistein fan located in nuernberg, germany.

the cover is awesome

It is one of the most beautiful record covers I've ever seen, actually.

Norman did you have the lp?

http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildata.php?itemnr=190003351484

Briefly, yes. I sold it for a lot of money, though the amount would probably seem cheap compared w/the insanely stupid unjustifiable prices collector's stuff goes for these days. I also had "Ultima Thule" parts 1 & 2, "contact high with the godz" on esp-disc, loads of shit like that. The only thing I still have these days that is remotely relevant to this discussion is Rabbi Josef Gordan "Competition" which is actually Julian Cope (& which is great) Apart from thatthe only collector stuff I still have is the "Glastonbury Fayre" triple and my Shirley Collins albums.

What you can't tell from that pic too easily is that the sleeve is made of metal foil coated card, silvery finish with a design embossed onto it - IIRC it's the side of a hawk's head, or a bird's head of some sort. (it's like 18yrs since I saw a copy, though so I may be wrong on the specifics) the creature's eye is a metal mirror plate that is glued on. The pictures on the inside of the gatefold are printed on a metallic surface. It's absolutely beautiful.

When did you sell that stuff?

x-post well i guess 18 years may be the answer?

Xpost a few days to Jon Lewis: Cheers, dude! One thing: I can't abide to listen to edits or incomplete works, so with Can I'll have to 'get' the full versions. I'm sure it'll happen soon (as with 'Tilt')!

I did like 'Mother Sky', to be fair, when Kerr sent it my way.

I thought most of Can's stuff was "edits"...

ffs I mean that I don't like listening to music that has been reduced or altered from the artist's published vision.

re: Zweistein

Sounds like I'll be firing up a search of the ol' Kraut sharity blogs after work tonight.

xpost These aren't edited for jukeboxes or anything like that. Czukay did the editing and sequencing.

I thought most of Can's stuff was "edits"

That's a really sharp comment, Todd. Yet again as with 1970s Miles, part of Can's project was to chip away at the supremacy of "the artist's published vision." And while the tracks may not have been edited for jukeboxes (great line!), I wouldn't be shocked if some of them ended up there. Most Krautrock is pleasant enough background to hoisting a stein at the local biergarten (sp?), no?

I can't imagine that happening though.

Apart from thatthe only collector stuff I still have is the "Glastonbury Fayre" triple

... i've got that too!

*COUGHCOUGHAHEM*

no really guys

I'm there, baby! Thanx!!!

Someone has uploaded the top 50 to Rapidshare (beware, NSFW banner ads)...
http://www.theforum.com/showthread.php?threadid=93840

Oops, sorry, someone already posted it. My bad.

although maybe i should have specified what i was linking to