KRAUTROCK Listening Klub! - New Albums Every Wednesday

Hey, some of us might be busy for the next two weeks! Also I want to see what other people are posting and the general direction the whole thing's headed (xp)

alright
12/05 - fit and working again
19/05 - ilxor

dont blame me if 20 people jump in ahead of you and you dont get a shot until next year, tom.

Already have my three albums lined up (in my head).

^ deserves to go before me

Actually, I might prefer to go later... unless Herman's down for having me highlight some Kraut-influenced stuff instead of a bunch of the "classic" '60s/'70s era stuff. I'm gonna switch it up a bit!

My immediate thought is that it might be best to get some of the "classics" out of the way first, though.

yes, get the "classics" out of the way. I dont think we need do Stereolab ever on this thread.

I've never heard VIVA. I'll have to grab it later. This is the first listening club thread I've opened.
I'm a big fan of the first two bands, but neither of those records are my favorite. They are pretty great debuts, though.

yes, get the "classics" out of the way. I dont think we need do Stereolab ever on this thread.

Hmmmm, you may want to push back my contribution week? I've got one classic lined up, then two heavily Kraut-influenced things from the '90s/'00s that are well worth hearing.

1st round of goes we definitely stick to the classics, "influenced" stuff comes much later as we run out, i think)

I cant push you back as noone else has volunteered and tom needs 3 months to pick his albums.

I'll give it a go Herman!

Can I have a week for classics, then another week for influenced stuff a bit later on?

Greedy

sure.

I'll be having multiple goes myself, hopefully not too many though as lots of you will volunteer.

12/05 - fit and working again
19/05 - ilxor
26/05 - Neil S
2/06 - Tom D (provisionally)

ta. Now I have to get thinking, should be relatively easy if we're the more canonical end of things.

i think we can be loose on the 70s end of things

tom is digging out his early Scorpions lps as we speak. I heard he liked a bit of Frumpy and Hairy Chapter too.

Promise to avoid crap German heavy rock and crap German jazz rock - and there's a shitload of the latter

...that you own?

... a lot of it, yes, unfortunately

you hippy!

What do you have then german jazz-rock wise?

Oh, various shite

name some names!

I bet he has Scorpions albums

Hey, select portions of "Lonesome Crow" are fairly krautrockish! (Particularly the Echoplexed bits.)

Hairy Chapter's "Can't Get Through" lp is a thud-rock classic, imo.
Early Scorps certainly ain't bad, either.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the concept: What are the responsibilities involved in volunteering to do a week?

1) Pick three albums!

2) Get wasted.

Yes, except you've got it in reverse order.

1) Get wasted.

2) Pick three albums!

3) Get wasteder.

Alright, I want a week. But it couldn't really be until like the middle of June because I'm packing up my records and moving across the country...

you goin' back to cali? like LL?

Yeah. Except not nearly as cool, and I gotta figure out how to get my music out there with me.

good luck!

Thx dude! Wish I would've had more warning, would've come up to your store.

(And a few hundred others.)

ok
I'll put you down provisionally then

12/05 - fit and working again
19/05 - ilxor
26/05 - Neil S
2/06 - Tom D (provisionally)
9/06 - pfunkboy
16/06- GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ

THX

Can we get a week for Geir?

geir only does prog club

Anyone else want in?

Listening to Phallus Dei, this was the first Amon Düül II I ever bought. I read about them somewhere in the mid 90s and one of my mates ran me into Glasgow to Tower Records one evening (it opened til midnight). I got this and tanz der lemmings(they didnt have yeti) and 2 Neu! cds. It still sounds bizarre now, love it. I remember finding yeti a few weeks later 2nd hand along with the other Neu! cd. Great times.

This thread/club I will most likely follow than any other one.

sidenote: the Neu! box set is now available

sidenote: the Neu! box set is now available

she be expensive

Shrug, I just cringe every time I hear it. Just a gut reaction.

I too prefer it to "Material"...a little much of an industrial vibe for me.

"Solar Plexus" from Rastakraut Pasta is terrifying. Like waking up from surgery in something like that final weird hall in 2001: A Space Odyssey and not being able to feel your limbs, and hearing ambient alien chatter from a few rooms away. Robert Ashley-type horror.

Two Oldtimers is an all time favorite of mine. So gorgeous.

MOEBIUS, PLANK & NEUMEIER - Zero Set (1982)

http://991.com/newGallery/Moebius--Plank-Zero-Set-440042.jpg

OK so we've started with Moebius + Plank. so let's continue. From earlier in the thread:

"Sowiesoso" - I got this, one lunchtime, in a little record shop called Casa in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. This was a shop which nobody seemed to buy anything out of, it appeared to be run by middle-aged women, their stock was ancient and mostly easy listening and Scottish folk music. This album was in a German folk music section (between the French and the Greek sections), alongside "Zero Set" by Moebius, Plank & Neumeier and "Double Cut" by Moebius & Beerbohm - hey, I don't know much about German folk music but I know what I like!

So here is "Zero Set". Hard to describe this album, sort of dense rhythmic electronic jiggery-pokery from Plank and Moebius with Neumeier clattering away on top (Mani being the polar opposite of the Liebezeit/ Dinger metronomic school of drumming). Bit let down by the last two tracks perhaps, but I'll leave youse to make your own mind up about that.

Link

DZYAN - Electric Silence (1974)

http://www.qpratools.com/gallery/big/dzyan-electric_silence-front.jpg

Trying desperately to post some music that doesn't include Dieter Moebius here. 3rd album by Dzyan: 1st album was prog rock bollocks, 2nd was closer to this album but got a bit too Mahavishnu Orchestra in places. This album is in a similar vein to the Et Cetera album I posted earlier: jazz rock elements, ethnic elements, bit of improv, sprinkling of mellotron, dash of electronics here and there, title track goes slightly Mahavishnu Orch. on us again but some people like that sort of thing.

Link

lol @ that cover

I've completely falling in love with the Thomas Dinger album, it feels so personal and idiosyncratic. I love music that feels like it could fall apart and there's plenty of those moments on here. What an opener "Ballgeflüster" is...

"Solar Plexus" from Rastakraut Pasta is terrifying. Like waking up from surgery in something like that final weird hall in 2001: A Space Odyssey and not being able to feel your limbs, and hearing ambient alien chatter from a few rooms away. Robert Ashley-type horror.

― Clarke B., Tuesday, May 24, 2011 8:49 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

This totally made me want to listen to an album that I had been avoiding for a long time because its name evokes either the world's most repulaive food (like chocolate cheese tilapia casserole) or embarrassed me to say out loud for whatever reason. It's a lot better now that I'm on the second track.

It's dark and rainy outside, so this seemed liked a good day for terrifying music.

Miss Cacadou is really cute, kind of half what I expected. I like that there can be one album with a song this cute and one that sounds like alien chatter.

Can someone describe for me the following: who bought this record when it originally came out? I mean, what was the audience for this music?

I bought it. I discovered Cluster via Brian Eno, and somehow, new vinyl imports started to show up in Pittsburgh, so I bought them when I could. I don't think I ever heard it on any radio stations.

By the way, a little bit off topic, but my husband wrote a piece for his blog that might be interesting to this thread.

Thanks for posting Zero Set, I have been wanting to hear the whole thing after catching a youtube with one of the songs.

Thank you doo dah! Looks like a great read and I cannot get enough of these cosmic fashions.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z3s5BmGhL2E/TdvpoyC7ovI/AAAAAAAAAHA/WvLzH53AFvA/s1600/Cosmicfashions.jpg

By the way, a little bit off topic, but my husband wrote a piece for his blog that might be interesting to this thread.

Great article, thanks! It's great to learn some of these little details like the Macht das Ohr auf / Macht das Tor auf pun that I never would have otherwise realized.

In reference to Rastakraut Pasta, thanks to Garyln for putting my album title distaste into more understandable terms:

an album that I had been avoiding for a long time because its name evokes either the world's most repulaive food (like chocolate cheese tilapia casserole) or embarrassed me to say out loud for whatever reason.

Looking forward to checking out the Moebius/Plank/Neumeier record...I Moebius/Beerbohm's Double Cut, though that's probably one of my least favorites.

Love the first track on Zero Set--those drums!--but I'm kinda ambivalent to the rest.

Wolfgang Riechmann & Streetmark - Wolfgang Riechmann & Streetmark
http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/3234/r9094741269414876.jpg

There seems to be two releases of this record with different track listings and art work. I prefer order of the songs on this one. Streetmark's second album from 77. Dreams is a bubbling cosmic jam.

http://www.mediafire.com/?c1ubl12yx5awf4h

Randy Pie - Randy Pie
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1040/randypiecopy.jpg

Randy Pie were ex Rattles who were maybe not quite Krautrock. Maybe cosmic blue eyed soul jazz?

http://www.mediafire.com/?ech2u7we8gq7d5s

Awesome. Thanks for the Streetmark/Riechmann. I haven't heard that one yet and will listen in the morning.

Last Saturday, I went to a yard sale and saw Riechmann's Wunderbar lp in a stack of used records and wanted to buy it, but the guy wanted $125 for the damn thing. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. I'm pretty sure it was the 2009 reissue and not an original Sky release.

No love for Randy Pie?

Oh man, the cover of 'Rastakraut Pasta'. I'd forgotten how great these album covers were. Did Sky have an in-house designer? Or was it Moebius who was really into design?

Moebius trained as a graphic designer I think

Moebius studied art with Joseph Beuys, right? Then again, so did Schnitzler, but Schnitzler wasn't much into design. i think Schnitzler was really into the sculpture side of Beuys. Beuys did do some great design work, though.

Those Cluster/Harmonia/etc records are so insanely well-integrated, on a conceptual level--the song titles, the graphic design, everything.

Streetmark album is pleasant (what is a Streetmark anyway?) but given that Dorothea Raukes was responsible for the Deutsch Wertarbeit album, I think she deserves her name on the cover too! Other than the fact that it's German, can't see any reason to be interested in the Randy Pie album however. Thx for all contributions as always!

I wonder if I can "like" Randy Pie on Facebook.

Won't someone help me find other things that sound like the Earthstar and Deutsche Wertarbeit albums posted upthread? I have been listening to both of them pretty constantly since.

Michael Shrieve's "Transfer Station Blue" (referred to upthread IIRC) is full of burbling synthy goodness. More well known, but Ashra's "New Age of Earth" is also fantastic. Peter Baumann's "Leda Welcome to Joyland" is more in the proto-Italo disco vein, but is v nice, and I think was also discussed upthread.

Love Ashra, haven't heard the other two. Thanks!

Couldn't find either of these on spotify, and could only find Transfer Station Blue (and other Peter Baumann, enjoying Bicentennial Presentation) on youtube. Didn't want to download the wrong thing by accident.

I think non-spotify links are on this thread if you wind back through it.

oh ok, got it. i don't know if anything could be better than earthstar.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tengger-spiritual-2/

Had never heard of Tengger before, but this review got me listening and this is great. The opener is so up my street, it immediately won me over. Meditative mantras, soft buzzing drones and motorik beats discreetly chugging along... Recommended.