This compilation album release is a tie-in with Wolfgang Seidel’s book Krautrock Eruption: An Alternative History Of German Underground In The 60s and 70s.
Who can forget the Mental Experience reissues of bands that may or may not have existed and recorded during the ’70s, whose music only seem to surface in the ’90s. Even after what seems like forensic detail on some artists, there still appears to be some muddy histories about some bands, and even some of the big hitters like Tangerine Dream are still waiting for a non-biased biography of their story, even if it only covers the first two decades.
So here we have a compilation of artists that maybe seem on the periphery in some cases, but were equally as important to shaping the sounds of the era, and some even having a greater influence on the German underground music that followed than the bigger bands. Conrad Schnizler was one of the founding members of Tangerine Dream and the album opens with his track “Ballet Statique” from his 1978 album Con; unlike some of his early work, which had side-long drifting, sometimes atonal pieces made up of tapes and electronics, “Ballet Statique” is a jaunty arpeggio lead electronic piece with a steady rhythm and the kind of ’70s synth sound that you hear band like The Human League appropriating only a year later. This makes for an excellent opener for the album and maybe lulls you into a false sense of security.Following this is a track from the 1973 album The Faust Tapes. “‘I’ve Heard That One Before / Watch Your Step” is a typical piece of early Faust, mixing experimental sounds with jazz influences and at times a psych wig-out mentality that would slowly drive the band into a more industrial music landscape as time went on.
The Eno, Moebius and Roedelius track “Foreign Affairs” is taken from their 1978 album After The Heat and has a stomping piano sound over which drifting synth pads and arpeggiated notes fight for attention. The track sometimes comes across sound-wise as piece that was left off of Eno’s Before And After Science, released a year earlier, although this recording pre-dates that album’s release. Harald Grosskopf is probably one of the great unsung heroes of German electronic music and his track “Emphasis”, taken from his 1980 work of genius Synthesist is a wonderful piece of electronic music from an album all Krautrock fans should own. Taken from Cluster 71, “21.32” is an edited version of this mammoth track and is more of a dub piece of space electronics by Cluster as the track is swathed in tons of echo that reverberates around the walls, long after the track has finished. Taken from the 1979 album of the same name by Moebius and Plank, “Rastakraut Pasta” has a more dub reggae groove that uses guitar and electronics in a spatial way and you can almost hear Bauhaus taking notes on its construction.Hans-Joachim Roedelius’s first proper solo album, released in 1978, was Durch Die Wuste and contains the track featured here, “Glaubersalz”. This is an almost baroque piece, with a mixture of piano and synth sounds blending together to give us something more akin to an early Wendy Carlos album; as it stands, it feels like the most progressive rock-sounding of everything on this compilation.
Pyrolator’s “Minimal Tape 3/7.2” is taken from Inland and is a rolling piece of sequenced synthesizer that nods at Philip Glass as the notes fall over each other to be heard. Originally released on his 1978 album Wunderbar, Wolfgang Riechmann’s “Himmelblau” is a poignant piece of electronic pop, made more sad by the fact that its creator never saw the records release as he was stabbed by two drunks in a park a few days before it was due to come out. There is a touch of Kraftwerk here and there, and the whole album is wonderful legacy to the man who painstakingly put it together. One of the earliest tracks on the disc is Kluster’s “Kluster 2”, taken from 1970’s Klopzeichen, and is a slow-moving ebb of deep bass throb and angular electronics that sounds more like it was created for art installations, even with its awkward percussion. Günter Schickert’s 1979 album Überfallig is a landmark of German space rock and here the compilation has chosen the track “Apricot Brandy 2”, a high mixture of forward-momentum guitar and tumbling drums that get put through a Hawkwind-style echo and comes out like a cosmic-sounding Gong in the process, with Schickert’s signature guitar style taking you off on a wild ride to the dark side of the sun.The final track is Asmus Tietchens‘s “Falter Lamento” from Nachtstucke; this is a big dramatic synthesizer track, full of bombast and the kind of chord sequence you would find on dungeon synth albums. It’s a big and bold end to Krautrock Eruption.
Like all compilations, some fans of the genre will probably scratching their heads at some of the omissions here; but in relation to book, it probably makes greater sense for the choice of music. Some tracks have been edited down from their original length, so be warned you are not getting twenty-minute-plus releases on this, which also makes sense.Overall, Krautrock Eruption is an interesting compilation and hopefully will bring some new traffic and greater exploration to some of the artists that may have been slightly overlooked over the years, and reestablish just how important they were to the entire Krautrock scene.
-Gary Parsons-
