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thisJs an extraordinary book."

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vox
A HEAD HERITAGE COSMIC FIELD GUIDE: 5 CLASSIC IMAGES OF KRAUTROCK

When Glam-rock appeared amund 1972, the 5. But the greatest Krautrock image of all is
West German bands again took it all, assimilat- surely the sleeve of Amon Diiill ll's Live in
ed it, and came out looking funnier & more con- London. A gigantic German-helmeted Storm-
vincing than any groups had since Funkadelic/ trooper insect claws the London Post-Office
Parliament. On Amon Diiiilll's Viva La Trance, tower from its foundations as flying-saucers lay
the group successfully combined theatrical the city to waste overhead.
animal costumes, harlequin Teutonics, and the
In hindsight, Krautrock was not remotely 'hippy'
current snakeskin platforms and fake furs, a Ia
in its modern post-punk definition. It was soar-
Sly Stone meets Bowie. Even more ridiculous
ingly idealistic and hard as nails. This
was Can's sudden pursuit of glam in a Velvet
Kosmische Musikwas played by painted freaks
Underground style.! was very uncomfortable to
and longhairs whose attitude had never left the
see all these older guys poured into leathers &
idealism or the communes/collectives of the
shades, especially as Michael Karoli, the only
mid 1960s. Krautrock's heart was still in the
young pretty one in the group, was photo-
MC5's guitars and the White Panthers' civil
graphed on his knees in a particularly submis-
insurrection of 1969 Detroit, and the sheer
sive pose, surrounded by3 pouting middle-aged
moment of Andy Warhol's 1966 Exploding
Sugardaddies.
Plastic Inevitable. Guru Guru even tried to
But Krautrockwasthe German pre-punk self-
redeem the swastika on the eponymous Guru
awarenesstrip of all time. And these groups had
Guru LP, placing it in the centre of the record-
suddenly plugged into where the post-war
sleeve, and reversing it on an ancient woven
British psyche still had the Germans pegged-
design, therefore restoring the swastika to its
as the Bogeyman Rotter of all Europe. And they
original peaceful direction. (It was a brave
exploited the situation in thee most genius of
idealism but, like The Swastika Redeemer, a
ways. From Amon Diiiil I to Amon Diiiil II, via
contemporary New York artist who is tattooed
Faust, Cluster, Can and Guru Guru- Krautrock
with hundreds of different & ancient swastikas
groups played this role. Here are my 5 favourite
all over his body, it was hardly enough to obliter-
Krautrock images:
ate such recent memories).
1. Faust IV opened with their 12 minute epic But Krautrock can only truly be defined in
called Krautrock. (A huge double-album sam- hindsight, as many of the groups were only
pler on the hip German Brain label was also intent on capturing the Moment. There are more
called Krautrock, and after Conrad Schnitzler's classic extended true 20 minute-freakouts with-
time in Tangerine Dream & Kluster, one of his in the sleeves of Krautrock LPs than in the
early solo LPs also contained a track called British & American music of all time. And all in
"Krautrock".) space-punk gatefold sleeves, too. Albums were
impossible to judge as they came out because
2. Amon Diiiil's "Mr. Kraut's Jinx" and "La
they defied analysis alongside anything else but
Krautoma" both appeared on the sprawling
other Krautrock. And for all its '60s idealism, the
1975 double-album, Made In Germany, the first
West German scene was never in a stasis- it
(and only?) Krautrock-opera.
did not yearn for some lost undefined Golden-
3. The first 'kraut' reference of all was on Amon age, but constantly dipped into the new music
Diiiill's 1969 "Mama Oiiiil and her Sauerkraut- forms that arrived and adapted them as its own.
band Start Up I" from their first LP Psychedelic This ability to assimilate all the best ofthe New
Underground. conspired to make Krautrock a substantial art-
4. Cluster's Dieter Moebius and his producer, form with considerable stamina. And so power-
Conny Plank, released an album of Bavarian ful has the term Krautremained that its modern
reggae-meets-New York-fuzz and called it connotation to any German Head is as a
RastaKrautPasta! description for the finest Marijuana •

Front cover rmage of Shrat taken £7 .99 net rn UK

from Amon Duulll s LP Yet1
Krautrocksam fer Head Heritage
des 1 ned b J: ne Stevenson rs the pub l1shrn g diVISIOn of
 "What a great book!" JOHN PEEL

Julian Cope

HEAD HERITAGE ·1996LE.

2ND EDITION
 Contents
First published in Great Britain in 1995 (Common Era)
by Head Heritage (A division of K.A. K. Ltd.) Introduction 1
2nd Edition 1996 (Common Era)
Copyright JULIAN COPE 1995 (Common Era) Chapter 1 Prehistoric Underground 4
Photographs C apter 2 A Little History of Krautrock Rising 9
Front cover: the image of Shrat is a detail from the LP Yeti by Amon Diiiilll.
Other photographs are taken from LP jackets from the author's library. C apter 3 Faust 21
Two chapters, "A Little History of Krautrock Rising" and "Can: Any Colour is The Greatest Gimmick of All.
Bad" were originally published in British magazine The Wire, in December
1994 and January 1995 (Common Era). C apter 4 Tangerine Dream 28
"A Little History of Krautrock Rising" also appeared in translated form in the 1967-73: Froese's Paranoia- from "Electronic Meditation"
German magazine Spex, Spring 1995 CE, under the title "Kosmische to "Atem".
Echos".
C apter 5 Neu! 40
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by Thank You Michael Rother, Thank You Klaus Dinger
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or From Kraftwerk to La Dusseldorf via Cluster & Harmonia ..
retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except An attempted Brief Un-ravelment of Neu I
by a reviewer who may quote brief passages.
ISBN : 0-9526719-1-3 apter 6 Can 50
Any Colour is Bad.

pte r 7 Amon Duull & 11 59

The Grimreaper is a Krautrocker and Other Stories.

aoter 8 limothy Leary & Ash Ra Tempel 68

Kosmische Musik meets Sci-Fi

ao er 9 Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser & The Cosmic Couriers 78

Sci-Fi Musik to the End of a Dream

ndix 50 Kosmische Classics 91

The Full Spectrum of Krautrock Musik Reviewed &
Re-appraised
Introduction
I was a teenage Krautrocker. I wrote this short history because
of the way I feel about the music, that its supreme Magic &
Power has lain Unrecognised for too long. Krautrock was not
played by just any old early '70s German rock band. It was a
Powerful Pre-punk attitude achieved by the Pioneering few -
the Ur-punk, those at the very beginning. Krautrock is what
Punk would have been if Johnny Rotten alone had been in
charge - a kind of Pagan Freakout LSD Explore-the-god-in-
you-by-working-the-animal-in-you Gnostic Odyssey. A sort of
very fit Hawkwind without the Doomsday Science-Fiction.
Krautrock has been obscured in the eyes of the public, who may
be unaware that it was as Holy as the Stooges, Sun Ra and the
MC5 all on one stage. Or that it was transcendental Cosmic
Fuck-rock played by Superfit amphetamine Visionary Poet-
druids and always had an attitude-to-the-Moooon!
I did not have to dig through the musty corners of my record
library for this information - my Krautrock all sits together, a
huge wad of it, next to the Psychedelia, the Sly and Funkadelic
LPs, the Scott Walker LPs - the stuff that is now accepted as
classic music, but got me labelled a queer, a freak, or just plain
fucking mad. I'm not a completist, but I have only written about
records that I have in my own library. And writing this book
inevitably caused me to fill necessary holes in my collection, so
a brand new Krautrock revival has taken place. I'd had many
before: in 1977, on meeting the Liverpool punkscene; in 1984,
when I met my then new manager Cally, a Krautrock disciple
 supreme; and most recently since 1991, when my guitar tech ...re of the fire, so it was never to be. Instead, we are left wit_h
Rizla Deutsche put Neu 2 on in the tour bus. Here we go again, legacy of the daring German Youth-dance away fro~ t~etr
I thought, and here we surely have. ent past. And Krautrock is it- some of the most astomsh_m~,
When I decided to write this Krautrocksampler in September ative, heroic glimpses of Man at his Peak of Arttsttc
1994 (CE), it was surprising but not bewildering to discover
that here was one of thee Great Untold Visionary Stories. I read
of those beautiful German post-war artists and I cried my heart
out. If I had been a young German in the 1960s I would have
played Krautrock or died. No way could I have lived with the
knowledge that my parents ' generation had had dealings in a
crime beyond Biblical proportions. I'd have been on a Rock-it
to Mars -which is precisely the path that the best German rock-
' n'roll artists followed. As I researched behind this High-mag-
ick musick, I discovered the obvious. Krautrock was borne on
the high East wind that soared above the rage of the 1960s
British and American scenes.
Krautrock transcended all this and more.
Because it had to.

In this mini-history, I've tried to explain who were these Ger-

man underground heroes, spoken of in hushed tones, but
unheard by most. Faust, Can, Neu!, Amon Dutil I and II, Ash
Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, La Dusseldorf, Harmo-
nia, Popol Yuh, etc., etc. Why did the whole West German rock
scene continue to make LPs of acid freakout music in wild op-
art sleeves long into the '70s? And why was a standard album
by any of the above far more extreme than even thee Most
extreme British and American equivalents, excluding only
such legends as the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" (which
some Krautrock fans would consider tame in comparison with
certain tracks that could be mentioned, e.g. Ash Ra Tem-
peli"Amboss".) This little history attempts to explain the rea-
sons, but it can never truly explain the music of a whole
Youth-nation working out their blues. There was a fire burning
in the souls ofpost-warGerman youth that somehow needed to
be, not fanned, not put out, nor added to with petrol- but rather
that fire needed to be allowed to bum. And burn it did. With an
intensity that could have changed the very fabric of the West
had it taken place in Britain or the USA. But that was not the
2
3
 iijlf.!QI§;II peri mental music - and in Karlheinz Stockhausen, they
.tlready had the greatest modem composer living right there
amongst them. Born in 1928, Stockhausen was part of an
ancient, ever-changing tradition. He had studied under the
French mystic, Olivier Messiaen, and grown up with the com-
ing new influx of experimental composers, such as Pierre
Boulez, Karel Goeyvaerts and John Cage. Stockhausen was a
, i ionary in every way. His mind saw and his ears heard things
qui te differently to other people. By 1958, he was positioning
Prehistoric musicians and audiences in strange formations . Sometimes
audiences encircled the musicians, sometimes banks of loud-
Underground peakers blasted the music away from the listeners, but always
a great deal of experiment and always the possibility that this
W. Germany in the early '60s was it- a new way. By 1960, he had performed the outrageous
onic klang called Kontakte, an electronic piece that sounds
In the early 1960s, whilst fashion and pop music danced togeth- overtly modem even today. Still seven years away from the first
er across the skies of Britain and the USA, the rest of Europe synthesizer, Stockhausen achieved a sound that was violent,
merely watched. The French affected not to give a damn. They percussive, dizzying- it even had his cohort and contemporary
had already adopted Le ' 50s rock' n' roll style which would sus- Pierre Boulez dumbfounded. And as the '60s progressed,
tain them along their chic way, whilst the Scandinavians went Stockhausen became an icon to all aspiring new West German
mad in their own quiet but psychotic manner, and adopted a artists. His wild music was taking him to New York, London,
love for American cars, streetgangs and the most primitive Paris, and proved that being himself could still earn the German
music available. But in West Germany, there were British and artist a place in the international sphere.
American airforce bases. As the scene of the Allies ' victory, But though Stockhausen was a huge influence to young
West Germany was a home to thousands of U.S. and British artists, they still had the problem of Right Now! Experimental
troops so German radio was very quick to pick up on rock- music was fine, but everyone continued to return to rock'n'roll
'n' roll from the start. The post-war West German kids learned for its instant gratification, its instant achievement, and its
their English from the radio and the TV; they all had American instant entertainment at dances every Saturday night. And once
accents. But they also saw the huge American cars driven by the West Germans had learned how to play pop music, they
the troops on leave, and they learned to love the whole style. would next have to learn how to truly assimilate it into their cul-
They learned to love chewing-gum, Coca-Cola, jeans and ture, rather than merely aping the British and American groups.
everything else they saw as good from the USA. Like Japan, But the jump from fans ofrock'n'roll to rock'n'roll artists is
West Germany after the war was showered with so much aid a very big one. And for most of the 1960s, it was a jump that
that the culture of the aid-bringers inevitably left some pretty West Germans were unable to make. By 1965, Edgar Froese,
hefty thumb-prints on the people. If West Germany was to not later to lead Tangerine Dream, was playing standards such as
sink under the weight of imported foreign culture, then the peo- "In the Midnight Hour" three times a night in Johnny Halli-
ple had to act quickly.
day's Paris club, "because it was the best song in our reper-
But there were still heroes to inspire West German youth. toire." But Froese was not at that time a prototype Krautrocker
Germany was the centre of all the most important modem Rising. He was not yet looking for a true German sound. He
4
5
was a working musician in a rock'n'roll band at a time when •und. Only certain US garage rock B-sides of the mid-'60s
most of the future German stars were not even involved in pop- r>erhaps equalled the Monks' sound. But even these had com-
ular music. Also in 1965, future Can leader, Bolger Czukay, mercial considerations to think of, so the Monks' sound wipes
was playing dance music in his spare time, as guitarist and lhe floor with all but the most savage. And NO-ONE ever came
accordionist (!)for the Jetliners, and studying under Karlheinz up with a whole album of such dementia. The Monks' Black
Stockhausen during the day. Yet at this stage, no attempt was Honk Time is a gem born of isolation and the horrible deep-
casually made to reconcile the black-based voodoo-dance of down knowledge that no-one is really listening to what your
rock'n'roll and the remedial candy melodies of pop with the aying. And the Monks took full artistic advantage of their
white intellectualism of post-war West Germany. The German lucky/unlucky position as American rockers in a country that
art scene was quite a law unto itself and many of West Ger- \\as desperate for the real thing. They wrote songs that would
many 's future stars had already dismissed pop & rock'n'roll as have been horribly mutilated by arrangers and producers had
kids' music- entertaining but ultimately disposable compared they been back in America. But there was no need for them to
to real art. So the West Germans pursued all the ex-patriot clean up their act, as the Beatles and others had had to do on
American and British rock' n'rollers in their own country and returning home, for there were no artistic constraints in a coun-
made them play right out on the edge of their capabilities. They try that liked the sound of beat music but had no idea about its
needed their entertainment to be Hot! lyrical content. On "Complication", the singer bowls the word
·"Complication !" over a savage fuzz guitar, over & over, finally
The Monks as Missing Link rhyming it with "Constipation!", before the backing vocalists
It was the West German demand for the real thing that made the join in a furore of how :
Beatles get so good performing at Hamburg 's Star Club. If they "People die, People die for you,
hadn't been great or at least extremely entertaining, then they People kill, Yes, they will for you.
would have been out on their collective asses. But there is one People go to their deaths for you."
much greater proof of Germany's Out-there-ness in the mid-
Each lyric is spat out with the true contempt of forces personnel
' 60s, in the form of a 1965 album called Black Monk Time*.
who know that their songs will not be listened to, merely heard
Recorded by The Monks, an out-there collaboration of five
as part of a Saturday night 's drunken entertainment. But for all
young American ground crew from a U.S. airbase in West Ger-
their listeners' lack of a need for meaning, the Monks them-
many, their album is one of the most chilling electrifying freak-
selves sure as hell put in as much as they, as songwriters, need-
outs of all time. It still has its feet in the early '60s, with vocal
ed. On the opening song, "Monk Time", the singer Gary Burger
styles as bizarre as Doris Day or the Four Seasons, and archaic
introduces the members of the group then launches into a vio-
song titles like "Drunken Maria", "Higgle-Dy-Piggle-Dy" and
lent diatribe:
The Ventures-style "Blast Off!". Ha ha ha. But the straight
"We don't like the army,
names belie the truly underground perversity of the Monks'
What army, Who cares what army?
songwriting. High falsetto shrieks tell of lost love, confident
Why do you kill all those kids in Vietnam?
agreeing college-boy backing vocals scold the singer for being
My brother died in Vietnam.
too wimpy, but always over a backing track of insanity so
James Bond? Who's he?
intense and simultaneously such speedball entertainment, that
Stop it, Stop it, I don't like it
no British pop group of the '60s ever got close to rivalling their
Pussy Galore is coming down
We like that,
* Now available on CD on lsraphon Records · ISROOJ, the Monks ' LP is a lost classic.
We don ' t like the atomic bomb,
6 7
 Stop it, stop it,
I don 't like it. " ca:m;•§;tJ
Any audience seeing a performance of this intensity would
have changed their lifestyles immediately. And of utmost
importance to the explanation of Krautrock is the Monks ' odd
ability to cross from one musical style to another, at a time
when this was a heinous crime in Britain or America. In 1964,
no beat groups played the lame jangle of yesteryear. By 1965 ,
Merseybeat was so old as to be extinct, doo-wop was prehis-
toric, and folk-rock was a year old and therefore old news. But
the Monks were able to collect all these styles, assimilate them
A Little History of
and synthesise them together because they were in West Ger-
many, not in spite of it. This is very important. West Germany
Krautrock Rising
was a late developer. In West Germany, style was far more
important than fashion . Things moved so fast in Britain and the John and Yoko & the Paris Riots
big American cities that a look could arrive, be adopted and B) 1967, the Federal Republic of Germany was rocking. The
then jettisoned by everyone on the scene in a matter of months. Ranles had even produced West Germany's first international
It was the same on the pop music scene. When Paul Rothschild • ·"The Witch", but the groups still sounded like everyone
produced the first Doors ' LP, he refused to let the musicians use . They had taken a while to embrace the whole trip, but that
any wah-wah pedals, fuzz-boxes or distortion pedals. He want- always been the German way. Even the Roman historians
ed to keep out gimmicks which would sound old-fashioned in been prompted to comment that, whilst the German tribes
18 months' time. This was an over-cautious approach but it re the hardest to Christianise, God help the tribes north of the
worked. It made the Doors' music timeless. Yet by the '90s The me when the newly-Christianised Germans went on their
Monks' music is just as timeless precisely because it does adopt m-again kick. And the newly-rocking West Germans were
the gimmicks of the moment. The Monks win through, because -again for shitdamn-sure. Briefly, during 1967, West Ger-
they adopt every gimmick of every moment and somehow rec- · ' eemed to become a province of British and American
oncile the lot in a sheer joyful abandonment of brilliant song- ~e. Psychedelia came six months late but stayed forever.
writing and arrangements, and a neurotic obsession with e Detroit's Stooges, who were so provincial that they were
recording everything with the VU meters on red. The Monks . wearing grown-out Troggs haircuts in 1969, West German
were born of the same insane clubs as the Beatles, only three were slow to pick up on a trend but even slower to put it
years later, and such mayhem and insanity seeps through every :n. The phasing which could be heard as a fashionable extra
pore of their music. Wild call and answer arias like an acid West earl\ 1967 British pop hits would still be heard on 1974
Side Story are yelped, hollered and yodelled in unison - the ~rman Krautrock epics, fully assimilated into the style
whole group. Impeccable. Utter machine gun guitar freakouts and. The op-art, pop-art and psychedelic light show
with endless descending organ, drum clatters of the First Tribe, hich had defined British and American record-covers
and all because the combination of rock' n' roll and the Germans 1967/8 period would come to dominate the whole of the
created an entrancing mania akin to Wagner 's operas. Yes, the 'est German underground.
Germans needed their rock' n'roll.

8 9.
 Certain events all over the world had caused this musical ther student of Stockhausen, and suggested they form a
gearchange into overdrive. up with Michael Karoli, 10 years their junior. This weird
When Yoko Ono got together with John Lennon, the com- bination of Stockhausen and psychedelia would soon be
bined populations of Britain and America frowned in disap- led The Can. And it was a show that would run and run ...
proval. In West Germany, this was not the case at all. The hip
artistic community knew all about Yoko Ono. She was visible
and she was a fine and inspiring artist. And, most of all, by pick- S ockhausen Sees the Jefferson Airplane
ing John Lennon, she gave her high artistic approval to the !heinz Stockhausen is central to the entire history of
Beatles' kids music right then and there. For many artists in ,Jtrock. And one massive piece of work, 1966's Hymnen, is
W. Germany, that was reason enough to form a rock'n'roll tal to that whole unconscious movement. Because Stock-
group. Also in 1968, the riots in Paris saw students hurling n is also the most important living composer and has
Molotov cocktails at the police and Situationists spraying ired so many different movements and musicians, it's easy
"Save petrol, Burn Cars", whilst the Russians sent tanks into nderstate this fact. But the release of Hymnen had repercus-
Alexander Dubchek's Czechoslovakia, re-enforcing the ideal throughout all of W. Germany, and not least in the heads
of freedom in any wavering young West German hippies. e young artists. It was a huge 113 minute piece, subtitled
Copycat riots in Berlin took place over a musical backdrop of thems for Electronic and Concrete Sounds". Hymnen was
the new freakout music by road veteran Edgar Froese's new ded up into four long LP sides, entitled Region I, Region II,
acid freeform group, Tangerine Dream, and Psy Free, a very _ on III, and Region IV. But why was it so important to the
young bass-less trio led by the drummer, Klaus Schultze. The Ge~ans? In short, because it took "Deutschland, Deutschland
music was somersaulting, trippy and deeply out there. Schultze r Alles" and screwed it up, screwed it down, played it
and Psy Free guitarist, Alex Conti, were vehemently opposed !!h weird electronic gizmos, distorted it horribly and basi-
to all capitalism - playing for hours for free, night after night. ~treated it pretty badly. The German public ALL furry-
West German pop festivals followed in the wake of Monterey - ed. The left-wing didn't see the funny side at all and
and the first great event was the 1968 Essener Sontag Festival, ..1 ed him of appealing to the basest German feelings, whilst
which featured two of the groups most inspiring to the German right wing hated him for vilifying their pride and joy, ~nd
Underground, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and Ed ·no the Europeans laugh at them. Stockhausen had JUSt
Sanders' Fugs. One ofthe German groups invited to play at the. r:ed from six months at the University of California, where
festival was a politico/musical commune called Amon Duul. had lectured on experimental music. Among those at his
Hours before the show, it was announced that their short lived mars were the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh,
peace was at an end, and two different groups actually played e Slick of Jefferson Airplane, and many other psychedelic
that night, known forever after as Amon Dutil I and Amon Dutil 1 ians. Far from snubbing the new music, Stockhausen was
II. Groups were all co-operatives now, and non-playing man- 0 at a Jefferson Airplane show at the Filmore West, and was
agers were illegal. The new scene continued to develop across ed as saying that the music" ... really blows my mind." So
wide age ranges. One day, Bolger Czukay was talking to one of il t the young German artists loved Stockhausen for
his students about his own former teacher, Karlheinz Stock- racing their own rock'n 'roll culture, they doubly loved him
hausen. The young student, a violinist/guitarist called Michael hat they recognised as the beginning of a freeing of all
Karoli, was not impressed. He played his teacher the Beatles' "I German symbols. By reducing "Deutschland, Deutschland
am the Walrus", and Bolger Czukay was astounded that rock- r Alles" to its minimum possible length, Stockhausen had
'n'roll had come so far. He phoned his friend, Irmin Schmidt, "fied it. It had much the same effect as a British man or
11
10
 woman hearing an ice-cream van outside - some kind of nderground, Collapsing and the double-album Disaster
response is triggered whether they want ice-cream or not. e fro m it. Some claim that they split from music alto-
Stockhausen had unconsciously diffused a symbol of oppres- o continue in a purely political way, but kept up the illu-
sion, and so enabled the people to have it back.* years with seemingly new LPs. The first Amon Diiiil
are extraordinary classics and extremely raw, like
Orcs playing neverending versions of The Mothers'
Mama Duul & her Sauerkrautband ...
of the Son of Monster Magnet" and the Stooges
But the new rock'n'roll in W. Germany was not rock' n' roll al .Blues". But they are dosed with a higher level of vi be than
all. It was a meltdown music-form which defied all categories er freakout records -relentless, uplifting and full of the
but that which theW. German musicians called it- Kosmische gimmicks that all work perfectly. Amon Diiiil did not
music. The term has been credited to Edgar Froese, future ng, but they laid the beginnings of Krautrock with their
leader of Tangerine Dream, but in 1969 all the young idealistic and with one particular song on Psychedelic Under-
W. German musicians talked about Kosmische music with a . The name of the song translated as "Mama Diiiil and
great reverence, a great idealism, as though they knew that il erkraut band Start Up!" With that title, the lazy British
was their way to the stars. Beethoven, their tragic hero, had said e at last had something to latch on to. Aha, we' ll call it
that music was far greater than philosophy, and the communes k ...
and collectives of Beautiful & Dutiful young idealists came
alive all over W. Germany, determined to rid themselves of all
memories of their parents' despicable recent history - to lose ,.. trst Rumblings of Kosmische Music
all these pent up feelings in a Great Rush To The New Kosmis- rmany was full of supposed 'head' groups by now. But
cheMusic. • them still did not sound remotely German, slavishly
All the 'real ' musicians had left Amon Diiiil I to join Amon to be Hard Rach!!! Others, like Embryo, Emergency and
Diiiil II, a process that would continue over the years. But the Control, mixed obvious Teutonics into unsuccessful
drain on Amon Diiiil I was so great that they were soon reduced with British/American rock and jazz. But in the mean-
to one strumming drumming chanting male/female mass, like moo Diiiil II, the musical half of the commune, had
the greatest Plastic Ono Band session ever. It was the time of dan amazing free-flowing LP called Phallus Dei, for
communal Freakout albums, inspired specifically by the 1967 riti h Liberty label. Its overtly mysterious sleeve first con-
Hapshash & The Coloured Coat LP, a London recordiHg me when I was 13 and standing in Tamworth Wool-
almost a year old, which had been led by the designers Nigel • I was with my Welsh grandfather, whom I asked about
Weymouth and Michael English, and the producer Guy <'.~ling of Phallus Dei. "Bloody Hell, Don't tell your
Stevens. One extremely psychedelic weekend, Amon Diiiil I :·he norted. "That means God's cock!" And with the
recorded (or over-recorded, to be more precise) one enormous f that 20 minute title track, both branches of Amon
session, which lasted so long that three of their LPs - Psyche- proved their commitment to the new cosmic political
ne cene. This record was very extreme, both the chim-
*During all this fighting, it was casually overlooked that the German national anthem
was only one of over 10 national anthems on Hymnen, and the mistreatment only nd and dizzy two-colour sleeve like something from the
appears on Side 2, along with the Russian anthem and a whole group of African r Elevators' International Artists label in Texas.
anthems. But the effect was still the same. Stockhausen had explained his use of
national anthems as symbolic- "identification signs f or the nation .. . a pop-art ges-
mething else again was stirring in Cologne. The
ture .. . comparable to the banal, everyday pictorial motifs of the American pop- ..en/Psychedelia-inspired Can were now a five-piece
artists, whose work Stockhausen knew so well, " wrote his biographer, Michael Kurtz. n: at Schloss Norvenich, the castle home of their patron,
12
13
 Mani Lohe. All except one was in his 30s and they were a nppy multi-dimensional space beings instead of the
frightening combination of exuberance and great experience. mgly insipid Waters, Wright, Gilmour & Mason, then it
These were exceptional people with an exceptional musical urely have sounded as real as this. And Electronic Med-
vision: "an anarchist community," said their organist, Irmin was given special treatment, too. Some genius at the
Schmidt. Though Can's first pieces were situations more like W. German record-company Metronome had finally
performance art, their new singer, a black ex-teacher called _ t on to the new sound. They asked the record producer,
Malcolm Mooney, continually pushed them further into the • ~eisel, to put together an especially different Heavy
severest most restrictive rock'n'roll, " ... towards the Velvet . with the accent on Germanic-sounding groups and spe-
Underground," as Holger Czukay later said. The shows were ...,ackaging. Meisel called the label Ohr (German for 'ear'),
fantastic, though Malcolm Mooney had a tendency to freak out, .1 ked Reinhard Hippen, the acclaimed young industrial
collapse, or attack the audience. But it was the release of their ·.to design the first five LP sleeves with a uniformity that
first album that opened up the whole scene. Monster Movie is a d make the label instantly aligned with Right Now. The
stone classic. There was still no visionary in any big record- · were brutal and crudely finished, but delightfully so.
company willing to put money into the new W. German sound. :-.en· s recurring theme used the broken bodies of dolls, and
But when Monster Movie was released on Music Factory cover of Electronic Meditation, a headless doll is trapped
Records in August 1969, the tiny 500 pressing sold out imme- e wires of an early synthesizer patch-bay.
diately and changed the whole W. German rock scene. It was I the early Ohr records were interesting and all of them
the first album of the scene that sounded as powerful and as well rd. On the LP Fliesbandbabys Beatshow, Floh de Cologne
recorded as standard American and British records, yet it . ed an impenetrable wordy structured garage music, like an
retained the brooding German Velvets-inspired sound. Some pable Mothers of Invention, a bierkeller Fugs. Lots of
idea of the attitude of the Kosmische music brigade at this time ·ti ng and urgent socialist messages breaking up the already
can be gained by merely reading the credits on the first Can - hackle sound. Much better, and occasionally incredible,
album: _·e Guru Guru, a heavy rock trio with its heart in the free-rock
lrmin Schmidt - Adminaspace co-ordinator & organ laser, ·the MC5 were never allowed to record. No vocals except
Jaki Leibezeit- propulsion engineer & mystic space chart read- ·ted 'thing' voices: scary, repeated and not very often at all.
er, Holger Czukay - hot from Vietnam; technical laboratory ·nly just huge epic instrumentals, LPs of two or three tracks
chief & red-armed bass, Michael Karoli - sonar & radared e. Their debut album UFO was a spaced menage a trois of
guitar pilot, Malcolm Mooney - linguistic space communica- .• Division, Deep Purple and a more Kosmische version of
tor. Young's experimental feedback frenzies on Arc. They
.Jd be fasterthan anyone, but their greatest songs were Glenn
- nca symphonies eight years ahead of time. And their titles
The Rise of Ohr Records & The Birth of Kraftwerk
!le, man. Shit! "Stone In", "Der LSD-Marsch", "Space-
In Berlin, the crazed young trio Psy Free split. Edgar Froese, r··, "Oxymoron", "Der Ekectrolurch".
frustrated with his current situation, persuaded drummer Klaus The Ohr experiment was a tremendous success, and opened
Schultze to collaborate in a new Tangerine Dream. The arch- ~ ;be way for more conservative companies to take risks. In a
experimentalist Conrad Schnitzler completed the T. Dream Jntry as big as West Germany, there was a place for many
line-up to create the awesome and freeform acid-blitz LP Elec- ny groups and Polydor, Metronome, BASF & Phillips, Ger-
tronic Meditation. This was truly the Kosmische music they n industry equivalents of Britain's EMI and America's CBS,
had dreamed off. If "A Saucerful of Secrets" had been played ,an to take more risks. Though most of the early efforts
14
15
 would be tame British/American copyists, the uncertaint} <> fixations, gearchanges included. Perhaps it is the
amongst German businessmen about what constituted the Hip yche of the post -war West Germans- unconscious-
New Sound ensured that certain experimentalists inevitabl) the USA through its thousands of miles of easily
sneaked through. And one of the most bizarre releases of earl) ..JJght roads. Certainly, the grey metronomic driving
1970 was RCA Records' Tonejloat LP by the quintet Organisa- -~~" ~" 0 '" of the Velvet Underground manifested in most
tion. Though delivered in a typically colourful 'heavy' sleeve an bands, though of all the British bands of that time
of the period, that is as far as Organisation's alignment with .1ybe only Roxy Music who could ever claim a true
contemporary rock went. Led by RalfHutter & Florian Schnei- ftuence.
der, later leaders of the huge international group Kraftwerk, the \·ing mentality in West German music was forged on
group's roots began at the Renschied Kunstakadamie where the -a...•"-llm that travels south in a great arc from the far-west-
duo had studied Karlheinz Stockhausen. With flute-based f Cologne to Munich in the south, taking in the cities
musical pieces such as "Milk Rock", "Rhythm Salad" and the . Coblenz, Frankfurt, Mainz, Mannheim, Stuttgart,
creaky percussive grooveless bossanova title-track, Tonejloar -\usburg. The thirst for music on this circuit alone was
was a major-label anachronism from the moment it was ze to the entire British scene. West Germany was by
released. And, like the ingenuous German corporation Phillips ggest market in Europe. But the autobahn was only
who released the equally bizarre Cluster LP soon afterwards, ree major conurbations that the rock'n'rolllive circuit
we can only presume that the signing of Organisation was _upply, and it soon became clear that West German
quickly filed away in RCA's box called 'Interesting Corporate uld sustain itself without ever looking out to the inter-
Mistakes'. ..;cene again. But it was just then that one of the most
Soon after this, Organisation became Kraftwerk and ular contributors of all appeared on the Krautrock
releas~d their self-titled first LP. But despite the name-change
and shift to the Polygram label, the group was still a ramshackle
flute and percussion-driven experimental unit. Whilst includ-
ing_ wa-guitar and a drummer, Kraftwerk was a bizarre though Kaiser on the Warpath- Rolf-Uirich's Grand Design
mamly successful attempt to make an entirely German record. h folk journalist is the last thing the scene expected. But
On the album opener, "Ruckzack", Kraftwerk sped up at will, lrich Kaiser was a progressive in everything, and noto-
slowed down at will, and had no groove at all. On the last track ·hroughout theW. German Underground for being a man
of the album, a 10 minute freakout called "Yom Himmel mission. He blew into Ohr Records and riled everyone
Hoch", synthesizers emulated dive-bombing raids and actual mediately. Kaiser had already written about Tangerine
recordings of explosions punctuated the music in a shattering in his book Das Buch Der Neuen Pop-musik. Now he
way. "Kraftwerk" is a strictly German word which translates as with Edgar Froese over the definition of Kosmische
both "Men at Work" and "Powerplant", and Ralf Hutter and and said that it could be applied to all forms of music.
Florian Schneider were both insistent experimentalists with a even more outrageously, he proved it. On being asked by
particular Vision. Unreleased recordings from that time reveal inessmen at Metronome to take over the running of Ohr
them to have been in a constant state of flux . Kraftwerk 2 would rds, R-U Kaiser immediately signed Amon DUtil I and
open with "Klingklang", an ever changing 17-minute experi- ~ them a 'head' producer, the wondrously named Julius.
mental mantra with a Stockhausen-inspired beginning. And the tenhelm. As organiser of the now legendary Essener Son-
group was to change beyond all recognition after their huge Festival, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser knew the members of Amon
1974 hit album Autobahn. But always Kraftwerk returned to I and had Kosmische plans for them. And their first Ohr
16
17
 album Pa:adieswarts Diiiil was an amazingly beautiful was huge news in 1971 , and the German Sounds mag-
freefolk epic, somewhere midway between an acoustic "White Readers ' Poll nominated them "Best Newcomer of the
Light/White Heat" and a Teutonic 1968 Red Crayola playing Popol Vuh were on Beat Club, and Fricke played his
~~e 13t_h Floor ,~~~vators. Its three long fuzz-acoustic songs, :: ynthesizer as a guest on T. Dream's Kosmische classic
Love IS Peace , Snow Your Thirst, Sun Your Open Mouth" e-album Zeit.
and "Paramechanische Welt", were Amon Dtiiil I's glorious · for all this, the meeting of Florian Fricke with Rolf-
swansongs before they rode off heroically into the sunset. And Kaiser in late summer of 1971 reverberated all across
the artistic success of Paradieswarts Dtiiil confirmed Kaiser's smische music scene. For Affenstunde's follow-up
suspicion that many forms of the Kosmische music were out its predecessor's dick into the dirt. Everything about In
there waiting to be found. He took the far-out buskers Witthuser ·arten Pharoas feels right. It is trance music, and Florian
and ~estrupp and turned them into an absolutely inspiring was a master composer and quite capable of taking the
Goth1c cham?er space-folk thing like mixing Neil Young's On into dimensions unheard of by the other Kosmische
the Beach With Frank Zappa's Straight records releases Tim .AIS . The whole of Side 2 of In Den Garten Pharoas was
Buckley's free-form album Starsailor, and also his e~lier ,.. magic of "Vuh". And I do not say high magic lightly.
Happy Sad and Goodbye and Hello LPs. In America, they h" tunes the listener into the heavens like no other piece
would certainly have recorded for ESP-Disk! . er heard. It maintains an incredible hold on the listen-
Impressed ?Y Kaiser's success at Ohr, the industry giant uch is the intensity of the piece, that "Vuh" actually can
BASF asked him to take over the Pilz label, their hip subsidiary. iluch to listen to in the wrong frame of mind, and dizzy-
In true Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser style, he kept control of Ohr and ·he freedom of feeling the music engages. And R-U
annexed Pilz as a cosmic folk label. Pilz is German for 'mush- new wonder boy, Florian Fricke, was on the way to a
room', ~nd t~at record-company's logo was a fabulous pop art
Flyaganc ...Just about as Kosmische as they came. Rolf-Ulrich
transferred Witthuser and Westrupp to Pilz as a symbolic ges-
ture, then proceeded to sign and influence his next big thing. Of of the Brain label - Enter Cluster and Neu!
course, he dropped the entire roster overnight in the great road JJe middle of 1971, Rolf Ulrich Kaiser was driving his
to the ultimate Kosmische folk label. ees mad. He stood over them whilst they worked. He
Po?ol Vuh were Rolf- Ulrich's next obsession, a group as big Into their offices and balled them out whilst they were
as their name. The Popol Vuh is the Mayan Book of the Dead a ~ o their bands, freaking out everyone concerned. His
terrifying mythology of a prehistoric Meso-American peo~le powerful, but you needed him on your side. Two A&R
who survived until the 9th Century AD. But whilst R-U Kaiser _ .ed Bruno Wendel and Gunter Korber decided they
could perhaps influence this group, the real vision was in the · take any more, and started a record company of their
he_ad and hands of its leader, the wonderful Florian Fricke. as to be known as Brain, and was to become synony-
Fncke had not chosen the name Popol Vuh lightly. He was here th some of the greatest Krautrock of all. Wendel &
to do magic an~ that's a fact. The first album had already been rought Guru Guru with them from Ohr, and immedi-
released by Liberty Records by the time Kaiser became : ~ed the extremely experimental Cluster. This duo was
involved, and that album Affenstunde ("Monkey Hour") ophrenic mixture that had recorded one bizarre LP for
was already sending shockwaves throughout the German !lips Records. Prior to that, they had been the even
Musi_c-scene_ with its use of Moog synthesizer in a (gasp!) non- ;rio K.luster, their third member being Conrad Schnit-
classical settmg. Affenstunde's peculiarly environmental form- in-exile ofT. Dream's Electronic Meditation . Now
18
19
 Schnitzler had left the group to pursue what would become
career of hilarious over-achievement leaving Cluster as a duo
just the poetically named Dieter Moebius &
Roedelius. Cluster were (and still are) a rare collaboration.
some bizarre husband and wife team, they let their machine-
generated muse fire up, and they would sit there in front of it.
like a hot stove, and play until it didn't feel good anymore.
Early Cluster has a raging peace in it, a huge beating .heart.
planet-sized and awesome. But clothed in a skinny body which
contrives to keep you from hearing all of the unearthly power.
For their first Brain album, Cluster II, Moebius & Roedelius
were joined by the producer/engineer Conrad Plank. Though
involved on the earlier Phillips LP as engineer, here Plank co-
wrote the music and produced the whole thing, creating an as not to copy anything going on in the Anglo-Saxon
incessant nightscape: a helicopter ride over miles of country-
side, but the lights of the city ever present, and even occasion- Uwe Nettlebeck, 1973
ally flying right into the city itself and almost burning up in the
glare. Along with Dieter Dierks, Plank was the mainstay of all
the greatest Krautrock on record. Over the years, those two
Sound of Yourself Listening
engineers alone would be responsible for the combined sound
of Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Guru Guru, Kraftwerk, and Ash Ra no group more mythical than Faust. I bought my first
Tempel, a formidable weight to carry around. ord over 22 years ago, but I could not tell you the
Like all other heavy labels of the early '70s, Brain had a fair f the group members off the top of my head. And I
share of dreadful and contrived American/British copycat rub- 1t tell you the names of all their songs, though I know
bish, like The Scorpions and Jane. They also saw the demise of better than almost everything else in my record library.
Guru Guru. From free-rock to free jazz to free gift that you can't 'lem live on their legendary 1973 tour, but you could
give away. One of Brain's greatest releases was undoubtedly . e 10 photos of Krautrock musicians, and I could not
number 1004, the soon-to-be-legendary Neu! But that's a t the five members of Faust.
whole other can of worms, in fact a whole other chapter (See t worked under a conscious veil of secrecy akin to, and
Neu! history.) Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser will appear again many times ng to, San Francisco's The Residents. They were a con-
throughout this book. But after Kaiser, Krautrock's First Great band, and in isolation is how they were conceived. By
Conceptualist, there came another Second Great Conceptual- d of 1970, it became clear to Kurt Enders, an A&R man
ist. And again he was from the world of the media. But this man G rman Polydor, that there was a place for the extreme new
was to make Krautrock international, and his name was Uwe German rock music in the international rock'n'roll
Nettlebeck ... . But no-one had yet attempted an entirely new sound
roke all of the imported rules of the British and American
. He told this to the music journalist, Uwe Nettlebeck,
\·as extremely impressed and wanted to lead just such a

20 21
 And so Faust was born - as cold and antiseptically as that. II has seen. Faust's unexpected success in Britain
No, not really. It was a fabulous challenge and showed how, them to focus themselves here, and the second LP,
very occasionally, visionaries in record companies have been Far, was actually released here first. Again, it was a
seen to get it absolutely right. Faust means 'fist', and a fist they record- all black this time, with a black inner sleeve,
were. Who the hell knows what their rehearsals were like in the k lettering on the record-label, and a set of 12"x 12"
Spring/Summer of 1971. Uwe Nettlebeck had spent Faust's illustrated each song. But this album was somehow
large advance on building a studio at Wumme. This old con- confident that the first one. So Far opens with my
verted schoolhouse, between Hamburg and Bremen, became ever Faust song. "It's A Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)"
their place of learning (and de-learning) a style which was ptations call and answer chorus over a boom-boom-
fuzzy, funny and extremely uncommercial, yet busted out with liD Mo Tucker one-chord trance-out. The rhythm gui-
weird hooklines and extraordinary sounds. But when they he same level as the Velvet Underground's Live 1969,
made their debut at the Musikhalle in Hamburg, the press hated ..ax solo is my favourite on record. The production is
it. The audience didn't know what to make of it, and so the d wants to be heard. It's the same throughout the
whole public thing started very badly for them in their home .md proved that Faust cut it as an un-straight pop band,
country. And when the LP was released in late 1971, the sales way early Roxy Music did. Polydor also thought so,
were so poor as to be as legendary as the group would some day ed "So Far" as a single. The B-side, "It's a bit of a
become. Some sources quote under one thousand records sold • minds me of something from the third Velvet's album.
in the first months of Faust being released. were Faust coming from? Though their influences are
But Faust were good. In fact, they had made a very special y unimportant, when a group is as original as Faust,
first album. It just took time to get it. And when Polydor ' sible not to be overtly inquisitive as to how they came
released Faust in Britain, the strongest appeal of their LP was •abulous sound. And so to catch certain glimpses of other
that it was produced in clear vinyl, with a clear lyric sheet and a attitude in their music is to heave a sigh of relief that,
clear jacket, emblazoned with a fist in X-ray. The effect was ) were human after all.
dramatic. And at a time when a hype could kill a new band
stone-dead, even John Peel wrote that when he first saw the
album" .. . regardless of the music within, I had to acquire one." •aide The Dream Syndicate- The Roots of Faust
Peel played the album all the time, and my Krautrock mates and • Faust ever ripped-off something, then they did it the way
I would all bore ourselves stupid, re-enacting the beginning of greatest artists rip-off- that is, Directly. They took the
it, whenever we hung out together or took the train into Birm- lachine's "We did it Again" (which is just The Kinks'
ingham. It was such a catchy bizarre sound. It sounded like _Really Got Me" in any case) and called it "Baby". Faust
music from some parallel universe suspended in time and used the Mothers of Invention's own archetypes, to the
played through the oldest radio ... • of copying Zappa's most annoying habit of playing
Extremely overloaded over-recorded synthesizers and radio 1e Louis" on distorted organ a Ia Uncle Meat. It made sense
static begin the album as fractions of "All you Need is Love" Z ppa & the Mothers. By 1966, they were already old gits
and "Satisfaction" burst in, followed by a vocal calling from ·d come through endless bar bands playing "Louie Louie"
another room, then a pretty schoolhouse piano (of course!), into ~ night for 25 years. When the Mothers played "Louie
a very arranged Zappa-esque horn piece which comes over a bit _ e··, they were laughing at the sheer boring ridiculousness
Teutonic, a bit Lumpy Gravy-ish. And in two minutes of music, a-ha-ha-I-can-play-this-with-no-hands-I'm-so-fucking-
Faust has taken you into the most inventive editing territory But when Faust played it, they loved it. When they heard

22 23
 the Mothers' crap slack double-album Uncle Meat, they hear 1t only because of the songs, or even the editing (which is
"Louis Louis" and vi bed on it for real. . . They loved rock' n'rol ·nest in rock' n'roll - heavily influenced by, but streets
to death. There was no irony at all. The Western Music seen of, Zappa's hung-up eavesdropping little muse), but
was a mythical and ancient currency to be plundered. And the) -e a true rock' n'roll Moment was Created, and the music
were certainly music fans of a very high order. The last part o •terly cuts it 22 years later. Faust were really out and about
"Miss Fortune" is very similar to the Velvet Underground' , . The music press was full of them and, in March 1973,
"The Murder Mystery", sonically and also in the way that th "ettlebeck explained the basic Faust intentions to the
song is achieved. But then they were clearly so in love with a! E. thus:
things Warhol thattheir 1972 collaboration was with Tony Con ey' re not professional in that sense ... We've always
rad. In the very early '60s, Conrad had been John Cale's ·~e idea of releasing records which lacked conventional
in the Lamonte Young New York ensemble, The Dream ::-.vJ10J·<r..~..,:'-· in terms of production .. . the music should sound like
cate. They played epic unchanging chamber dirges with _ . as if recorded by someone who passed a group
lectual perfection combined with lots of pre-Hippy ng or jamming and then cut the recorded material wild-
Outside the Dream Syndicate was a heavenly marriage. The
was recorded at Wumme, now a successful recording studio • ettlebeck is clearly over-stating his case here, but
its own right, in October 1972, and released on Virgin's uu•-'lS"._II!!rJ can never have foreseen explaining the workings of
price Caroline label for£ 1.49 in early '73. This long uuovuc'"l5'"<1-~ zarre Musical-unit to the popular press. Now was the
mantra was epic, dignified and strung out. Like the huge gn;J.IIIIIIIWI ~ for Faust, and they decided at last to tour Britain ...
and white photo of him on the LP jacket, Tony Conrad was
ghost upon his own record. His violin hung like a spectre
the whole album, but never did it eve.n dip or sway. Much
minimal even than John Cale, here was a musician with a dst of Faust-mouzik time ticks like a bomb. "
from the beyond. From Faust's free 1973 Tour-handout.
It was ironic, then, that the next Faust LP, The Faust
was one whole pound cheaper than the collaboration with t explain the excitement that the Faust tour brought.
rad, sold 10 times more than all their other records, and ~3, nobody had a clue who they were, or even if they
their best album- an unconditional stone-classic! But .Jl. The name Uwe Nettlebeck was constantly heard,
Records had licensed the LP from Uwe Nettlebeck, as part rs in the press abounded. The tour took on a sort of
the new recording deal now that the Polydor contract had event of the year' vibe and even some of my
out. Steve Lewis at Virgin had worked out that they could se ~ares came to Birmingham Town Hall to see them.
The Faust Tapes for 49p, and not lose money. It would ·r were free Faust manifestos handed to everyone,
,, ue the heavy Faust trip in fine style, whilst s.tmiLimme:ousr· enry Cow posters. It was ironic, but perfect really,
boosting the credentials of the very young record compan. ,ad chosen such a lame bunch as Henry Cow to sup-
II With a Bridgit Riley op-art painting on one side, and a bunch • a·ayed their wacky Cambridge University Degree
reviews picked by Uwe Nettlebeck on the other, The Fau:. oons and time-changes galore, and the guitarist
Tapes was an overnight phenomenon. Everybody bought i e of the stage and put headphones on, and pretend-
Not everybody loved it. When a record is so cheap, it's the band in a jolly way. Ho-hum . ..
times hard to see the real value. But I dug it to death. It was the · was all change as the road drills and hand-paint-
best by far. .mo came on stage. And the two pinball-machines,

24 25
one on each side of the stage, facing outwards and connected to -d maybe they should have stayed in Wumme instead of
synthesizers. And the lights were all intense white, wit mg it in the Manor, in Oxfordshire. But hindsight does
extremely directional strobes that lit up the high high ceiling o any good, and when Faust 5 was rejected by Virgin,
the Town Hall. It was 1973, and musicians usually soloed and ·ettlebeck lost interest and Faust disappeared just as my s-
looked to the audience for applause, and great ugly guys nanced ly as they had first arrived.
around in cheese-cloth singing about fucking nothing at all. ~ the story did not end there. Faust were guaranteed
And then Faust walked on - longhairs without flares, wearing diate legend status for what they had achieved and, like
those pale European straight-legs you'd see on hip German stu- and Can, were highly inspirational to the soon-coming
dents over here in the early '70s. I couldn't believe it - the punk-scene. New albums of old songs have surfaced
opened with "It's a Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)". One played th ime to time, Munic & Elsewhere, The Last LP, and 71
drums, one played the piano and sung, one played acoustic gui- re of Faust all contain unreleased songs in various
tar and sung, and the two others played pinball machines that .:urations. But, greater than all their records, Faust tell of
triggered synthesizers- backs to each other on either side of the roic time when reaching for the stars did not have to
stage, as strobes caught the strings of the finest rhythm guitarist e getting the stars in order to be successful.
since Lou Reed. It was epic, it was brilliant, it had attitude
enough to raze cities and it ruined every show I went to for at
least two years after. At times they caught snatches of thei
songs and flung them about a bit, but they had concrete on stage
and big road drills and their very Stooges' Ur-punk presenc
awed me and shocked me.

Faust IV and the End of the Line

After that, Faust were inevitably in a comer. They had becom
a part of mid-teenage British culture and The Faust Tapes wa
subjected to Monty Python-like rituals in the schoolyard, to se
how much of it we knew and sort out the real Heads. Whe
Faust IV came out it was an enormous letdown. I can't think o
anyone who bought it. The packaging was weak. The songs ha
real riffs, and there was a reggae song on it! That song, "Th
Sad Skinhead" is now one of their best, but I couldn't see it at
the time. And neither could anyone else. Faust IV, certainly as
great as all but The Faust Tapes, was given the thumbs down. In
truth, "Krautrock", the classic 12-minute epic that opened the
album, is really just a continuation of their whole trip. They fol-
lowed it with amazing songs; "Jennifer" and "Giggy Smile" are
Krautrock classics. But I suppose Faust IV didn't have the
innate sense of Moment that all their previous events/release
had. With hindsight, the sleeve was vastly inferior to all the oth-

26 27
 ,tze, Edgar Froese & Conrad Schnitzler, all formi-
~r own unorthodox musical fields, but brought here
by Edgar Froese's desperate need to capture at
emblance of the Tangerine Dream live musical
Once a player of Top 40 music but now a re-formed
with a quest, Froese had led T. Dream since the end
.u least three other line-ups and he was, by now, des-
-,ake a brand new musical statement. And when the
cians entered Mixed Media Studio (actually just a
Tangerine Dream r space owned by local Heads), they put together an
,ral tape that transcended all those of their contempo-
different musical configurations, a bizarre nether-
From Electronic Meditation to Atem
- ncoction of magic and ritual was quickly built, using
ques that Froese, Schultze & Schnitzler had learned
" .. .dedicated to all people who feel obliged to space ."
~ long educations in Experimental Music. They put a
T. Dream note from Alpha Centauri 1
tke on to a cash register, smashed glasses, and used
ell ish edits as Luddite as the early Amon Diiiil record-
.· mes during the recording, the musical truth of these
The Making of Electronic Meditation dwelt in a low low Earthbound Realm, grubbing
In October 1969, three intensely powerful and Visionary ·heir primeval cello and percussion swamps, whilst
imental musicians entered the Mixed Media Studio, in e marshlands floated the low-church ugly-duckling
Berlin, a walled city surrounded by miles of grey Eastern ·Edgar Froese 's Swan Rising. But more than all this, at
pean nothingness and only connected to the outside Electronic Meditation, T. Dream took off into outer-
world by a 96 mile 'corridor' . Using an un-standard _:Jd. And on the guitar/drums Burn-outs of both "Cold
configuration of lead guitarist/organist, a cellist who uuuu.uou, and "Journey Through A Burning Brain", Tangerine
on violin and 2nd guitar, plus the fittest drummer in music, Tan- zzled with a ferocity of True Renaissance Man. Klaus
gerine Dream there recorded an album of such intense freedo m drumming was like a religion-fuelled feedback-
and Vision as was seldom recorded in the Western world. .lliTly of Ottoman Mo Tuckers beating at the Gates of
tronic Meditation is an album of undeniable genius, born of It was the sound of Germany 's entire collective psyche
frustrations of one who has had visions of truth, and needs t up on its hindlegs and screaming, "To The
project them to others Right Now! The three Visionaries* <>n !!!"With Klaus Schultze's drums liberated from the
tent bass guitar, a free-rock was created with its feet in
* I do not use the term Visionary lightly. Indeed, the Tangerine Dream line-up fo -nu ical camps at the same time. It was a musical form
ELECTRONIC MEDITATION is, in Krautrock terms, a little like having Syd Barrett ted youth 's Rock' n' roll sounds with the Classical, and
Robert "J!att & Eddie Phillips all in the same group. And never have the musician..
· tiona! with the most extreme forms of novelty. And the
ALL continued in music at a pace as crazily achieving as Froese, Schultze &
Schnitzler. Edgar Froese sT. Dream catalogue is enormous, whilst Klaus Schultze haJ as as timeless as is nearly all the very greatest art. ..
release way over 50 LPs since this first LP. Unbelievably, Schnitzler surpasses eve
this incredible output ~ one year in the late '80s he produced I 4 solo LPs and two col-
laborations. Like them all or not, this compulsion to produce & produce is quite aw
inspiring.

28 29
[I

Edgar Froese Meets Salvador Dali- Northern Spain York, where he had been creating 24-hour piano
1965 .\nother American, Morton Subotnick, advocated
But how had Tangerine Dream come to this musical place? - possibilities of the brand new Bucla synthesizer.
understand this, we must first return to 1965 when Edgar ) the lateral-thinking technical Visionary Don
was lead guitarist in a quite standard beat group called The !lew instrument had no keyboard at all, but was con-
"The first time I heard the Rolling Stones was in the midd et of push pads which created a chain of different
of a rehearsal with a rock'n'roll group (The Ones.) I was first - usical 'happenings'. Other foreign composers like
all attracted by their looks. Their faces were absolutely bit, Xenakis and Toshi Ichyanagi gave seminars,
aged. They were the absolute opposite of The Beatles." hub of the West German Experimental scene orbited
The success of The Stones was most inspiring of all to audio-workshops of Roland Kayn, Thomas Kessler
sullen-looking and unglamorous Froese. He had turned to hausen himself.
guitar only after discovering that he could not sing as he saw gh Froese immersed himself in the new, he was still
new Pop Culture embracing all kinds of very different types eteran not completely in synch with the revolutionary
Beauty in art. Later the same year, The Ones travelled to N - of young Berlin - not to mention the many new and
Eastern Spain to play a summer season in the Catalonian to~ idealists, much younger than Froese, who were
of Cadaques, an artistic and exclusive seaside resort 30 -"'-r.....,by the beat music of the early and mid- ' 60s.
from Barcelona. Here Edgar Froese's life and its meaning d to change things too much, Edgar Froese dragged
entirely changed by a chance meeting of some clarity with back to Cadaques for one final show at Salvador
vador Dali. The Ones played a show at Dali 's villa and lla. The French film producer J.C. Avery was at the
for Froese was ever the same again: ·· ng a film about Dali's famous Christ Statue and he
"This was the biggest change I ever had in music. By The Ones to record the film's soundtrack. But it was a
the way he was talking and thinking, I found that .1f'J elation. The Ones struggled into the early months of
was possible. I thought that I would do the same thing as he ·educed to playing "In the Midnight Hour" three times a
in painting, in music." · Johnny Halliday's club in Paris. As they became poor-
Edgar Froese had come to rock'n'roll through the now poorer, all five of them slept in one room and ate the
-~~.-~:.1 horsemeat, which they cooked on an open fire along
dard Art School route. Like Salvador Dali, his schooling had
been in sculpture and painting. Now, Froese was euphoric >is de Boulogne. And all the beautiful young people
saw countless strands reaching out into the future - ways ng to Paris only reminded the depressed Froese of his lost
which he could paint, record, write, tour ... all these He finally split The Ones, packed up his things and
inside a fabulous new kind of art package. With his to Berlin.
hackles up, Froese took The Ones back to West Berlin
he submerged himself and his group in the work of the
Experimental Composers.
Berlin was at the centre of this radical discovery and had,
many years, been the home of people who cut up tapes, r
music backwards, placed speaker systems in strange configura
tions, and tried to weird their audiences out in each and eve
way. Seminars by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Italy's Lucian.
Berio even questioned what music was. John Cage arriv
30 31
Live '68- Tangerine Dream & Psy-Free at the Zodiac ap Carnaby St. capitalism on which much of the Ameri-
Club nd British scenes thrived, and musicians were happy to
"The biggest shock I ever got as a guitarist was to listen to Jimi
n a pittance so long as they could play without the police
Hendnx." ir backs.
:.~t the schedule and policing of such events was punishing
Edgar Froese, 1976
musicians left constantly, through lack of recording deals
The Berlin Underground had by now sucked up and assimilat- 1ney. Gradually, people began to leave. Lanse Hapshash
ed the music of The Grateful Dead, The Mothers, The Fugs. replaced by a Swedish jazz drummer called Sven Johann-
The Velvet Underground and The Doors. Still bemoaning his " hilst Volker Hom bach left to become a cameraman for
lack of a singing voice and in love with "the special modulation film director Jurgen Fassbinder. A new Dutch bass
in Morrison's voice," Edgar Froese attempted to re-arrange r. a Liverpool drummer called Paul, a small commission
instrumental versions of Doors' songs(!) for his new free-rock TV soundtrack, and Edgar Froese's new vision ground to
quartet Tangerine Dream. A Berlin drummer called Lanse Hap- · His head was caned, brutalised and battered. Where were
shash contacted Froese who invited Hapsash to join Tangerine dividuals that could sustain the intensity of the Trip he
Dream on the hipness of his name alone. The source of that n his Burning and Dali-magnified Brain?
name was a British free-rock freakout LP Hapshash & the
Coloured Coat*, which had been released just that summer to
enormous acclaim from the British, U.S. and German under- It's Got No Commercial Chance But We'll Take
ground. Featuring side-long one-chord psychedelic grooves
and chants, it was far more extreme than any of the American m West Berlin lived the ultra-left wing psychedelic freak-
music thus far released - American record companies so far rio called Psy-Free. They were about three to four years
keeping such a tight rein of discipline over their supposed psy- than Edgar Froese, and had that amazing free-form
chedelic groups that the first Grateful Dead LP made them called Klaus Schultze in their organ/guitar/drums
sound like a frisky country band. p. Then, soon after the break-up of the second version of
Throughout the autumn of 1967, Froese and Hapshash gerine Dream, Psy-Free split right out of the blue. Edgar
rehearsed with Kurt Kerkenberg on bass and Volker Hombach JoeSe asked Klaus Schultze to play drums in a new Tangerine
on flute and violin. And by January 1968, T. Dream played their earn. An undergraduate at the Technical University of
first show at Berlin Technical University amidst an orgy of rlin, majoring in psychology and experimental composition,
riots, free-thought and anarchy. This led to a huge Berlin cult JUS Schultze, was a student of Thomas Kessler. Since 1968,
following, as T. Dream took on an enormous residency at the ad been making experimental tapes and had insight into the
Zodiac Club, playing free-form freakout music to Berliners for mi ngly impenetrable electronic music from his work at
5 or 6 hours per night. This new Berlin idealism totally rejected sler's studio. Edgar Froese had also attended many of
, sler's lectures and felt compelled to continue with an
- 1rthodox instrumentation. He asked Conrad Schnitzler, a
* Though central to the formative moments of recorded Freejorm psychedelic rock, Jture student several years older than himself, to complete
HAPSHASH & THE COLOURED COAT as a statement is not one which sustains its
muse into the '90s. Like Klaus Schultze's CYBORG, it created a genre which quickly line-up. Once called the "untameable experimentalist" by
turned around and kicked its creator's dick into the dirt. HAPSHASH & THE u icologist A. Freeman, Schnitzler proved to be the bizarre
COLOURED COAT is now available on CD. For comparisons with all Amon DiiU/1
recordings, search out "A Mind Blown Is A Mind Shown" and "The New Messiah
:1<1 atonal Sonic-anchor on which Edgar Froese & Klaus
Coming 1985". ltze would be able to hang their unearthly Pre-verbal

32 33
muse. The results were wild to say the very least. Electronic ultra-experimental group called Kluster*. With
Meditation is ancient, modern and futuristic all at once, though from R-U Kaiser, Edgar Froese asked the young
it is really neither electronic nor meditative. Though played by ist Steve Schroyder to join T. Dream and Rolf-Ulrich
electric and acoustic instruments, Electronic Meditation's -er booked the group into Dieter Dierks' studio at Stom-
unorthodoxy makes it no more technologically equipped than a near Cologne.
man in a dungeon playing music with his bare hands and feet. lpha Centauri was the name of the second LP and it was
It's highly likely that the use of the word 'Electronic' in the LP cosmically garage and pagan as Electronic Meditation.
title was more for symbolic reasons, part of Tangerine Dream's the 13-minute epic, "Fly & Collision of Comas Sola", the
collective attitude towards experimental music, and Edgar begins with a screeching stellar synthesizer that wheels
Froese's desire to be Seen to have Embraced this culture. And the sky before slipping into an unholy union of beautiful
more than embrace it, with Schultze and Schnitzler he had tran- flute, light and elfin, against a grey low-church chord
scended it. When the head of Ohr Records Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser that is unashamedly shackled to the earth. "As the flute
heard Electronic Meditation, he said: on a more and more atmospheric vitality, so the organ
"Okay, it's got no commercial chance but we'll take you." intrusive and stubborn, cantankerously shifting from
to major chords at will. And then it all takes off. Huge
- uned shaking synthesizers threaten to obliterate the whole
until, Phoenix-like and utterly at odds with everything
Destruction, Resurrection & Alpha Centauri great de-tuned kettledrums rise out of the mix to jam with
R-U Kaiser had already written about T. Dream in his 1969 azy beautiful flute. The flute picks up, dances even crazier
rock'n'roll book Das Buch Der Neuen Pop Music. He was a t>efore and lifts the drums to a new plateau until the drum-
huge fan of the group and was determined to have as much uddenly blasts into a brand new space and ... explodes
input as possible. It's difficult to truly understand Edgar his drumkit in a way unlike all other rock'n'roll, yet
Froese's headspace at this time. He was constantly asking "ly like the inspirational freakbeats of Klaus Schultze on
extreme individuals into T. Dream, then freaking out when the) •nic Meditation. Chris Franke had obviously felt the
acted like themselves. As early as October '69, Froese had ning psychic storm that Klaus Schultze had left on the
freaked out at the Essen Pop & Blues Festival, because Klaus P. And it was with awe-inspiring thoroughness that he
Schultze was using "strange organ tapes" on stage! Maybe it Schultze's performance on Alpha Centauri. Again,
was just a control trip he was on. Whatever, Schultze left soon o rthodox instrumentation had conjured a magic totally
after Electronic Mediation's release, joining another raw and anything heard before. But this time, Tangerine Dream
shatteringly cosmic group - Ash Ra Tempel. ButT. Dream had ruck a deep chord in its German audience, and Alpha
found a fan in the young jazz drummer, Christophe Franke. sold an unprecedented 20,000 copies, pushing the
From one of the earliest and most inspiring of all the early Ger-
man free-rock groups, Agitation Free, Franke had been RTANT CONRAD SCHNITZLER NOTE: Kluster was formed by Conrad
intrigued by the visual experiments that accompanied T. r. Dieter Moebius & Hans-Joachim Roedelius to create vast weather-like
ic. In early 1971. they recorded the album ZWEI OSTER£/, a vast thing
Dream's performances. He quickly integrated into the group ~g of two 20-minute pieces. Both tracks "Electronic Music Und Text" and
and, for a while, Froese, Schnitzler & Franke recorded music rtic Music ( Kluster4)" bear far more resemblance to ELECTRONIC MEDI-
for TV and played at the Vienna Arts Lab. Then Conrad Schnit- rhan to the later Schnitz/er-less group who changed their name to Cluster.
~ua s first & massive CLUSTER LP on the Phillips label lacks that spine-
zler left. With the arrival of Chris Franke, the musical scales llo that coursed through the Kluster recordings and irrigated the very soul
had tipped too far away for Schnitzler, who left to form a MEDITATION.

34 35
group and Kosmische music into a far greater sphere of · d. It must, then, have infuriated Edgar Froese that his
ence than had before been considered possible. Klaus Schultze, had, one full month before Zeit,
With great expectations from the German underground, the modern epic Jrrlicht. With hindsight, the two
1972 follow-up was Zeit; a huge sprawling double-album. .ue extremely different- Irrlicht is far more cacopho-
means 'time ' and that is precisely what this unexpected tri ng arrangements far headier, and the space it occu-
minute monster was missing. I have listened to Zeit well over 'Tiore action-packed than Zeit. But in the cold moment
thousand times, and still it hangs outside any formal time-zone. · ·ement, the two records were constantly compared
Gone was the confrontation of the previous LPs, replaced b) h other.
epic rhythmless motionless ambient tracts of deep space. Here.
the Orb is the fastest of speed metal, I shit you not. Four pieces.
all around 20 minutes long, fused together to create a Krautrock
equivalent of the films 2001 or Dark Star. Again, the · me time as Zeit, Tangerine Dream recorded an outra-
opaque titles served only to enforce the idea that all T. 'arage-Prog. single called "Ultima Thule (Teils 1 & 2)".
pieces were performed on some unearthly Pacific atoll, sur- ..mmann 's rock attitude reared up on Side 1, which is a
rounded not by the ocean, but by the stars. Before the Zeir onolithic slab of Barrett Floydian instrumental mania.
recording sessions, Edgar Froese had replaced Steve Schroyder k kicks off with a hilarious madly strummed bar-chord
with Hanspeter Baumann, accusing Schroyder of "freaking · m Froese, which loses its way a little before picking up
totally out." Again, Froese may have been merely powertrip- RSJ Slab-funk riff which Pete Baumann's keyboards
ping. For when the amazing and free-form Ash Ra Tempel, also · te. "Teil 2" was an entirely different piece, less punky,
an Ohr Records band, welcomed Steve Schroyder with open tke the soundtrack to some famous Ancient Egyptian
arms, Froese was moved to invite the young organist back to
play as a guest on the Zeit sessions. the summer of 1972, Tangerine Dream played at the
Pete Baumann, a great-looking rock organist from a group h Festival, their last show with a conventional organ/
called The Ants, was an altogether more Traditionally capable guitar line-up . The show was recorded for a BASF live
musician than had previously inhabited T. Dream. By the ~- the band contributing a track called "Oscillator Planet
recording of Zeit, he was not fully integrated into the group, and ert". This and the recording of "Ultima Thule" had quick-
a hole appeared in the music which proved to be very positive. - tegrated Pete Baumann into T. Dream, who suddenly
The spaces stretched out into huge silencescapes, and the mag- themselves in their stride and produced the mighty epic
nificent drumming of older times was dismissed to some distant Atem. Arguments about the next direction the group
horizon. Popol Yuh's Moog mantra, Affenstunde, had enchant- d take were caused by Ohr boss R-U Kaiser. Rolf-Ulrich
ed Edgar Froese who invited Popol Yuh's leader, Florian n a Vision-trip similar in power to Edgar Froese and the
Fricke, to play his outrageously fabulous and expensive big men did not see eye-to-eye. Kaiser's new Cosmic
Moog on Zeit's daunting opening track, "The Birth of Liquid ,ners/Kosmische Musik label was doing extremely well
Plejades". Four deep sonorous and fractious cellos led by ne desperately wanted Tangerine Dream to jump ship from
Jochen Von Grumbcow, of the German Medieval folk-group • to the hip new label.
Holderlin, held sway as Fricke's unutterably beautiful phased But Froese would not be swayed and his Vision remained
woman-tone cuts through the melancholy. With Kosmische - t. The title track of Atem, over 20 minutes long, is big like
music a widely discussed phenomenon throughout the West tima Thule (Teil2)" and it is quite clear that T. Dream were
German scene, Zeit was only the second electronic example to ired to new heights by the recording of their one 45 . The

36 37
title-track of Atem is big like the driest desert. It opens like Side ,eed it. It was late 1973 and 1967 felt a long time ago to
2 of Joy Division's Closer, mellotron fanfares salute Atlantis as Froese. Perhaps it was time to move on. The days of con-
it slips into the ocean, then back to those beautiful drums so ·es on cash registers were obviously over.
absent from Zeit. This all gives way to a long long Zeit-like ream quickly sussed that this was their way to cosmic
time-suspension section, rhythmless but randomly pulsating. m. There was certainly no sell-out but, almost overnight,
The last track on the LP, a short piece called "Wahn", is the fur- ·ent the True experiment. Away went the broken busted
thest out there. T. Dream get all feral and start barking and . And gone forever was the snarling-in-the-dust intensi-
chimping it up - three shaman synthesists that have finall y ·hose first four classic LPs, replaced, instead, by short 33
betrayed their instruments to dance together in a circle and har- ·e LPs of programmed pre-Newage sequenced automaton
monise only through each others' breathing. It is a beautiful, izer music. Yes, without knowing their older siblings, T.
funny and moving sound, for it shows masters of Experimental :n ·s later 1970s albums Phaedra, Rubicon, even Stratos-
Music reaching their Muse in any way that they can. .ue quite a good listen in the cold light of the ' 90s. But at
:ne, they seemed an unforgivable tragedy after that blazing
LP birth and gestation.
Phaedra Goes International
In Britain, John Peel made Atem his Import LP of the Year and
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser secured the album's release on Polydor.
Tangerine Dream were so big now that most Germans thought
they must be British. But Edgar Froese was furious to discover
a Kosmische Musik logo on all the Polydor copies of Atem. He
furry-freaked at R-U Kaiser for the last time and successfully
got out of the Ohr Records contract. The synchronicity was per-
fect. With such enormous interest in Britain, Tangerine Dream
were signed to the brand new and (then) ultra-hip Virgin
Records. The John Peel Show and the constant British press
had prepared the way forT. Dream's first simultaneous Ger-
man/British release and Phaedra was a Top 10 album in
Britain. It was a good, even occasionally exhilarating piece of
sequenced pulsing easy-listening trip-out music, and would
soon become a staple diet of the early '70s British student. But
the essential moment of their early Muse was clearly gone, as if
evaporated in an instant. Perhaps it was the combination of
changes which precipitated Tangerine Dream 's sudden shift of
direction. From their constant sessions at Dieter Dierks' studio,
the group was suddenly recording in Virgin's Manor in Oxford-
shire. At the same time that the conventional and often a-rhyth-
mically-used percussion instruments were finally ditched, a
large Virgin advance enabled Froese, Franke & Baumann to
buy banks & banks of sequential whatsoevers whenever they

38 39
 rk and Kraftwerk 2, which were barely less un-hinged
:r first record. The same lopsided skanks prevailed and
·was never really less than the hard ftamming Crunch of
ental musicians attempting the most basic rock' n' roll.
now Kraftwerk were breaking, or trying to break, into a
ng and it was taking a long while. Temporarily reduced
-O. Ralf Hutter & Florian Schneider asked Michael
pronounced 'rota') to play guitar and Klaus Dinger to
·or them. Rother & Dinger were good friends and
Neu! y confident musicians, and they very quickly carved a
1thin Kraftwerk that was both Impressionist & Medita-
From Kraftwerk to La Dusseldorf via Cluster & •ne moment, and Expressionist & Ur-punk the next -
Harmonia ... - the sound in a direction that neither Ralf Hutter nor Flo-
hneider had intended. But the live TV appearance on
An attempted Brief Un-ravelment of Neu! ub was already booked, and a frantic RalfHutter freaked
d left the group. 'Kraftwerk without Ralf' played Beat-
" We make no premature fixing of style, as we are very dependent midst huge orange German traffic cones, though it would
on situations and circumstances. " re correct to call the group 'Neu! with Florian'. "Truck-
Klaus Dinger & Michael Rother, 19T Gondolero" encapsulates the entire Neu! career in its 11
length. This curiously drawn time-piece swerved from
- ·e-form bass-less noise-rock Neu! would become so well
Neu! with Florian (Kraftwerk without Ralf) for, to the tiny eked-out wa-guitar swamp they inhabit-
Neu! was born in a royal shitstorrn, live on German TV, on ng in the classic motorik Hallogallo-siyle they always
bizarre night in August 1971. And in true keeping with thei o hard to avoid. It was a stupendous piece of music that
convoluted history soon to come, that incredible II minute per ryone, including the musicians, gasping.
formance on Beatclub, including delicate and chillingly beau
tiful snatches of their forthcoming classics "lm Gluck" an
"Weissensee", was not even played under the banner of Neu '
but of Kraftwerk. That truly incredible Klang they calle :'\eu! was born- the epitome of Krautrock. Neu! (pro-
"Truckstop Gondolero" was played by a Neu! phoenix risin: J ' Noy' ) means 'new' and this group was just that.
out of the Kraftwerk funeral pyre. Kraftwerk re-formed as the remedial synthesizer duo
Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were, at that time, pi ld record the cult LP Ralf & Florian, Klaus Dinger &
neers of the very fiercest sounding experimental music. Arde Rother borrowed enough money to buy them four
followers of Karlheinz Stockhausen, they had begun life · Windrose Studios, in Hamburg, with the inspirational
leaders of Organisation, a five piece experimental group whi ·r Conrad Plank, whom they already knew through
had recorded the Out-there Noise-rock LP for RCA call r ·. The recordings created a mightily successful first
Tonefloat. Re-cast and re-named as the ultra-Germ utshone everything around it. Neu! was a mini-mas-
Kraftwerk, Hutter & Schneider had thus far recorded two L and quite a move on from the duo's Kraftwerk roots .
nd that replaced the hectic stop/start of the Kraftwerk

40 41
trip was an ambient bassless White-light Pop-rock mantra too early and not right. Dinger & Rother were under
steadied itself directly between the two extremes of B sure to get bigger after the unexpected success of the
blegum music and the extreme German experimental -.o Neu! recorded their first single for Brain, the double-
Neu! was the product of two young Master-magicians who 'euschnee"/"Super". "Neuschnee" is a fairly standard
so grabbed hold ofthe creative 'moment' in the studio as to cr . pretty mid-tempo Neu! instrumental groove. "Super"
ate a true jewel of an LP. The recording's success was heigh 1remely buzzsaw-punky bassless hoot' n'holler dance
ened by Dinger & Rother's natural inclination to mt·rr"'''""'' hich DAF copped completely for their classic "Der
intriguing and beautiful sounds alongside the clanking tni", in 1981. But the single was not a big hit. Andrew
Cut-up prevalent in so much contemporary at UA was having big success in Britain with Amon
music. Both had a flair for melody that was straight out of Di I and Can, and German music, the weirder and more Ger-
neyland, and no hang-ups at all about sounding pretty as well e beuer, was suddenly being given lots of space in the
fierce . Neu! was quickly signed to Bruno Wendel & The success of the first album began to weigh heavily on
Korber's new Brain label, whereupon the duo designed them r.
selves a record-sleeve of Washing Powder attention- wi ng to outside pressure, Neu! went straight back into the
simplicity. On an all white gloss 12"x12" background, the and began to record Neu 2. They worked hard on the
other presence was the word "Neu!" shouting enormous ric "Fur Immer", a greener richer 11-minute "Hallogallo",
red. "'ere almost done recording Side 1 when they were told
The album was an instant hit and it seemed that every bod. :heir recording budget was screwed and they were almost
found out about them right from the beginning. I bought th f money. Furious and distraught and in a total mess, they
first album when it was released in Britain by UA in 1972. ed out at the size of their problem. Then, in a moment of
10 minute E major guitar mantra "Hallogallo" which v~-'''""''"•• tic vision cut with dubious clarity, one of them (and I'll bet
the first LP was a radio hit in 1972. Its mid-tempo um,uau19,u!:'il• Klaus Dinger) suggested making Side 2 a pop-art cut-up
stoner vi be penetrated all of Britain via John Peel who dug it ·ement, using their single tracks "Neuschnee" and "Super"
death. As I wrote earlier, Neu! was the epitome of Krautrock. · e basis. As these two very cool songs combined only added
and they have defined it more clearly and fundamentally than o seven minutes, drastic action was needed. So they played
any other group. Their LP had an even more vivid jacket in ·euschnee" at 78 rpm and recorded some of that. And then
Britain and it screamed off the record shop shelves, its bright ~ played some of "Super" at 78 and 16 and recorded some of
dayglo pink sleeve with Neu! in white and underlined like L They even recorded "Neuschnee" with Klaus Dinger
Daz container. At a time of Roger Dean 's Yes sleeves and ri ng his fingers on the machine to slow it down.
ilk cluttered full of Space junk, mythical animals and me~m!Jer.s il And so the LP became a sort of weird rip-off Krautrock stan-
of ugly groups cast as supermen in some prehistoric void, Neu! .;.u-d. It's hard to feel spiritually satisfied by Neu 2 but it is truly
artwork was speedfreak clean. And they clung on to that annoy- etty fucking good. However, Michael Rother was totally
ing Pop-art exclamation mark at the end of their name at all ·eaked by the whole experience, causing Neu! to split up. Four
costs. onths after the split, he was in the studio with a brand new
"'and called Harmonia, making some of the greatest music
f his career and of the whole Krautrock trip. Musik Van
Neu 2 & The Death of Neu! Ha rmonia was co-written and produced by Michael Rother &
,;:'l& 'W'l'<ox'lJK'i.'<i ':.'lf~~~':.'\. <0\ ~~'bt, '\.~'1t.. t..'I.~ ~t:,'0Wf/~J~t.. '0'1 t..kt:,QkQ. Cluster ...
with another ex-Kraftwerker, Eberhard Krahnemann, on bass

42 43
 Enter Cluster- Moebius, Roedelius & Musik Von freedom as artists, particularly in their sheer bravery of
Harmonia doning the vast Aircraft-hangar structures of their recent
Having begun their career with one ~>imilarly poetically named for a whoJenew thing (see Review 30 of Top 50 section.)
duo, Hutter & Schneider, it seems only artistically correct for ~1us ik Von Harmonia LP sleeve was a retarded super-real-
Neu! that there next should have been contact with the other "'Y.linting of a towering blue ammonia bottle, with artlessly
great poetically named duo, Moebius & Roedelius, better ed announcements proclaiming: "Mit; m.rother (Neu! ),
known as Cluster. And Cluster, who also recorded for Brain ~eb ius (Cluster) , j.roedelius (Cluster)" - they were a true
Records, were looking for an entire change of direction . They o.J trock supergroup.
had not released a record for almost two years and that last LP 'hilst all this went on, Klaus Dinger had been working qui-
Cluster II was in a style that now belonged to a different age. on his proto-punk band La Dusseldorf with his brother
But the relationship between Dieter Moebius & Hans- mas and Hans Lampe, Conny Plank's tape-op from all the
Joachim Roedelius was a strong one. As a duo also, Cluster had sessions. As ever unorthodox, Klaus Dinger 's La Dussel-
successfully avoided friction between each other thus far by was going to be another bass-less tom-tom heavy Kraut-
working with other musicians. They had started out as the trio controlled freakout. And the strange Glam Dinger image
Kluster with the arch-experimentalist Connie Schnitzler, turned full blast on to his younger cohorts, as Klaus pre-
releasing epic and spacey records that sounded unearthly and d for a Trip that was entirely integrated. Soon, everything
hollow but always listenable. Schnitzler's influence was ready ...
extreme, though, and his compulsive and phenomenal output
of work was too wild for Moebius & Roedelius. When Schnit-
zler left to pursue what would become an outrageous solo 75 & The Return of Neu!
career, they continued as a duo, releasing the vast weather bal- '1 Klaus Dinger met Michael Rother. They talked about the
loon of sound called Cluster on Phillips Records . It was soon everything had gone wrong and felt as though it had all
after this point that they signed with the much hipper Brain n thrown away stupidly. In one refreshing and, as usual,
label. For Cluster II, Conrad Plank was placed in the Schnitzler .) inspiring act, Neu! was reborn for a farewell pre-La Dus-
role and received full writing and production credits for it all. rf LP. The album was called Neu 75 and it was a classic.
But then came the long lay-off and the need for change. Cluster a great album like the Harmonia, Cluster or even other
and Neu! shared record companies and the same co-produc- . albums were, but a classic. A future-shaping moment of
er/engineer, so when the Neu! split occurred, Michael Rother eous vision . Punk as eating the snot off your mates face,
looked for temporary asylum in the arrris of Cluster. tual as dawn on any clear day. It was a moving fucking
The trio of Rother, Moebius & Roedelius created a wonder- e-out, geddit?
ful sound and the recording sessions were astonishing- and so ·eu 75 came together at Conny Plank's studio in December
trippily beautiful that the trio felt compelled to call themselves - -l. The album was to be divided in half, a trippy spiritual
Harmonia. Each piece was a short vignette of sound which followed by a long minimalist Pagan wig-out. Side I
faded in, filled the room with its unearthly beauty, then left just nged to Michael Rother, its three long pieces opening with
as quickly. The driving force musically was Michael Rother, ":as elegant as-Harmonia, but driven by that unmistakable
who invested every moment with the candy melody and sim- bass-less Dinger drumming, low down in the mix and med-
plicity of guitar licks that had made all Neu! songs so austere onal in effect. Thereafter followed two of Neu! 's most
and Joe Meek-ian. Yet Moebius & Roedelius also showed en or- o.J tiful suspended seascapes, "Seeland" and "Leb Wohl". It
as if the first Neu! LP had returned from a long heavy jour-
44 45
ney, and was much changed and grown introverted by the ways suspected those riotous key-changes into the Pis-
rience. It was beautiful dewy-eyed music; backward , uitar solos to be the inspiration of some sharp Krautrock-
to childhood, and to the safety of not knowing the world ... than the addled mind of some mild and boogie Faces
Zippeeeeee! In comes Dinger and his Dusseldorf cronies 1 But it still felt good to have it semi-confirmed by the pre-
kick your head off on Side 2 with music that was surely Rotten attitude, long green hair and Hawkwind fixation
most radical version of rock'n' roll since Eddie Cochran. ealed in the recent autobiography, Rotten.* You know, I
the music pivoting entirely around the double-drumming y this over & over till I'm a boring old git but Side 2 is
the School- playground Boy-chants, the musical backing as fuck and two years ahead. Not the Stooges, not the
as it was could afford to be weak and thin. That it was not . not American at ALL. You hear "Hero" and "After
and thin is a nice bonus, but the point I'm trying to make is and British punk suddenly makes sense. For a few beau-
Neu 75 thrived on Im-balance. It was Im-balance that gave months before old-prick Johnny Thunders brought heroin-
epic side opener "Hero" its mesmerising power. For over ng into the punk scene, it was really the Neu!-driven
minutes, those crunching guitars never let up. They start ofthe Sex Pistols that turned on the young punks. And it
Full-on and they Maintain. No guitar solos at all, but a Klaus Dinger & Michael Rother who deserved the credit
barrage of Johnny Thunders-"Frankenstein" Ernie Ernie ever really got it.
ing On & On & Fucking on. And they had key changes. nd everything about Neu! was punk, and pre-empted punk.
was pop. No-one did that except the Sex Pistols two years was extremely drum-led, yet Klaus Dinger was the great-
-and it uplifts the slavering hound in each us in such an n-drummer ever. He had one drum fill and one drum beat,
ous but Glorious Way. he played at many different tempos. Dinger was a key-
player/guitarist first, but could find no drummer nearly
enough for what Neu! required. So he did it himself.
A Summary of Neu! the photos, the sleeves, everything that Neu! did, it was
That was the end of the Neu! story. But the fall-out and reper and years ahead. Klaus Dinger was also an exquis-
cussions from those three albums was (and is) immense and glam tart, who cut it in thee most fabulous of ways. His
is only now that the implications are being understood. In keep- -Pop-in-the-Photo-Booth image, which shifted around
ing with the spirit of the other most famous German duos time to time but always surrounded him, was one of his
Cluster and Kraftwerk- Neu! was made of two extremely po\\ uccessful and endearing traits in the whole of his I 0 year
erful personalities. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger argued _ career. That Dinger's name is not standard currency
they fought, they each surrounded themselves with separat ngst the majority of Heads is one of the great tragedies of
scenes, and they split up twice and had to have time away fro rr. ' n' roll- because the guy deserved to be a fucking big star.
each other. perhaps time will tell. ..
Of the two, I do consider that Klaus Dinger was the greate
because his contributions most affected the future of music. I
! R.I.P.- Viva La Dusseldorf & Harmonia's Deluxe
was his influence on the transitional Neu 75 and its follow-
La Dusseldorf which, in 1976, directly caused David Bowie e early post-Neu! years, both Dinger & Rother had consid-
take his Low direction. And, as I must re-state, Klaus Dinger success in the art that they created. La Dusseldorf quick-
direct effect on the Sex Pistols, via Johnny Rotten, can be dis- ny Rotten did give it away on a radio show sometime in July I977, eve11playing
covered merely by playing Neu 75's "Hero" or "After Eight ·Hammill's I975 "Institute of Mental Health, Burning" from the NADIR'S BIG
next to any Sex Pistols singles. As a huge fan of Johnny Rotten. ;c£ LP, another massive influence on pre-punk.

47
46
ly had a big hit with "Silver Cloud", the attitude of which David y early polytone keyboards. They were joined on drums by
Bowie again copped in a big way for "A New Career in a New ru Guru's Mani Neumeier, who lifted the Harmonia sound
Town" on Low. Happily, Klaus Dinger had good artistic and beyond that of the first LP. Deluxe has a tragic magic to it
commercial success with La Dusseldorf, who recorded three t is reminiscent of epic poems like Longfellow's Hiawatha
very cool LPs between 1976-81. The first, La Dusseldorf, is the short stories of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. And one
the greatest of the three. It opens with the 13 minute two-chord ng on Deluxe stands out to utterly confound my belief that
ramalama of "Dusseldorf', a soft-frantic synth-mantra that aus Dinger was the driving force of Neu! The song is
repeats the word "Dusseldorf' over & over & over again as lonza", and it pre-empted the clatter beats of La Dusseldorf
though it is a story. When the song finally comes to an end, . some months. Was this a combative stance on the part of
cheering soccer stadium crowds chorus "Dusseldorf. Dussel- llchael Rother? He knew full well that the La Dusseldorf LP
dorf. Dusseldorf." Then its off into the next song, another fast going to sound the same way. Perhaps it was the fallout
pre-77 bass-less buzzsaw guitar trip repeating (yet again) the 1m a truly symbiotic relationship. Certainly, when Michael
single word "Dusseldorf' over & over. This song is called, of 1ther went solo, the first few LPs (Sterntaler, Flammende
course, "La Dusseldorf'. Perhaps it is the female partner of the .-rzen) were recorded with Can's Jaki Leibezeit, who could
first song . Or maybe it doesn 't matter at all when you' re Klaus Ter Rother that steady unfussy non-drumming and the same
Dinger and on-one with your mates. The fol1owing two albums, ... dimentary Dinger drum-fills that he had obviously grown
Viva and Individuellos were both crazed Bavarian cosmic dieted to. Whatever, the music and story ofNeu! is a legend
knees-ups of the first order, mainly because Klaus Dinger had aha great canon of work attached to it. And its influence until
an uncanny ability to sing about serious subjects in a way that e ' 90s is minuscule compared to its future position in Rock-
had you both rolling in the aisles and caring at the same time. "roll.
His melodies were simple but incredibly moving, as well as
maddeningly catchy.
After the Neu ! split, Michael Rother ran to the role of Clus-
ter's producer for their forthcoming album Zuckerzeit. This was
the first Cluster album in years and it was hugely Rather-influ-
enced. Zuckerzeit means 'Sugartime'. And the exquisitely
unhinged toytown Velvets melodies were superimposed over
Moebius & Roedelius ' utterly catchy but crazy idea of what
Pop-music was . Cyclical synthesizer riffs over archaic drum-
boxes and dumbfounding insistent melodies as stupid as the
ti ties ("Caramel", "Marzipan", "Hoi! ywood" , "Rote Riki", etc.)
Then Rother, Moebius & Roedelius reformed Harmonia for
one final LP, the stunning beauty called Deluxe. The British
writer Biba Kopf recently wrote:
"Of all the great German groups of the mid-70s, Harmonia
must rank among the most mysteriously overlooked."
And it is true. Deluxe is a magnificent album that everyone
should own. It is melodic in a most melancholic way. Weeping
synthesizers and weeping guitars over electric percussion and

48 49
 ntalist Olivier Messiaen . At the famous Darmstadt Kurse
·eue Musik, he had studied under Stockhausen, Luciano
• o, John Cage and Pierre Boulez; four of the greatest com-
rs of the 20th Century. Schmidt had been a conductor, a
,ing teacher, a theatre-critic, and a writer for both theatre
fi lms before his move to rock'n'rolL
With Schmidt on organ and piano, and Czukay's student,
19 year old Michael Karoli on guitar, Holger Czukay
' e to play bass. He claims that this was initially because
Can -one really listened to the bass," but Czukay also required
edom to operate the tape-machine, and it was as editor of
Any Colour is Bad (1968-73)
group's musical visions that he would come to be known.
ll ing themselves Inner Space, the group found a free-jazz
·u rn mer, again ovedO years old, and again on a new musical
"Inability is often the mother of restriction, and restriction is the
:~est.
great mother of inventive performance. "
Jaki Liebezeit had been playing free-jazz in Spain for five
Holger Czukay of Can . ears. But recently, he had had a moment of immense life-
Can was formed in the exhilarating revelation of seasoned _hanging clarity at a show he'd played. Leibezeit had been
musicians discovering rock'n'ro!L Whilst most rock musicians · uched and changed by the words of, what he called, "some
play only what they are capable of, most members of Can were md of freak. " The "freak" had slagged Leibezeit for playing
over 30 and music veterans when the group formed . And such ·ree-jazz, and said: "Why do you play that shit? You must play
was the effect of psychedelic rock on all of them that they had :nonotonously." Those words stayed with him forever. Jaki
to ra?1cally change their style in order to even play the music. Leibezeit had never heard the word ' monotonously' used in a
Smc~ I 965, t:Vo students of Stockhausen, Holger Czukay ;>ositive way before, and the pealing bells of truth shot through
and Irmm Schmidt, had talked of forming a group together, a him. Leibezeit changed his drum style immediately. And it
group that would both utilise and transcend ethnic, electronic was with this concept of monotony that the drummer entered
experimental, and modern classical music. But now it was 1967 Inner Space. He, in turn, chided Holger Czukay for playing
and Czukay was a music teacher. One of his students Michael too much bass, and insisted that he try to play bass with "only
Karoli, had recently blown Czukay's mind by playin~ him the one tone." Irmin Schmidt was later to claim that he himself
Beatles' "I am the Walrus". And it was soon after this whilst often played nothing on early tracks, so trained as he was for
listening to Jimi Hendrix, The Mothers of Invention ~nd the standard musical achievement. So Inner Space was forged on
Velve~ Underground's Banana LP one night, that Irmin restriction, and they were still talking obsessively about it
Sch~mdt and Holger Czukay finally decided to take the plunge when Hildegard Schmidt, Irmin 's wife, found their first
and mclude rock'n'roll elements in their group. Like Kraftwerk singer.
later, they were from an extremely academic background, and Malcolm Mooney was a black American, a sculptor and
were uncomfortable yet fascinated by every aspect of rock- teacher. He had never sung before but threw himself into the
'n ' rolL But it was rock'n'roll's sense of moment that thrilled role with such fervour that the others readily followed him.
them most of alL Mooney suggested that they became known as The Can, a pos-
Irmin Schmidt was 31 years old, and a life-long fan of ex per- itive name that had many meanings. In Turkish, 'can ' (pro-
50 51
 nounced "chan") means both 'life' and 'soul'. In Japanese d have shied away from attempting, and so placed them on
'kan' means both 'feeling' and 'emotion', whilst 'chan' mean ternational stage immediately.*
love when used in salutation. (Later on, Irmin Schmidt woul nits release in August 1969, Can's Monster Movie, was
playfully claim that Can stood for Communism Anarchisr- ly acclaimed. One of the recordings of "You Doo Right"
Nihilism.) On becoming The Can, the presence of Malcol r- the Schloss Norvenich show now covered the whole of
Mooney forced the group into even greater musical restric 2, and was a moving epic masterpiece. And it was on the
tions, until late 1968 saw them as an experimental rock ban unk holler of "Outside Your Door" that Malcolm Mooney
It was now that their friend, Mani Lohe, owner of the cast! ·iously defined their musical stance with the repeated cho-
Schloss Norvenich, suggested they build a rehearsal studio i ·Any colour is bad." Unlike the Kosmische music of most
his home. Can organised a show at Norvenich, a happening t other great German bands, Can had stylised themselves
be recorded, in which they would play two long performance the beginning as raw and expressionist, with clearly
of a song called "You Doo Right". In keeping with Can's trul. d boundaries. But Mooney was having problems. The
restrictive style, the whole thing was recorded on two reel-t show at Schloss Norvenich clashed with an exhibition
reel tape recorders and parts were later used on their fir the performers. The constant movement of the audience,
album. · w the event more as a multi-media piece than the group's
The early recordings that Can made were a disparate cro ow, caused Mooney to start singing "Upstairs, Down-
between early Captain Beefheart (Safe as Milk period up Cpstairs, Downstairs" over and over until he was repeat-
Mirror Man), Freak Out-period Mothers of Invention, star words on his own and the rest of the group had finished.
tlingly like The Fall, and specifically like the Velvet Under ti nued through the intermission and into Can's second
ground. Yet the sound of late '68 Can is still very much its own lllance, eventually collapsing from exhaustion. The rest
A brutally simple intuitive trip, repetitive to the extreme, an accepted this as part of the 'whatever' that happens at
rarely a note-for-note cop of any other band. It is, perhaps, iron . vents, Michael Karoli even saying: "It was quite nice
ic then that Can's classic debut LP Monster Movie began thei .\1alcolm lost his head, which happens sometimes. The
career on record desperately trying not to play the Velv nhere was really good."
Underground's "European Son". But try as they did, still th · .\1ooney found life in West Germany increasingly diffi-
album opener, "Father Cannot Yell", would return again an e was totally out there and he was black, too. A Jewish
again to its roots, only to transcend similarities and shake o f Mooney told him that he was on the wrong path. This
yet another classic song from the same form. affected the singer, and he began to visit a psychiatrist
"Father Cannot Yell" was a fascinating and fruitful exerci .1tment. But soon after the five-hour happening they
that T.S. Eliot would have been proud of. In his essay "Th.. ··can-action-rock-incitement-playground", Malcolm
Metaphysical Poets", Eliot chided the establishment for alwa) ~ 's psychiatrist advised him to return to the United
seeing similarities between artists as negative. Why, he asked nd, in December 1969, Can's 'linguistic space commu-
was it not possible to return to the ancient bardic perspecti\ did just that.
that happily accepted the apprentice's use of his master's blue 'ley's departure devastated Can. He had named them.
print? Only in acceptance of what had gone before could h
himself truly move on. Can certainly proved this on Monste Can~ DELAY /968 LP. released in 1982. These recordings were made just
•me just before, the MONSTER MOVIE sessions. All are very original,
Movie. It's an incredible record in terms of both original inven
ers. With this weight ofmaterial to chose from for MONSTER MOVIE, we
~~~'\,~~~""~~}>.s&\')'U~"t'U't.\::>il -~<n) ~"'ut'l12enness wih!'-" (.rut knew precisely which kind of mtLsic they wished to be aligned
Cannot Yell" gave the world a great song that lesser arti <ng lite album with " father Cannot Yelt".

52 53
nounced "chan") means both 'life' and ' soul'. In Japanese. >Uld have shied away from attempting, and so placed them on
'kan' means both 'feeling' and 'emotion' , whilst 'chan' mean mternational stage immediately.*
love when used in salutation. (Later on, lrmin Schmidt would On its release in August 1969, Can's Monster Movie, was
playfully claim that Can stood for Communism Anarchism atly acclaimed. One of the recordings of "You Doo Right"
Nihilism.) On becoming The Can, the presence of Malcolm m the Schloss Norvenich show now covered the whole of
Mooney forced the group into even greater musical restric- e 2, and was a moving epic masterpiece. And it was on the
tions, until late 1968 saw them as an experimental rock band. \ punk holler of "Outside Your Door" that Malcolm Mooney
It was now that their friend, Mani Lohe, owner of the castle n ciously defined their musical stance with the repeated cho-
Schloss Norvenich, suggested they build a rehearsal studio in . ·'Any colour is bad." Unlike the Kosmische music of most
his home. Can organised a show at Norvenich, a happening to the other great German bands, Can had stylised themselves
be recorded, in which they would play two long performances m the beginning as raw and expressionist, with clearly
of a song called "You Doo Right". In keeping with Can's truly ·fined boundaries. But Mooney was having problems. The
restrictive style, the whole thing was recorded on two reel-to- ond show at Schloss Norvenich clashed with an exhibition
reel tape recorders and parts were later used on their first ve the performers. The constant movement of the audience,
album . ho saw the event more as a multi-media piece than the group's
The early recordings that Can made were a disparate cross n show, caused Mooney to start singing "Upstairs, Down-
between early Captain Beefheart (Safe as Milk period up to .lirs, Upstairs, Downstairs" over and over until he was repeat-
Mirror Man), Freak Out-period Mothers of Invention, star- .g the words on his own and the rest of the group had finished .
tlingly like The Fall, and specifically like the Velvet Under- l; continued through the intermission and into Can's second
ground. Yet the sound oflate '68 Can is still very much its own. rformance, eventually collapsing from exhaustion. The rest
A brutally simple intuitive trip, repetitive to the extreme, and Can accepted this as part of the ' whatever' that happens at
rarely a note-for-note cop of any other band. It is, perhaps, iron- uch events, Michael Karoli even saying: "It was quite nice
ic then that Can's classic debut LP Monster Movie began their ·eally. Malcolm lost his head, which happens sometimes. The
career on record desperately trying not to play the Velvet -tmosphere was really good."
Underground's "European Son". But try as they did, still the But Mooney found life in West Germany increasingly diffi-
album opener, "Father Cannot Yell", would return again and .ult. He was totally out there and he was black, too. A Jewish
a~ain to its rog~~ 1 Q!!!y !Q tmns~;bnd similarities and shak~ out ·fiend of Mooney told him that he was on the wrong path. This
yet another classic song from the same form. greatly affected the singer, and he began to visit a psychiatrist
"Father Cannot Yell" was a fascinating and fruitful exercise ·or treatment. But soon after the five-hour happening they ·
that T.S. Eliot would have been proud of. In his essay "The .:ailed "Can-action-rock -incitement-playground", Malcolm
Metaphysical Poets", Eliot chided the establishment for always \looney 's psychiatrist advised him to return to the United
seeing similarities between artists as negative. Why, he asked, States and, in December 1969, Can 's 'linguistic space commu-
was it not rossible t~ ~~t.l!.~11- t_~ t!J.~ 'll.l£.i~!.lt Q.~\Q.i.~ \1\;~i5.V,<;,(;.t\% ~iClltor ' did just that.
that happily accepted the apprentice's use of his master's blue- Mooney's departure devastated Can. He had named them.
print? Only in acceptance of what had gone before could he
·Listen to Can 's DELAY /968 LP, released in I 982. These recordings were made just
himself truly move on. Can certainly proved this on Monster afte/; and some j ust bef ore, the MONSTER MOVIE sessions. All are very original,
Movie. It's an incredible record in terms of both original inven- ·ery un· Velvets. With this weight ofmat erial to chose from for MONSTER MOVIE, we
tion and also Rip-off invention. Can 's brazenness with "Father "'ust assume that Can knew precisely which kind of music th ey wished to be aligned
•.-ith by opening the album with "Fath er Cannot Yell".
Cannot Yell" gave the world a great song that lesser artists
53
52
And he had forged their new direction. Though he often missed next. And 14 and a half minutes is a long time to really
whole shows, the group was not prepared for his departure and. out.
from December '69 to May 1970, they recorded only one ne\\ n Damo Suzuki, Can had found their bubblegum hero. For
piece of music. But in May, they played a four ni~ht reside~c~ possessed a wistfulness in his voice which was a very
at Munich's new discotheque The Blowup, and It was dunng pop delivery, like David Cassidy's, a thrilling teenage
afternoon coffee on a Munich sidewalk that Holger Czuka~ hat made me understand why my girlfriends needed their
discovered Can's new singer. s, Davids and Mares. I had a huge crush on Damo Suzu-
The meeting was typically Can. Whilst Jaki Liebezeit was nd still do. I stood in my bedroom aged 15 ripping off the
still screaming "No, no, it can't be true," about Malcolrr he's pulling on the back of Ege Bamyasi. That pose and the
Mooney to anyone who would listen, Holger Czukay was torrison shot on the front of Absolutely Live are still my
calmly asking the young Japanese busker who had been plagu ·avourite all-time images of rock' n' roll singers.
ing them all afternoon if he would sing at the show tomght. I ptember 1970 saw the release of an interim album The
was to be an inspired choice. And this quote from Holg Soundtracks* containing some old Malcolm Mooney
Czukay encapsulates the aims of Can in mid-1970: but with a majority of recent Damo stuff. "Mother Sky"
"It was a furious concert, first Damo was singing ver up the first three quarters of Side 2, and eclipsed every-
dramatically, it was very peaceful, he was very concentrateD. on the record. Irmin Schmidt's passion for recording film
And then like a Samurai warrior he sprang up, he took th had ensured that Can had been made available for all
microphone in his hands and he screamed at the audience. Th filmwork. Now this was all brought together on a very
audience got so nervous, people began to hit each other, the record, but one which did not play like a complete album.
was a fight and almost everybody left. At the end there we at the end of 1970, Can were back and ready. And with
only some diehard fans left, 30 Germans, 30 Americans, ver ude a mile high, they stormed into Schloss Norvenich
enthusiastic, and the rest of the concert was just played fi . now re-named Inner Space and, in three months, record-
them. It was beautiful, a very good concert. " epic masterpiece Tago Mago. But even in 1970, Melody
Damo Suzuki's erotic careless Devotional at the micr was saying, "If the Velvets play in ajunkyard, the Can
phone was to completely change Can, and soon. In less than where more sinister still."
month, Damo was singing "Don 't Turn the Light on, Leave . Can had descended to a deeper place than the Velvet
Alone" at Inner Space, feeling freaked out and uncomfortab --·~'r<, llrln had ever attempted, far deeper than the street,
It's interesting to note that this song predates what wou nto the Unconscious. It was more like France's ridicu-
become the standard Damo groove by a year at least, echoi nevertheless sensational Magma, another group of
later classics ''I'm so Green" and "Moonshake". But first, ng high magicians.
recorded one of their greatest ever songs. And though it " \1ago opened with "Paperhouse", "Mushroom Head"
Damo's, the Can sound was still writing for Malcolm Moon . Yeah" on Side 1. It's as good as they ever got. The
"Mother Sky" is a 14 minute trance-driving "L.A.Wom· •unds only like itself, like no-one before or after,
through the streets of Cologne at 4 a.m. The group are drin· , Can themselves. It's pointless to describe the music,
in a large pre-war American convertible, and Damo is hoven uge free-rock, as though each member of Can has a
above them singing. "Mother Sky" brought Michael Karol
guitar blasting out with a hitherto unseen force. It just ' FAUST TAPES, Can did not think of THE CAN SOUNDTRA CKS as an
down all around it and is psychedelic as all hcll. A sexy Jap ···-up to MONSTER MOVIE at the time, but it was so well received that
ese geisha one minute, a twang blues beyond Robby Kreie been accepted as such.

54 55
 " Aumgn", Irmin Schmidt intones for 17 1ater on, out ror Ege Bamyasi t'ne-y 'S\Tuc:~ g\:>\u. h"i'>U 'C'I'C"i'> \\\<c
d ailing truly out there. AC C{mes s;ogle, ':5'poon '; coo/ddono U'rong-jn enrJy ).972. Can went
to number one in the West German Top 30, selling over 200,000
"'''""''""''" that is too much. Chanting with
_ takes the musician far out of him- opies. ,.,
1
e.-to which the 13th Floor Elevators' As a bass player, Bolger Czukay is comparable only to John
If. The magic of the records made it a Cal e. But as an editor, he is surely second to none. Though epics
urn, an esoteric rock classic. But even as !ike "You Doo Right" had been recorded live, many of Can 's
o. it can be seen that there was a schism .,reatest songs started out as free-form jams. It was Bolger
the rest of the group, which was more than Czukay's mind that created verses, choruses and a structure for
_ :te\\o. Whereas Malcolm Mooney had practically .hem. The early Can LPs all relied heavily of Czukay's brutal
th ~u ic by the stance of his raging vocals, Damo editing blade, and it's a deficiency of the later records that he
uzu d far less control. And later, his sleepwalking sexi- .tllowed certain sections of music to remain. But now was a dif-
ne , ould eventually lose all control as the sound steered ever icult time for Can. The British press lauded them as saviours of
inchmgly more towards a steaming jazz. Malcol~ Mo~ney just ck, and made a big deal about the Stockhausen connection.
never shut up for long enough for the Schmidt/Letbezett axis to ' ith shit like Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman all over the
speed up into their inevitable frenzy of extremely educated ews, it was hard for Can to limit themselves- especially as
hey could really play up a storm if they wanted to. Nick Kent
playing. as driven to write:
But all this was perplexingly part of Can. The group psyche
of Can was an entirely different beast to the five individuals "Only Can have motivated themselves out of the Krautrock
themselves. Like many true stars, all their foibles were as ne to really merit superlatives as such."
obnoxious as their music was great. But Can were beginning to Sunday papers, art magazines, even the likes of the Specta-
signify the most of everything in music. They were the most .r (who knew truly fucking zilch about rock'n ' roll) wrote:
psychic, the most quotable, the most inspiringly simple, the "If you consider yourself in any sense involved with modern
most horrendously flash, and the most smug intellectual end- usic, you cannot overlook them."
less drywanks, though this is not so bothersome when the And then the horrific Sunday Times rock critic, Derek
music is such successful To-the-Moon experimentation. well, wrote:
But there was also this recurring sexiness in Can's music "No band in the world illustrates the inadequacies oftoday 's
with Damo that it should have been dragged out more often. It's usical terminology more so than Can."
the hotelroom whisper of female soul singers, the abandon of It was the start of the deification and de-mystification of
Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis" and the teen whisper :m, and the end of their rocking freakout trip. The next LP
of David Cassidy 's "How Can I Be Sure?" And Tago Mago's Jture Days was a schizophrenic stalemate. Opening with the
1972 follow-up was virtually that record. There were five clas- Je track, one of Can 's most wistful, epic and exquisitely beau-
sic Can pop songs on Ege Bamyasi- "Sing Swan Song", "One ul songs, Future Days promised everything but did not deliv-
More Night", "Vitamin C", 'Tm so Green", and "Spoon". Each Side 2 was a shambles. The other great song, another David
one had the above ingredients, and each one had a chorus, a sidy-voiced monster called "Moonshake", could have
verse and a masterful groove. And the opening "Pinch" was me from Ege Bamyasi. But Damo Suzuki was very unhappy
Damo at the controls, grabbing hold of the music and filling the d knew that the balance within the group had gone. They
track with his fantasia. Unfortunately, it was to be the only true re now very separated from the West German scene and had
Damo Suzuki/Can album. He would lose control to the jams orne an international band, subject to the eulogising of more

57
56
- -- ----- ------
average artists who used their name like a by-word. And after a
show at the Edinburgh Festival, on August 25th 1972, Damo rg:MQI:i;*l
Suzuki left Can. The group continued as a four-piece for many
more years, producing very patchy, flawed LPs which still
occasionally contained songs of a stunning quality. At times,
they even transcended their old sound. But this was never for
more than a couple of songs per album. Like most teenage Can
fans, I lost interest when Damo left, and I cringed when I saw
them on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Holger Czukay was wear-
ing extremely crap white gloves and the whole thing came over
as a muso trip. Of course, it wasn't meant to be, and many fans Amon DUUI II
love all their albums right to the end. I just had it in my head that
ANY COLOUR IS BAD. Or as Jaki Leibezeit later said: The Grim reaper is a Krautrocker & Other Stories
"When we began it was great, everybody just had a few
notes he could play so it stayed simple. But later our technical
.-A crazed Gothic-Germanic teenage horror movie fan refraction of
abilities increased, Holger could play very fast on his bass,
.lle whole early murky psychedelic fuzztone feedback modal
lrmin could play a lot of technical things, and Micky could play "l'JUSIC fad."
very difficult things. It began with TAGO MAGO. I mean
"Hallelujah" is monotonous, but not in the best way. And it Lester Bangs on Amon Duulll:
really went off with FUTURE DAYS, I think, it became too Psychotic Reactions & Carburettor Dung
symphonic. "
But Can will be remembered as one of the great 20th Centu-
An Introduction
ry bands. I've listened to their music for over 23 years, and I
still freak out at their staying power. All of them continued in Of all the great Krautrock groups Amon D····l II
.h . ' uu were surely
music after Can's split in 1978, and all have made great music e most true to the trarl. Starting as an ill-fated politico/musi-
at some time since then. Every one ofCan's members is a hero, a~ co~~une,_ t~e group at all times maintained the aspirations
a Wizard and a True-star. u.n I ;~gmal vrsr?n of t?e great Kosmische music first defined
n ' and whrch w_e ve come to call Krautrock. They were
.he group whose musrc continued to feel the pain of post-war
Europe, and the ones who retained the Krautrock elements Jon
.Jter all the other bands had been assimilated into the regula;
::erma? Rock-scene or become internationalised like Can and
angerme Dream. As late as their 1975 LP H". k A ....
I ·11 · l}ac , mon Duul
. were s~r p 1aymg "Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles"
rth a ~htterg_uaar over a glitterbeat (on "Da Guadalou ")
~er whrch th.~r.r bass player Lothar Meid left to form Jackb~oti
: ~m~n Duul story extends outside music and into lifestyle
~ ' m t at way, th~ music was sometimes secondary. Tours
auld feature very drfferent line-ups to the then current album,
58
59
side-projects abounded, and collaborations with Popol Vuh at In the hippy atmosphere, there was no way to exclude
one point made the two bands seem interchangeable. And e with a spliff and a set of maracas.
Amon Diiiilll's music was definitely badly affected by the con- er at the Amon Diiiil I commune at this time, the line-up
stant comings and goings in the band - they've certain!) articu'Wrly percussion-based. Get this 1969 sleeve credit
recorded their fair share of shit. Later albums like Made InGer· their Psychedelic Underground debut: Rainer-12-string,
many and Hijack oftentimes fell into a dreaded Euro-sound but. :JUirich - bass & doublebass/Helge - conga!Krische -
even at their worst, Amon Diiiil II always displayed more th & pjano/EJ]a - drum & vocals/Angelika - drum &
just vestiges of their former outrage. And, more than that, ·schi - maracas! !!
were a Yoko Ono-inspired punk commune band with COilSICJer., Karrer set up Amon Diiiil II with the guitarist John
able stamina ... rl and Renate Knaup, a former teacher with an exquis-
tc Yoko inflection. Another founder-member of the
Diiiil commune, the free-jazz drummer Peter Leopold,
Phallus Dei & The Munich Commune-scene llowed. Their artist friend Falk-Ulrich Rogner joined on
Munich in the late '60s was a hip scene. And in 1967, amidst .111d keyboard bass, attempting a Ray Manzarek role
free-jazz, the politics and the idealism, a commune the group. But the pleasures of keyboard bass soon evap-
Amon Diiiil sprang up. A floating group of 10112 for Rogner, and Amon Diiiil were joined on bass guitar
political activists, and psychedelic artists came together in e Anderson, a British roadie for the unknown Kipping-
large house in the city for the specific purpose of creating ge (later the pub-rock band Brinsley Schwartz.) Amon
kinds of political art. But the house fell through and Amon Il's first album was 1969's Phallus Dei. It was hard,
tried for several months to re-locate, in the interim all staying and very innovative. Chris Karrer's violin and Falk-U.
a mutual friend's apartment with just two large rooms. But, r's synthesizer conspired to create some very pre-Roxy
the Munich writer Felix Scorpio wrote, in article No.52 of oundscapes. And the opening "Kanaan" was an exotic
now-legendary International Times: " ... the experience of d of Da Capo-period Love played by an Iron Curtain
ly uptight community living sorted them out somewhat, rs of Invention. The middle European harmonies and
the result that they split." .Jllt rhythms created a hurried matt of percussion, springy
And so, in October 1968, the peace commune played moorland bog, undulating and very cool. Like their com-
first big show, the Essenner Sontag pop festival, as two ister group, on Phallus Dei, Amon Diiiil II were also
bands, Amon Diiiil I and Amon Diiiil II. Most of the Amo by percussion. They were joined on vibes by Embryo's
Diiiil I story has been told earlier in this book, but such was th tian Burchard, on congas by Holger Trulzsch from Popol
charm of the original commune that both groups would inter- and Amon Diiiil's other violinist Shrat was now solely
twine from time to time, and there was a constant trickle ng the bongos. With two drummers as well, the sound was
improving musicians moving from Mark I to Mark II through- . e any other rock'n'roll band. It was a swirling meltdown of
out the early '70s. As time passed, Amon Diiiil I would spen nic San Francisco Kosmische psychedelia with absolute-
more time involved in projects like the Berlin Kommune Eins commercial restraints. The result was quite incredible. On
using their music only to promote their activities. LP, Amon Diiiil II had combined the strident organised
The leader of the split was Chris Karrer, one of the com- orable Dervish rock weirdness of Side 1 with the title track
mune's founders. As a free-jazz violinist and guitarist of some tde 2, a wild 20 minute improvised, cut-up dreamscape of
experience, he couldn't bear to see the commune's musi nische music that at times organised itself into a pure hill-
falling into a free-form freakout of bongos and acoustic guitar peedball rush. And, as I wrote earlier, the whole thing

60 61
came in a two colour red/blue freakout sleeve any real He their future logo. Though their sound was pared down
would kill for. one drummer and one bongo player, still the ancient
.m mystery was achieved in the magical swirl of the
Yeti was a fabulous double-album- 68 minutes of some
Yeti .:reatest Krautrock ever. The first record was filled with
But whilst Amon Dutil II were immediately big in West Ge ng mini-epics: "Soap Shop Rock", the wiry medley,
many, Phallus Dei was ignored in Britain. Still, the group h he ridiculously named "Flesh-Coloured Anti-Aircraft
big allies at Liberty/UA, their London record-company whi ·: six minutes of mythical fear-inducing magic tales.
despite the M.O.R. image of its U.S. parent company, was lhe hell is going on in that song? Something scary is
here in Britain by total Heads. Andrew Lauder was th ·d but the precise meaning always eludes me. But the
extremely young boss- hanging with the Notting Hill fre t of all their punk songs is "Archangel's Thunderbird",
and getting out of control. Through Abi Ofarim, the entrepR that Renate implores everyone to drive over a "Louie
neur who sung the huge '60s hit "Cinderella/Rockerfella ··Boeing 747 riff that has them come in late on the break-
Lauder had already brought Can to his new label, and his as kind of like Jim Morrison's famous live TV fluff on
ciation with the Notting Hill-based Clearwater collective so h Me" . I love that they kept it in. It shows such of-the-
brought the first Hawkwind album to Liberty Records. Da' nt confidence. The drumming is not rock'n'roll at all,
Brock, leader of Hawkwind, soon heard a similarity in attitu :h who knows what it is. It crashes in and out of the beat,
in Amon Dutil II's already released Phallus Dei. The tv. ti mes sounding like a musician playing a different song,
groups became big friends and Hawkwind's loud proclam fo r the beat to inexorably return. And Yeti is Amon Dutil
tions on all things Amon Dutil made the group at least an inter reatest improvisation LP of all. The three very long tracks
esting enigma until they could start to sell records. And 1 ganic and sensational, the side long title-track is an epic
Klaus Doldinger, they now had a capable manager and a re of turbulent out-there Kosmische Musik. But my
inspiration. So the group returned to the studios to record the rite piece is easily "Sandoz in the Rain", on which both
second and most legendary album, Yeti. n Dutil II and members of Amon Dutil I were re-united.
This epic double-album was to change everything for them beautiful song is very reminiscent of the sound of Amon
And in Britain, they were soon to become heroes of the under I's then currentParadieswarts DuulLP. It may bebecause
ground. The John Peel Show, already champion of so muc e eerie-beautiful rock'n'roll fake English that Rainer
German music, embraced Yeti with real love and blasted Am
Dutil Il's long epics across the British night into every youn .
Head's pad (or bedroom if you were 13 as I was then). Even tru
munal Upheaval & Fragmentation as the Hits
sleeve of Yeti showed that it was a confident ground-breakin_
pComing ...
record. This was the first ofFalk-UJrich Rogner's slide projec
tion covers, and the star was Shrat the bongo-player, with hi lhe Amon Dutil II community was changing constantly.
weird low forehead and a strange peasant dress, wielding lhe group suffered considerable psychic damage from all
huge scythe across a field of bright yellow ground fog; th upheaval. Shrat left to form his own bongo-based group
Grimreaper as a Krautrocker. It was a mesmerising image, an eti. Their British bass player, Dave Anderson, left to join
one which would stay with them throughout their caree ·wind, Falk-Ulrich Rogner left but continued to guest on
though Shrat would quit soon after. Indeed Amon Dutil them- -.m and design their record-sleeves. And Renate Knaup left
selves understood the power of the Shrat image because 1 ;he first of many times. Unfortunately, this all conspired to

62 63
 give the next LP a very stop-start feel to it. Dance of the Duiil II a great deal now. Carnival In Babylon was much
mings (Tanz der Lemminge) was extremely disappointing, i tening than the previous albums, and John Peel played
even making it a double-album did not hide the fact. The Years Round" constantly. By the middle of 1972, the
freakout "Marilyn Monroe Memorial Church " was the s was a standard feature of many a Head's bedroom, and
highlight, but even this drum-led frenzy-piece was inorgan n Diiiil II at last toured Britain. Liberty/UA celebrated the
and stilted compared to their other improvisations. But ·ith the low-price re-release of Phallus Dei on their 99p
Falk-U Rogner sleeve was another mystifying classic, and t label. Of course, certain commune members did not get
impenetrability of Dance of the Lemmings meant that it to music to tour, so they were temporarily replaced, but even
quite a while to suss that, by Amon Diiiil 's standards, th 1ucleus of John Weinzierl, Chris Karrer, Peter Leopold,
record was a pile of pedestrian shit. * te Knaup and Falk-Ulrich Rogner would still fall to pieces
But such was life in the commune. And finally the tense pe ti me to time. Perhaps it was the tour, or the sudden out-
pie packed up and left so that Amon Diiiil II could get of concentrated activity. Whatever, Amon Diiiil II hit a
again . The fog visibly lifted around the group, and so son of structured songwriting that was to be a mixed blessing.
improvements were immediately forthcoming. Back oose semi-structures of Carnival In Babylon were fine
dear Renate to sing some of her best ever Amon Diiiil. And the No-structure-at-all of much of their previous albums .
of nowhere came the most beautiful Teutonic folkrock albu unfortunately, hereafter Amon Diiiil II really got into
Carnival In Babylon. No wonder Amon Diiiil II announc r' songwriting.
thei r rebirth on the record label, where they wrote: e negative aspect of the new songier Amon Diiiil II was
"THANKS TO ALL THE PARANOID PEOPLE WH mmediately apparent. Indeed, only seven months after
MEANWHILE MOVED OUT." previous LP, Wolf City was a revelation. It was a huge
Carnival In Babylon was a mystical masterpiece whi recorded by a transitional group, but somehow in a state
existed entirely on its own. In some ways, Amon Diiiilll ry inspiring flux. Only John Weinzierl, Lothar Meid and
getting closer to an orthodox rock sound, but their bizarre an y Fichelscher played on every track, but the wealth of
tude to mixing records put a strange emptiness into the was dramatic and different in every way. It was progres-
of music. Lothar Meid's bass is pumped full up, xyl rock like VanDer Graaf Generator is progressive- huge
beat out melodies, whilst the drums, tructured but in an unglamorous way, and ultimately
though clattery and powerful, are by the nature of the m n and punk in its execution. Their sense of time was urgent
reduced to a papery pitter-patter. And all clothed in that Falk- nal, their alchemical time changes beyond the mere intel-
Rogner sleeve; another of the type that would in future Iism of shit like Genesis or Yes . And from the opening
Amon Diiiil II legendary merely for their LP covers. And f "Surrounded By The Stars", Wolf City emitted a grand
songs such as "All the Years Round", "Tables are Turned ty that they had hinted at since the first track of their Phal-
"C.I.D. in Uruk" and "Shimmering Sand", they delivered ei debut, exhibiting a curious Detroit intensity towards
unearthly folk album to the world. Britain was listening 1g structured progressive rock.
nd so 1972/73 became the most successful but also most
* I've seen this album referred ro as TANZ DER LEMMING£ in magazines ow r a! of times for Amon Diiiil II. The huge influx of guest
past few years, as though the British name is nor the original. This may wo rk as a k1 ians, and the disruptions within the commune, continued
of Hindsight Purity, but the album was a big undergmund hit in Britain, in I97I ,
DANCE OF THE LEMMINGS and not in its German-titled form. As Krautmck i
\ ate gruelling recording sessions that increasingly frag-
subjective British phenomenon, then DANCE OF THE LEMMINGS should rema d the band. Even as Wolf City was being recorded, a
the name. taneous sister project called Utopia was being formulated
64
65
within the same sessions, by bassist Lothar Meid, along '-'
Amon Diiiil producer Olaf Kubler, and guest organ
a ny . It was a long time since the first 'kraut' reference on
n Diiiil I's 1969 "Mama Diiiil and her Sauerkrautband
· out!" But still the group was at it- their music changed
-
Embryo's Jimmy Jackson. Using these much straighter mu
cians who aspired to be as 'good ' as the British or Americ e stance remained.
was later to be a particularly negative influence on the grou never saw Amon Diiiil II. By the time they toured, I was
songwriting and direction. The resulting LP Utopia was a w :: out with Jane Smith, a Krautrock fan who was jealous as
derful mystery but confusing to British audiences, who rec _ ,f Renate Knaup, even though her entire image was ripped
nised the Falk-U. Rogner sleeve, noted the similar line-up · enate 's look from the inside gatefold of Carnival In Baby-
musicians, and even a re-recording of Wolf City's "Deut But I bought that average Live In London LP and still have
Nepal" . And confusion clearly reigned over the Amon Diiiil t for the sleeve. It is Amon. Diiiil's finest Krautrock
camp. Utopia was only partially Krautrock, but aspired to ent. .. A gigantic German-helmeted Storm trooper insect
international, veering into true Traffic/Stones grooves at tim the London Post-Office tower from its foundations as
With enormous amounts of songs to chose from , the gro g-saucers lay the city to waste overhead - the greatest
was beginning to lose its way. Amon Dutil II chose to re-grou iest Krautrock image of all.
In late 1972, their 'classic' line-up went out on tour and hope
to gain some objective overview of their situation. They pla:r
only old songs from their first three LPs, which British au
ences knew best in any case, and the tour was a roaring succe
But United Artists released an average cheapo £1.99 ccince
LP called "Live in London" (really recorded at the Croyd
Greyhound), whose improvisations and multiple titled spact
rock pieces were quite at odds with current Dtiiil songwritin.,.
For the young fan it was a confusing time, and I can we
remember having no idea what to spend my minuscu
resources on in the Amon Diiiil II department. Too many mid
price records dissipates the fan 's pride in his favourite arti s~
and the sheer volume of LPs to chose from was mindblowin
Between July 1972 and August '73 , there were five albums ~
chose from! Wolf City, the re-issued Phallus Dei, Utopia , Lil
in London . .. And then, just one month later came their glam·
pop album Viva La Trance! It was all too much.
The inevitable had happened. Amon Diiiil II had burned th.
weirdness out of themselves with too many guest musician
diluting the stew. Whilst they played the most mind-blowine
head music, Amon Diiiil's pop was often formulaic and trite ir:
a nasty 'Euro' way. The following albums were quite enjoyable
but patchy, and even included some of their best over
Krautrock references. "Mr. Kraut's Jinx" and "La Krautoma··
both appeared on the sprawling 1975 double-album Made Ir:

66 67
 IHif!iQi§;l:l "Tune In, Turn On, Drop-out" and "Deal for Real". But
. an accepted hero of most of the '60s Underground, had
need the authorities that he would be a 'soft' prisoner and
on sprung from his Minimum Security jail at San Luis
by The Weathermen, one of the most extreme of the mii-
Yippie political action groups of the '60s. The Weathermen
ered Dr. Leary and his wife, Rosemary, into the guardian-
Jf Eldridge Cleaver's Black Panther Party, who promptly
them and took them to their new embassy in the north
Timothy Leary & an city of Algiers. This embassy, The FLN Headquarters,
"een set up soon after Algeria had gained independence
Ash Ra Tempel the French- now all Underground parties who had helped
w government in its revolutionary days were welcomed as
Kosmische Musik Meets Sci-fi ers. Outlawed groups and governments-in-exile flocked to
-rs to begin again. But here in the echoing opulent domed
mg of the FLN Headquarters, with its blue and white
N.B. When I started writing this KRAUTROCKSAMPLER its pillars and balustrade, the mood changed from
September I994 (CE), I had no idea that the book would e te to minute. Eldridge Cleaver told Leary that he must give
like a soap opera. I knew that the Cosmic Couriers ' scene '' Jack Panthers $10,000 of the $20,000 advance due to arrive
the only one to retain its true Kosmische side beyond I 974, t forthcoming book Escapades.
I knew nothing of the inspired Vision behind it. And as I d lQn, the British psychedelic guru and poet Brian Barritt
deeper, a Beautiful & Dutiful Enlightenment was unearth ed in Algiers to see Timothy Leary, hoping to get a fore-
glowing red hot in Berlin and Cologne. And one that had beg written by Leary for his new book Whisper. Barritt was
in the white mountains ofSwitzerland. It's a short thrilling st JUSt out of jail, having served four years for smuggling
with a tragic ending for some of the main participants. And 1 ,n and a quarter pounds of hash into Britain. He and his
music created from this scene soared like Nothing Else .. . nion, Liz Elliott, got along fabulously with the Learys,
uggested that they all throw a communal I Ching. The
..t!!:ram that Brian Barritt and Liz Elliott threw was The Wan-
Timothy Leary Escapes
~ the same hexagram that Rosemary and Tim Leary had
By 1972, Dr. Timothy Leary was on the run from pretty mu~ n in San Luis Obisbo prison just before Tim had escaped.
every authority. Now effectively banned from the West, Lear rred on by the synchronicity, the two couples read this as a
had been called "the most dangerous man in the world" by Pre rrnation of their Trip together.
ident Richard Nixon for his advocation of enlightenme \'ith his $10,000 dollar share of the book advance promised
through LSD. And Dr. Leary had served a small part of a I 0 ye not yet forthcoming, Eldridge Cleaver relaxed his paranoid
jail sentence for his official 'crimes' - possession of half a; ~ on Timothy Leary for the time being. And it was during
ounce of marijuana and some roaches found in his car. B ti me that both Leary & Barritt discovered that they had
everybody knew that this was just a smokescreen, a diversion b. n working independently on similar Neurologic Mind-map
the authorities who had been out to get the good doctor since h terns.
had begun to shout his mouth off about acid, with his statemen In Algiers, they discovered that the two systems were sim-
68 69
ilar enough to be interwoven. They began to talk of "Ps) enfranchised Gypsy leader. His people had come from
Phi": of the Psychic and of the Physical. They shared psyche Europe and been scattered in the West, but he often
delic visions at the dry river-bed near Bou Saada th ~ -TrP~ ~Pn many of them in the Swiss Alps at times of particu-
unconsciously re-enacted the rituals of Aleister Crowley mportance. As a poet, the works of Sergi us Golowin were
Victor Neuburg in 1909. Magic fused and sparked all arou n by all Swiss children with imagination. Now he was a
as the spectre of Eldridge Cleaver hung over them at all time le-aged man with three wives, offering long term hospi-
Cleaver had had Leary dose him with acid at the FLN Hea . to the Leary Mob. He and his friends , an art dealer called
quarters, but throughout the trip Eldridge had visions of h Laszlo and Walter Wegmuller the folk artist, directed
black activist brother, Bobby Seale, in jail and he emerg guests to a Swiss hideout fuelled by the acid of the Swiss
from the trip even more opposed to what he saw as a whi· company, creators of LSD-25, the very drug that
cop-out. Cleaver had horrendous flashes of intense r~~ was so in trouble for advocating. Golowin took them to
where he saw LSD as a counter-revolutionary drug, sappu-:. with Albert Hoffman, synthesist of the first acid in
the will to change the real world by replacing it with a fa! . and got them high with H.R. Giger, later the super-real-
new one. ionary creator of the Alien . And it was in this environ-
It was in this environment that Brian Barritt & Timot; that Timothy Leary and Brian Barritt's 7-tier system was
Leary's trip co-agulated into one. Barritt's bywords had becor." and flourishing, when Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser came
Time and Space. Now Leary renamed his forthcoming book I
about Time. As Barritt writes the formula in The Road ofExce
"Time+ Space= Tim-ESP-ace."
They were on-one and they knew it. And things were getu
spaced and scary. The Black Panthers were laying claim t? most successful cult Record Company Producer in the
Americans entering Algeria. Their trip moved from the poll Underground, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser came to Switzer-
of International Black Power into an arena of Detroit H )()king for more than another hip record. He had the
!urns Replanted. And it was at this time, whilst the Panther h German corporations at his beck and call. He had
their fingers in too many pies, that Brian Barritt, Liz Elliott · the way the industry was run. And now he wanted
the Learys fled to Switzerland, the only country which w r -Spiritual Enlightenment. And most of all a Means of
be too haphazard to kick them out. .tlion.
Switzerland is comprised of many fiercely indepen Timothy Leary, Kaiser was directing a huge scene of
mini-states called cantons. Only by allying together ex pre and musicians, guiding his Kosmische groups with the
for the purpose of signing a collective treaty to expel Tim o mic-aplomb as George Gurdjieff had controlled his
Leary could Switzerland eject him. By never staying Ion.; •-u am• .,~ at the beginning of the 20th century, but also

one place, the canton-hopping Leary could remain in SwiG: - many of the participants crazy, just as Gurdjieff had
land for years, though he had to remain underground at ne to do. With his wife and co-producer Gille Let-
times as the CIA were still under orders to return him to AI"" olf-Ulrich Kaiser was constructing an outlandish and
ica. In Switzerland, the fugitives were received almost a t imple Device for "Enlightenment: find the Freaks,
ily. There is a mage on every hill and many of the my I m, inspire them with confidence, record them and stand
even today, never make the long descent into the cities. A k. In 1969, Eric Clapton had said that his life-wish was
illusioned ex-MP called Sergius Golowin took the two 'he true note that would so touch people to the core that
pies to his mountain retreat. Golowin was a poet, a mystic ld instantly Understand. By late 1972, the musicians

70 71
around Kaiser were creating pieces that lifted the soul out of· the cosmic conger eel of white light which so few artists
body- a healing feeling white light sound that made Claptor. • .1pture in the Moment of Recording.*
remarks seem as trite as the licks he was playing. Not so t: r years I had drooled over that description in I Need More.
group that the Kaiser had brought with him to Switzerland. A 1wn many friends that passage- I had bored them with it.
Ra Tempel were thee most exciting, inspired and fucking era. II the time Ash Ra Tempel had already done it in 1971 ...
Kosmische rock' n' roll group in all Germany. Their two L~ was not all without a price. The first LP was by a Kos-
thus far released had taken the metal of Detroit to heights e power-rock trio of gargantuan size. The 20 minute
even considered by the MC5 or the Stooges or even Funkad ng track "Amboss (Anvil)" was all of lggy Pop's above
ic. Sure those groups had got close on stage. But Ash Ra Terr ption and more. Sure it was a fucking cosmic freakout.
pel got it on record. While the collective Detroit obsession wr was played by Renaissance Man and Cosmic Man at the
the Outer-spacings of Sun Ra and the free-jazz innervisions ime.
John Coltrane had been tamed beyond recognition by u ~ k Jim Morrison's ridiculous "Renaissance Man of the
American record industry, Ash Ra Tempel suffered no such di description.
appointment. And those searching for the fulfilment of It Jt was just an excuse to be a fat slob.
Detroit promise need have looked no further than Ash Ra Terr at was just an existentialist knee-jerk.
pel in 1971. There's a part of Iggy Pop's autobiographical 1. No. No.
Need More in which he writes (pl7) about the early Stoog ese freaks were fit. Superhuman. Superman.
sound thus: ey were here to go . But all in good time. And they had
" ... I'd play this sort of wild Hawaiian guitar with a pick-u- ng power over 20 minute tracks. On "Amboss", Klaus
that I invented, which meant that I made two sounds at o~. plays drums like a hundred drummers. He's not twice
time, like an airplane ... using 55-gallon oil cans which I g werful, he's a hundred times as powerful. Hartmut Enke,
from a junkyard and rigged up as bass drums, I homemade piritual leader of the band, hits his Gibson bass the way
drum set. For drum sticks I designed these semi-plastic mold a giant could: the huge extra-longnecked she-bass was
hammers. Scotty beat the shit out of these cans; it sounded liJ... cajoled and ultimately goosed into action by this huge
an earthquake- thunderous .. . It was entirely instrumental · freak they all called The Hawk. And Manuel
this time, like jazz gone wild. It was very North African, aver; ng plays blues like Clapton, but right alongside pre-
tribal sound: very electronic. We would play like that for abo Keith Levene white noise and egoless as Lou Reed's
lO minutes. Then everybody would have to get really ston!!l.. /969 rhythm guitar freakouts . The interplay is so intuitive
again ... But what we had put into 10 minutes was so total an frequently it's impossible to hear the instruments- you just
so very savage - the earth shook, then cracked, the Music . And the LP was housed in yet another of Ohr
SWALLOWED ALL MISERY WHOLE." (my capitals) ' extravagant packages- a centrally opening gatefold
Music that Swallowed All Misery Whole . .. an Ancient Egyptian exterior, a freaky occult gematriac
In the first two Ash Ra Tempel LPs, Ash Ra Tempel an ... ·or, and a tragically beautiful Head-poem that began: "I
Schwingungen, they had captured on record All that Iggy Por the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness
had promised Could-be but, because of Record Industry Hang- hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the
ups, had been unable to deliver. And this music which coul streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. "
Swallow All Misery Whole reached into the core of each musi-
cian who played in Ash Ra Tempel and pulled out, still wrig- firs t four Ash Ra Tempel LPs are so brimming over with high magic that to hear
~won their recent CD re-issues is almost too much.

72 73

---- _.a.: _-ir

 By the second LP Schwingungen (Vibrations). · was not to be. For when the Leary Mob met the
Schultze had temporarily left the band to record his migto the sparks flew ever Up-wards ...
solo album /rrlicht, an album which begins like a night-
some unknown stadium then continues into the very h
cosmic-dam, Klaus accompanied only by his synthesiz · 'Festival'- The Kaiser meets Doctor 7Up
an orchestra which he said later "possibly thought I was · ·eally good at leading the whole thing .. . Everyone who
In the meantime, Schwingungen saw Ash Ra Tempel : .·. tzerland went with a different impression . To some
through its cosmic Stooges' Funhouse stage, complete ::ilt he was a guru, he was a guru. To someone who
Mathias Wehler on wailing alto sax, in the Steve McKa) · · ·him as a friend, he was a friend. If you wanted him to be
tion. The line-up was augmented by their road-manag ... auld be a star It was no problem for Tim! "
Pop on congas and Wolfgang Muller on drums, and carr Manuel Gbttsching
like an organic freerock blitz. Side 1 featured ultrafreaky
tone classic in every way. Yes, it is unlikely to find
John L., recently sacked from Agitation Free for beingj u
Leary singing lead vocal in a cosmic group, but even
much of everything. And on the awesomely tragic 12-mr
that he chose to sing a wild yelping freaked out blues!
"Flowers Must Die", John L. pre-empted John Lydon'
he Kaiser gang had come for Enlightenment, Leary and
wail with a Seering death's head drama that Never has fai l
Barritt were all ready to play the rock stars, coming on
bring tears to my eyes. The words, like so many translated r
m Morrison and Mick Jagger. As both were already in
' n'rolllyrics, have a vivid and dignified poetic truth in t•
, they had put together the 7Up lyrics around a tradi-
delivery that transcends the hippyspeak in which the)
rock'n ' roll construction which was totally at odds with
written:
• ::1 mische sound of Ash Ra Tempel. But Manuel
"I see when I come back,
·hing and Hartmut Enke had begun their careers in The
From my lysergic-day-dream
echase Blues Band back in the mid-'60s, and they quick-
Standing in the middle
their way through what Barritt & Leary were aiming for.
Of the glass and neon forest
reconciled it all as a kind of West Coast chordless psy-
With an unhappy name: City
where blues riffs sparkle out of nowhere and the sheer
Flowers must die ...
t of synthesizers renders everything with an unreal Pere
I want to be a stone, Not living, not Thinking,
early Roxy Music quality. The 7Up image was a hard
A thing without warm blood in the city."
statement by Leary, who spiked a large bottle of
And so it was that Ash Ra Tempel arrived with Rolf-Uln . especially for the recording, and then watched as the
Kaiser in Switzerland for the great meeting of the minds. Th outside disappeared.
was an enormous sense of expectation in the Kaiser camp. Gi. - r_:p was recorded live at Sinus Studios in Munstergasse,
Letmann was with them to co-produce the project and to gi a subterranean horror-chapel that could only be exited
the Kaiser a little space for his Navigation. Dieter Dierks v. double cellar doors in the middle of a mainstreet, giving
there, recording engineer of so many of the Ohr LPs, now J.ppearance of emerging from a crypt. A proper Bern Festi-
hand with his synthesizers, echo-units, reverbs and, above a. had been suggested, but this was never a real possibility
his attitude. Steve Schroyder was there to play organ, recent!. en Leary's dubious circumstances. Instead, the Leary Mob,
sacked from Tangerine Dream for what Edgar Froese h all its assortments offreaks and hangers-on, and the Kaiser
called "freaking totally out." And if there was any worry of g, less crazy but out of its natural environment, struggled to

74 75
 achieve what had seemed so easy on the numerous internaL Kaiser, who saw it more clearly with the eyes of a cos-
al phonecalls. It was a huge group, 12 people actually e man. Psy-phi. Sci-Fi. The psychic and the physical
tributing to the sound on tape. Four other singers - M1 ily mix to become Science-Fiction. It was almost too
Duwe, Portia Nkomo, Bettina Hols and Liz Elliott- jm· be true. By realising that the double-play on words
Timothy Leary & Brian Barritt on vocals. But by the end o lost in translation, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser played the pop-
recording session, no-one knew if there were even en d went for the jugular. From now on Kaiser 's byword
songs recorded to complete an album and Dieter Dierks ft ·sci-Fi .. . '
Berlin with the master tapes, which he desperately edited
re-mixed before anyone could get near them.
Using Barritt's cosmic equation (Time+ Space== Tim-E.
ace), the album was divided in two parts- Side l was "Spa
Side 2 "Time". They were both extremely different, but e
was a trip. "Time" is a classic Kosmische Musik astral pi~
freakout, utilising the chords of Schwingungen's title-tr:
because Manuel Gottsching and Hartmut Enke were convin ..
that they had discovered The Sound of Heaven in that ch
sequence. The music of Side l 's "Space" is unlike anyth
ever recorded before or after. But that's probably because ·
very idea is just too ridiculous, the whole side being filled \\
wild muscular cosmic blues boogies, with fizzing Dieter Die
synthesizers rattling over the heads of the musicians, impr .
nating ever pore of the music and liberating every worn-ou t r
invigorating every lousy blues holler, and turning the wh
thing into a cosmic Cresta Run of such ferocity that when
side is over, the listener has laughed his head off, felt affrom
shouted "Amen" a few times, and been simultaneously sem
La-la-land.

Sci-Fi Rising
But though the album's heart belonged to Timothy Leary ar.
Brian Barritt, ?Up was a Gotterdammerung for Dieter Dier
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and Ash Ra Tempel's guitarist, Man
Gi:ittsching. The LP became a blueprint for tbe way to
future. After the maelstrom of the Bern Festival, everyone 14.
adjourned to a farm owned by Leary 's friend Mindy, wh
they tripped for days and got involved in long drawn-out
orgies. It was during this time that Timothy Leary explained
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser his theory ofPsy-Phi . This image remai n

76 77

~-=- - ....... ------.- =...

 mass barter system that could shore up the world with
ination of rock heroes and enlightenment.
Rolf, today was a new beginning. He had come to record
ters, but he now remained in Switzerland, himself a
And his quickly rising spirit looked to his wife, Gille,
) he did see the Goddess. For Rolf, Gille Letmann had
his Sternmadchen, or Starmaiden. And in his new state
had never looked so odd nor so beautiful as the way
it now. He could see forever. The thrill of creativity
Rolf-Uirich Kaiser & rough him like 10,000 watts of.clear white light. To be an
To create in this constant bath of light. This was every-
The Cosmic Couriers He thought of Tim, on the run from everyone. Brian, four
prison yet still uncorrupted, Sergi us' poetic idealism in
Sci-Fi Musik to the End of a Dream ontain home, the fabulous Moebius strip that Walti had
for the 7Up album. Man, he should stay and record the
" It happened during the acid-trip at Mindy's farm. Rolf and Gil
.;cene ... Rolf lay and watched the idea take shape in his
were standing at the junction of two footpaths in the middle o ·
It was just as Brian had said earlier: they were all Cosmic
field ... I happened to be looking from a nearby hilltop ju$t as T
Rolf shivered with a delight that all-enveloped him
passed by the crossed paths, and tarried to say a word or two
hed him clear through the roof. He saw a new record
that moment I saw Gille's face shining with adoration for Tim, a
:ailed Kosmische Musik. It would be the record-label of
saw Rolf see it, too. I believe that Rolf's actions after that expe
' mic Couriers - purveyors of all-things pioneeringly
ence were an attempt to try and get Gille to see him as she ha ...
· an Enlightening rock' n'roll Trance-trip.
seen Tim that day For that I forgive him, and make him a hero,
he lay Delighted in his room, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's mind
did it all FOR A LOOK FROM THE GODDESS (my capitals)."
great lights above all of his artist and musician friends.
ne knew what was the Best way. He alone would Do It.
Brian Barritt, The Road of Ex
Do It Right. Ha. Bern had been far too chaotic. He had
Tim Leary too much leeway and it had interfered with the
trip. He must learn from this for next time. Shit, Brian
Rolf's Dream
tt had come to Berlin on three different occasions to try to
One night, during the chaotic aftermath of the 7Up sessi le in on the mix. Rolf had even had to spike Brian's coffee
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser had l:l Dream, a Vision. As he lay trippi n~ p him away from his beloved 7Up. But not any more.
the loft at Mindy 's farm, a huge avalanche of sweat now on, the Kaiser would always be in Complete Con-
over his eyelids and threatened to deluge him. But there was And as the dawn sun peered over the window sill, It shone
sweat at all. And above his head, a dazzling beam of light c a changed man .. .
caded over him and irradiated his soul - fried it up so swee
that he recognised his Mission at once. To enlighten the
once and for-all with a music so free, so profound, so fu ll Krishna Von Goloka & Wegmuller's Tarot
light that every great mind would be drawn to rock'n'roll ar- new R-U Kaiser was soon hard at work recording the work
every great rock'n'roller would become enlightened. It was rgius Golowin & Walter Wegmuller. In his new Kosmis-
78 79
che Empire, Kaiser saw Leary's 7Up as the first release of ness, he decided, must become the Cosmic Couriers'
brand new Visionary Record-label. But the Kaiser w . He was used to his idealistic drug-fuelled rock'n ' rollers,
record every mage on every hill if necessary. Golowin 's U. ere was something brand new. Knowledge and truth. Cer-
Krishna Von Goloka and Wegmuller's epic Tarot would be· .. there was deep Intuitive wisdom, but here it was all
second and third releases respectively. Everyone in Germ ed up by scholarly learning and years of thorough practice
was intrigued by this weird temporary Swiss scene. But R Occult. Golowin and Wegmuller had spent much of the
Ulrich Kaiser had decided that there should be no more g on an Odyssey around Switzerland, Southern Germany
vanting around the Swiss hills trying to record elusive mys he South of France, collecting the myths, legends and tra-
From Timothy Leary, he had learned that Control of the sit of other gypsies they had met. Their adventures and dis-
tion was everything. And from now on, all Kosmische Mu ries had all been published in one of Golowin's books Die
would be made in the safe hands of Dieter Dierks, at his stu des Tarot (The World of Tarot).
in Stommeln near Cologne in W. Germany. e Golowin sessions finished, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser had
At first, Ash Ra Tempel began the project with Walter W - Wegmuller and Ash Ra Tempel flown to Germany to
muller in Switzerland, whilst Sergius Golowin flew to Di · n new work for the Tarot project at Dieter Dierks' studio.
Dierks' studio where he was backed by Kaiser's cosmic new double-LP format would require far more light and
supergroup: Wallenstein's Jurgen Dollase & Jerry Berkers. · if it was to work over two full albums, so Kaiser aug-
cosmic folk duo Witthuser & Westrupp, and Klaus Schultze, \1 the three-piece Ash Ra Tempel with many of the musi-
was involved (as usual) in all of the projects. The sessions for LL from the recent success of the Golowin sessions. Hartmut
Krishna Von Goloka were incredible. And soon a middle-aged . Klaus Schultze and Manuel Gottsching were now joined
MP had made one of the finest Cosmic rock LPs of all time, "alter Westrupp, playing his usual l 0 or so different instru-
with only three tracks on the whole album. Klaus Schultze h .. plus Wallenstein's Jurgen Dollase and Jerry Berkers. But
been persuaded back on to the drums at last, and for the whole tme, they brought their drummer Harald Grosskopf in order
Side 2, the mystical 19-minute dance called "Die Hoch-:z... e Klaus Schultze more time for his beloved synthesizers.
(High-time)", there is a middle-European Ur-pagan rumble u rot was an enormous artistic success. Introduced by
sounds as though Klaus is missing his beloved synthesizers, so Dierks in a high vaudeville style, the music ranged so far
has attempted to copy their sound using his drums. o wide that it is impossible to grasp a description in words.
But back in Switzerland, the Wegmuller/Ash Ra Tempe the Lou Reed street riffing of "Der Herrscher (The
Tarot project had got extremely large and unwieldy. It was no tmnt>•·orl" to the Kosmische frenzy that covers all of Side 4,
a double album in length after Walter Wegmuller had sudden!_ >tis the funkiest record ever played by white boys. And it's
decided, in a fever of activity, to write lyrics concerning all 2: nk that transcends the way early Funkadelic does - great
major arcana of the Tarot. The Kaiser was delighted by the ide ing wa-riffs, multiple percussion, howling guitars and a
and suggested that Tarot should come in a lavish package in th of sound that is a jungle of rhythms. And all of this in its
spirit of the early Ohr releases. But Wegmuller was way ahea(, box, with detailed information and the full colour set
of him, years ahead in fact. For the previous five years, since .t!l 78 brand new Tarot cards as painted by Walter Wegmuller.
1968, Walter Wegmuller had been painstakingly painting
brand new set of 78 Tarot cards. He was a gypsy like Golowin.
a street trader, a diviner, and an artist who lived by his wits and Coming of Kosmische Musik
his daily output. !'liS vision, The Kaiser had the Kosmische Musik trip all sort-
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was more tha~ressed- this thor· lOt. This new label was only for the mages, and that was the

80 81
way it must be. But the exciting and freaky Ash Ra Tell'- Kaiser bided his time and filled the void of Cosmic
were disappointed. During the Tarot sessions, they had rec · releases with an extremely Un-cosmic live LP from
ed a brand new album called Join Inn and wanted to rele<b- & Westrupp.
on the Cosmic Couriers label. The music was like old tirr
with Klaus Schultze playing wild drums on the 20 mir
Schultze's Cyborg- An Oasis amidst Chaos
freeform freakout they called "Freak'n'Roll". Its wild undt.
ing riffing was unlike any previous Ash Ra Tempel piece- Cosmic Couriers trip accelerated, R-U Kaiser's vision
and audible yet barely more understandable for all that. On x m appeared to become out of control. Already disliked
2, "Jenseits (The Other World)" was a typically low-key lTh. of his musicians for being too manipulative, and even
tation, but this time with Manuel Gottsching 's girlfriend. R by an old friend as being like the 1930s screen baddie
Muller, relating the story of 7Up and just how affected the) · orre, Kaiser was now so sure of the Righteousness of his
all been by the experience. But Kaiser wanted the rock rec he began to act as though he were invincible. With an
to remain as Ohr releases -he had re-shaped both Pilz Rec wesome presumptuousness, he invited Brian Barritt to
and Ohr Records so much by now that they were in dange· Berlin as a paid Psy-Phi Advisor for the Cosmic Couri-
becoming merely vehicles of what outsiders saw as his 1.*
tacular whimsy. And so Join Inn got its Ohr release. rlin, Barritt was told to swing Tangerine Dream away
But Ash Ra Tempel was not in any way an average gr' Edgar Froese's obsession with Surrealism and angle their
They had been buffeted all over the place by the enormi1 owards Psy-Phi. Kaiser also told Barritt that Wallen-
this mythical saga. They had followed Kaiser on his dream ere not cosmic enough, and they too would have to
sion and if he was back home and all in one piece now, the~ Ash Ra Tempel was the third band on the Kaiser/Bar-
tainly were Not. One night in concert, as the hurricane of s ut with Hartmut Enke already too out of his mind with
unfolded before them on stage, Klaus Schultze and Ma: ms and LSD, this proved impossible.
Gottsching were slowly aware that Hartmut Enke was in a·· '\0 it was left to Klaus Schultze to hold up the Kosmis-
far-out state. He had stopped playing his mighty Gibson - . Like Florian Fricke, Schultze could not be manipulat-
and was just standing on the stage with his arms outstretch . aiser and was all the more respected for this. Though his
an attitude of sheer bliss. When they came off stage that m"" o LP Irrlicht had been a disastrous commercial flop,
Enke told them that the music was so wonderful he felt no f!"" chultze retained in his trip such personal Clarity &
need to play. Many years later, Manuel Gottsching w that R-U Kaiser suggested that Schultze's first solo
explain this by saying simply: "He got very involved in or the Cosmic Couriers label should be a double-LP.
Timothy Leary philosophy." \·borg was born - a pulsing undulating landscape of
Now Ash Ra Tempel fell to pieces completely. When K achines and synthesizers. Four epic barely changing
Schultze and Hartmut Enke decided upon solo careers, Mar overed the sides of this huge 90 minute album,
Gottsching found himself adrift with no rudder. He imme
himself in the then current LSD-fuelled weekend freakou
·chapter entitled "The Kaiser" in Brian Barritt 'sforthcoming LSD jour·
the Dierks Studio - hours and hours of music was reco J~D OF EXCESS. It describes in great personal detail the psychological
under the direction of R-U Kaiser and Gille Letmann, u ··he Cosmic Courier trip as applied to rock"n "roll by Leary through Barritt.
lfh T. Dream and Wallenstein. Brian Barritt appears to have taken on a
Gottsching finally decided that the only way to maintain
mky type of role, interpreting Leary better than Leary himself and work·
sanity was to quit this lifestyle and to continue as Ash Ra ~ dd therefore gaining a better overview of the system and how it worked on
pel with Rosi Muller. With no new finished projects, R

82 83
"Synphara", "Conphara", "Chromengel" and "Neuron fro m the players already involved- those contributors to
sang". Suddenly, a whole new kind of music had appeared three classic LPs. Kaiser never doubted their musician-
from nowhere. It was not atonal, neither was it cacopho . eir allegiance to the Trip Itself, or their integrity.
And this unutterably simple space music was topped by a - T, as the man with the Vision, was he really getting the
little cosmic conceit from Kaiser: on the front sleeve of C.' leage out of the Cosmic Couriers that it deserved?
stood the pretty hippy Klaus Schultze, his face looking up He thought not. ..
the middle distance, and framed in a dazzling and case then, as Johnny Rotten would later write of the Sex
white light mirroring perfectly Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's V
back at Mindy's farm. of all shambolic glory, something lent itself to chaos."
Divine instant, born more out of necessity and despera-
.:rn true vision, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser decided to sell his
Of Desperation, The Cosmic Jokers are Born ... ns out and formed The Cosmic Jokers ...
The dissolution of Ash Ra Tempel proved too much for -
Hartmut Enke. Their former leader never got any other pro
together and nothing would be heard of him afterwards. M. Cosmic Jokers album is sheer genius But ...
while, the weekend acid raves at Stommeln continued iv puppet Krautrock supergroup - the first and only one of
_gear, and the Djerks studio was an incessant orgifie£1 Le - This was clear from the day Manuel Gottsching
X-perience. With Brian Barritt and his partner Liz Elliot into a Berlin record store and heard a cosmic jam-ses-
full patrol, Kaiser and Gille Letmann put all their bands thr ..tt he had played on only one month before blasting over
their cosmic paces . Wallenstein were by now far better · akers.
their recent and ultra stodgy Mother Universe LP on 7 at record is this?" he asked. Oh, it's The Cosmic Jokers
Records. But compared to the other Cosmic Couriers relea. .:rnuel looked at his own photograph on the back sleeve, a
they would always remain an extremely stuffy proposi· nown standard publicity pic., and got very pissed off.
however cosrruc they got. Brian Barritt attempted to add en paid only a session fee for the recording, yet here
phi to Tangerine Dream, who were naturally extending t.: If Kaiser getting free mileage out of his credibility and
boundaries from the first three Ohr LPs. But really, no-. as Ash Ra Tempel's guitarist. There were also pictures
could add More Psy-Phi toT. Dream. & Harald from Wallenstein, and a shot of Dieter
Control. It was close to the end of 1972 and R-U Kaiser who probably wouldn't mind. But when Manuel saw
wrestled control of almost everything. But it was still o of Klaus Schultze on the sleeve, he knew there was
enough. After those first three Cosmic Couriers release . be trouble. Klaus already barely tolerated Rolf Kaiser
Trip had been diminished, compromised. His Tangerine e was gonna get him for sure. Manuel wondered about
plans had soon lain in ruins when Edgar Froese refused t approach the situation. After all, the LP was fucking
The Kaiser release their forthcoming LP Atem on the Ko -two side long phasetone freakouts that sounded like
che Musik label. Not surprisingly, T. Dream begrudged ha\ nted Ash Ra Tempel. It had all their contemporaries
Kaiser's ideas thrust upon them, and reacted furiously, insisu beaten. Like a whole album of Funkadelic's cosmic
that they remain on the Ohr label. To add further insult, rm "Maggot Brain"- it went all the way and just didn't
had licensed Atem to the British Polydor label without e' ff. No vocals apart from one Brian Barritt spoken cosmic
asking the group. "Galaxy Of Fallon to Telepath 1". Manuel
But R-U Kaiser kept dreaming. If only he could constru hing was almost broke and felt very used. But he decid-

84 85
ed to wait and see how it all unfolded before taking furt n Gille beamed out like cosmic game show hosts whilst
action .. . their star team of satellites also emitted generic
The Cosmic Jokers was the ultimate cosmic trip with R ty pic. stares in varying stages of grinning intensity: Tim
Kaiser as the Dhiagilev, the choreographer, the Ur-McLarer with his headphones, cutesy Klaus in his headphones and
the band. Now in complete control, he would edit the houl' e silver headphones became standard Cosmic Courier
Kosmische freakouts into semi-coherent tracts of sound. after a while), Dieter Smiling Dierks, the two Wallen-
vocals, or use vocals already found on the tracks. He w geezers, Rosi I'm with Manuel Muller, and Manuel
release these albums in a coherent package, a ridiculou 'Kosmische 'for totally Skint? Gi:ittsching.
crass marriage of the Spiritual and the supermarket. And the torture never stopped. The Kaiser did a deal with
would no longer have to listen to these musicians' complru magazine and out came The Cosmic Jokers' fourth
It was his Trip. Well, his and the Starmaiden's. They cOl. Planeten Sit-In as a quadrophonic demonstration
with Dieter Dierks' consent, put loads of stuff together - : This was an album of shape-shifting collage, achieving
fall-out from the Leary scene had been one long beautiful organic but similar effect as the first two LPs. This time
of Creation & Magic. If it was created on a higher plane, hared the credit with the Starmaiden and still there
they were just the people to rationalise it into palatable !isk those psychotically twee smiling photographs on the
able Sonic Wisdom ... )f the sleeve. The records were all wildly uplifting and
ly trippy, but the musicians were getting hungrier
ungrier and more pissed off every day. Manuel Gi:ittsching
Jamming Good with Rolf & Gille
been a Kaiser apologist at first, but when the Gilles
But with the success of The Cosmic Jokers, Rolf & Gille s ·hiff LP appeared, it finally broke the musician's enor-
realised that they had a fabulous trip within their grasp. dam of patience. Here was the final indignity- the Cos-
they began to release more of the acid-jams that had come Jokers were now backing band on the Starmaiden's
of Dierks' studio. A second Cosmic Jokers' LP was ! Gilles Zeitschiff (Gille's Times hip) was yet anoth-
called Galactic Supermarket, and it was another funky 2 x ~ lliant LP in a brilliant career now in freefall. The musi-
minute Kosmische mother-fucking wa-phase classic, and had all looked the other way when Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser had
time full of Jurgen Dollase's great Mellotron swirls. The slee ht a hundred blow-up armchairs to support the army of
of the first LP had been in Peter Geitner's Ad-man Enlight · gn journalists whom he flew in for the 7Up release. And
ment style, very much like Todd Rundgren's first Uto had given up food for the free LSD and shelter of Dieter
sleeve. For Galactic Supermarket, Geitner outdid himself v. studio. But now they realised that Rolf & Gille were
a pyramid and mandala affair that could have been selh
washing powder. It was a classic artform that mirrored · "ow Rolf & Gille had, by this time, dumped all attempts to translate the Leary
whole Kaiser & Letmann Cheap New-age Fix. Psy-Phi", going for the synonym "Sci-fi" rather than articulately & coher-
rtempting to provide a catchy German equivalent. Throughout the Krautrock
Sci-Fi Party* soon followed- a Kosmische Musik samp enon, the Germans failed to slangify their own language, preferring to use the
with tracks from previous releases combined and re-edit . encoded English forms such as "Love is Peace" and "Make Love Not War" ,
with new pieces like Brian Barritt's spoken word "TheEl m using expletives such as "Fuck ", "Motherfucker", "Cool", etc. But this is
lure on the part of the German artists, merely a reflection ofjust how strong-
tronic Scene", in which he explained how the Leary Mo <lllte Meaning in rock 'n 'roll is discovered not in the words, but only inthejux-
greatest discovery of all during the 7Up sessions was the s~ m of those words with the music AND the balance of effects and studio
thesizer, and how he was drawn to Berlin by the promise - within the track. This is so imponant in rock 'n 'roll that words of an almost
ely bland nature can be elevated to the status of a devotional hymn by giving
working in this field. On the front sleeve, Planet Rolf & S g to a Joe Meek!

86 87
way off the rails and had forgotten about them. Some of
musicians attempted to get their contracts with Kaiser nullifi
and there soon appeared articles in Der Spiegel and Der We
woch claiming that members of the Timothy Leary Mob we
in cahoots with R-U Kaiser to pervert the lives of young mu
cians with LSD and orgiastic goings-on.
Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's scene came crashing immediate
down. His Kosmische Musik label had been a huge artistic s
cess so far, and groups such as Mythos and Popol Yuh had rna
spectacular albums for the label. But the axis which cent!\.
around the Cosmic Couriers was no longer firm, in fact it was
ruins. And in The Road of Excess, Brian Barritt writes: " ...
last thing I heard of Rolf & Gille they were on the run."
With the Leary Mob' s involvement, the German cour
immediately voided all of Kaiser's contracts and Kosmis
Musik came to an end. Though the Cosmic Jokers ' soap ope
had eclipsed the other LPs in the catalogue, 17 albums had b
released on the label and almost all of them were classic
their kind. Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's dream had been corr
despite his lopsided way of pursuing its realisation. And wi&
the Great Scheme of the Krautrock Dream, 20 years later
April 1995 (Common Era) as I write this final chapter of ·
KRAUTROCKSAMPLER, Kaiser should be forgiven and e\
made a hero for his misguided but Visionary zeal, for he (te
porarily) forced music beyond the Canopy of Earth and far·
out into the Stars.

88
ppendix:
Krautrock Top 50
f these records are currently available on CD, and all are on the list
re-issued. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and is based on the
that I personally know and love. Asterisks denote the easiest to get
. ou are starting from scratch with Krautrock. And if I missed your
one out, well excuse me.

'~a-is sued on Captain Trip Records adding the Ohr 45 PARAMECHANICA L

,'JO RLD/ETERNAL FLOW.

N DUUL II- Phallus Dei lliberty/UA)

N DUUL II- Yeti (Liberty/UAJ *

0
e-1ssued on Mantra Records

DUUL II- Carnival In Babylon (UAI

=e-,ssued on Mantra Records

DUULII- WolfCityiUA)
ssued on Mantra Records

RA TEMPEL-AshRa Tempei(Ohr)*
- e-1ssued on Spa lax Records

RA TEMPEL- Schwingungen IOhr)

=EHssued on Spa lax Records
RA TEMPEL & TIMOTHY LEARY- 7Up !Kosmische Musik)
ssued on Spalax Records

91
 9 . ASH RA TEMPEL- Join Inn (Ohr)
Re-issued on Spalax Records

10 . CAN - Monster Movie (UA) •

Re-issued on Spoon Records

11 . CAN- Soundtracks (UA)

Re-issued on Spoon Records

12. CAN- TagoMago (UA)

Re-issued on Spoon Records

13. CAN- Ege Bamyasi (UA)

Re-issued on Spoon Records

14. CAN- Delay (Spoon)

Originally issued and still available on Spoon Records
a.d!bausen's Hymnen - a divine The ultimate display of the Krautrock
15. CLUSTER II (Brain) age of German experimentalism aesthetic: a German Velvet
Re-issued on Spalax Records :he supercha rged influences of Underground compilation in a fake
West Coast rock'n 'roll. Roger Dean Yes-style sleeve.
16. CLUSTER - Zuckerzeit (Brain)*
Re-issued on Spalax Records

17. CLUSTER- Sowiesoso (Sky)

Re-issued on Sky Records

18. TONY CONRAD w/ FAUST- Outside the Dream Syndicate

(Ca roline)
Re-issued by Table of the Elements Records

19. COSMIC JOKERS (Kosmische Musik)*

Re-issued on Spa lax Records

20 . COSMIC JOKERS - Galactic Supermarket (Kosmische Musik)

Re-issued on Spalax Records

21 . COSMIC JOKERS- Planeten Sit-In (Kosmische Musik/

Hobby Magazine)
Re-issued on Spalax Records

22 . COSMIC JOKERS - Sci-Fi Party (Kosmische Musik)

Re-issued on Spalax Records

23. COSMIC JOKERS & STERNMADCHEN- Gilles Zeitschiff

(Kosmische Musik)
Re-issued on Spa lax Records

24. FAUST (Polydor)

Frustratingly available on a m id-price Japanese Polydor CD, which imp..
here for around £20(! .) Find originals in any provincial record shop f or-
price of a new vinyl LP. I bought two in Nottingham for £8 each (Aug uS'
1994CE) and one in Caine, Wessex for £12 (Aprii1995CE), so don 't fa
inflated prices.

92
 Tangerine Dream's greatest work. Faust's greatest work.
Note the ultra-rare free balloon on faust is pronounced " Fowst'',
Electronic Meditation !Richard -rhyme with "cow" .)
Gravett Collection) and the 1972
freakout45 Ultima Thule.

Tangerine Dream Zeit Faust The Faust Tapes Iback cover)

Tangerine Dream Electronic Tangerine Dream Atem Faust IV

Meditationlwith balloon)
Tony Conrad &Faust Outside the
Tangerine Dream Alpha Centauri Tangerine Dream Ultima Thule 45 Dream Syndicate
 The greatest work of Amon Diiiilll:

Phallus Dei Dance of the

Lemmings

The greatest work of Amon Diiiill: Yeti Carnival in Babylon

Psychedelic Underground Paradieswarts Oil ill Wolf Citylgatefold)

Collapsing lgatefold) Utopia Utopia A. Diiiil Project

Oisasterlgatefold)
 The Neu! Family including Cluster,
La Dusseldorf &Harmonia.
(Neu is pronounced "Nay",
to rhyme with "toy".)

Cluster Zuckerzeit(back sleeve)

Neu Neu! Cluster Sowiesoso

Harmonia Musik Von Harmonia La Dusseldorf Viva

 Here are the 5 classic Cosmic
These are Rolf-U irich Kaiser's early Jokers LPs that destroyed R-U
mage recordings, etc., when Kaiser's career.
everything was still Sweetness &
Light.

Walter Wegmuller Tara: Cosmic Jokers Sci-Fi Party

Klaus Schultze Cyborg Cosmic Jokers Planeten Sit-in

Ash Ra Tempel &Timothy Leary 7Up
(reissue) Cosmic Jokers & Starmaiden Gilles
Popol Vuh Einjager&S Zeitschiff
Sergius Golowin Lord Krishna Von
Go/aka
 Ash-Ra Tempel & Timothy Leary 7U;; Can Tago Mago
Ash Ra Tempel Ash Ra Tempel

Ash-Ra TempeiJoin Inn Can Ege Bamyasi

Ash Ra Tempel Schwingungen

The first 4Ash Ra Tempel LPs are unequivocal to-the-Moooon! genius. Above: Kla us
Schultze lucked in Iippy, the tragic Hartmut Enke before the Fall, and Manuel Gtittsch1r
the underground hero Guitar-god of all time.

Opposite: The first4 Can LPs are faultless. Buy them all. Bottom: Can on stage.
 FA UST- So Far (Polydor)
SO FAR is in the same Japanese inflationary hole as the clear album.
While you're waiting, check out those provincial record shops. Stay far
away from Netting Hill Record & Tape Exchange, though. My friend
Psychedelic Paul got a copy of NEU 2 in Doncaster for £2 last November
1994CE), so let's get down and get looking.

FAUST- The Faust Tapes (Virgin)

Re-issued on Recommended Records.

Brilliant ly re-issued on Virgin Records at mid-price in original packaging.

SERGI US GOLOWIN- Lord Krishna Von Goloka (Kosmische Musik)

Still unavailable at the time of going to press (Summer 1995CE)

URU GURU- U.F.O. (Ohr)

Re-issued on ZYX Records.

ARMONIA- Musik von Harmonia (Brain)

Re-issued briefly by Brain Records, then withdrawn.
Currently available unofficially from Germanofon Records.

ARMONIA- Deluxe (Brain)*

Currently available unofficially from Germanofon Records.

RAFTWERK (Vertigo)
KRAFTWER K in Britain was a double album combin ing the two original
reco rds KRAFTWERK & KRAFTWER K 2. Both LPs are now currently
available separately, as originally intended, on Germanofon Records .

LA DUSSELDORF (Nova/Decca)
Currently unavailable on CD and hard to find on original. Maybe
Germanofon will re-issue it.

Julian Cope in Cologne, Germany, discussing Krautrock with Spexjournalists on Aug" LA DUSSELDORF- Viva (Nova/Radar)
15th, 1995 (Common Era ). Currently unavailable. Lookout for old '80s COs, this album is still available
cheaply 1£8 - 1995CE) if you strike lucky.

OEBIUS & PLANK- Rastakrautpasta (Sky)

RASTAKRAUTPASTA has just been re-issued on a 2 for 1 single CD with
its inferior but still highly entertaining sequel MATER IAL.

U! (Brain)
Re-issued expensively on Germanofon Records

EU! - Neu 2 (Brain)

Re-issued expensively on Germanofon Records
HEAD HERITAGE aims to alert all the Heads (the gen1uses, the
EU!- Neu '75 (Brain)*
psychos, the neurotics, the culturally dispossessed) to anytru
Re-issued expensively on Germanofon Records
lost or shadowy knowledge or Wisdom of our recent & ancient
POPOL VUH - Affenstunde (Liberty)
past. This Krautrocksamplerwas an ideal place to start- and v. Popel Vuh's re-issue scene is up the wall right now. AFFENSTUNDE is
expect that the Trip will be a real slow-burner ... available on CD with the title track on IN DEN GARTEN PHAROAS as a
bonus, thereby rendering the awesome magic of "Vuh" completely at
sea. Try calling Alan or Steve Freeman at Ultima Thule in Leicester. They'll
Dorian & Julian Cope (Ma & Pa Excellence) explain in detail without blowing your mind.

93
40. POPOL VUH -In den Garten Pharoas (Pilzl*
See note for AFFENSTUNDE

41. POPOL VUH- Einjager & Siebenjager (Kosmische Musik)

Re-issued on Spa lax Records.

42. POPOL VUH- Hosianna Mantra (Kosmische Musikl

Re-issued on ZYX Records with original artwork. Beware the inferior
version on Spa lax, which accidentally used deteriorating master tapes

43. TANGERINE DREAM- Electronic Meditation (Ohrl

Currently available on a cheap CD with unoriginal generic artwork an•
(same at the following 3 LPs but in different colours) from Jive Electro
Throughout 1994 CE, on a book-signing tour through the Virgin
Megastores of Britain, I picked up between 10/20 of each one on sa e
gave them to friends everywhere. They don't look like much but the C
rautrocksampler in
sound fabulous. Search them out - they're so unprepossessing tha t~
people bleep right through 'em. Also available on Relativity Records -
original Reinhard Hippen packaging.
eview- top 50
44. TANGERINE DREAM- Alpha Centauri (Ohr)*
See above note for ELECTRONIC MEDITATION
AMON DUUL 1- Paradieswarts Dlilil (Ohr)
45. TANGERINE DREAM- Atem (Ohr)
See above note for ELECTRONIC MEDITATION .:. BAUER- vocals, harp & bongos
.~R BAUER- guitar & vocals
46. TANGERINE DREAM- Zeit (Ohr) - CH LEOPOLD- bass, piano & vocals
See above note for ELECTRONIC MEDITATION -'<M - guitar, bass & vocals
4 7. KLAUS SCHULTZE- lrr/icht (Ohr) -flute & bongos
-'SESSER- guitar
Re-issued on Fnac Records.
.:iE FILANDA- drums & vocals
48 . KLAUS SCHULTZE- Black Dance (Brain/Caroline)
Re-issued on Brain Records .
·san album that scared me as a teen and I'd never even heard it. Every
49. WALTER WEGMULLER- Tarot (Kosmische Musik)*
in the days when they were s6ll just a record shop, I'd scour the
Re-issued on Spalax Records in a box with Wegmuller's original Ta•
paintings- the price is a ridiculous £50. Everyone I know is freaking Mail Order list. This album was always included, and always it said
stupidity of this, especially with such a special Classic. "Paradies Warts Diiiil". I never even knew about Amon Diiiil I! I'd
read it like mail order lingo, ie. "Machine Head Purple" and
50. WITTHUSER & WESTRUPP- Trips & Traume (Ohr)
in Holy". This album reveals Amon Diiiil as a reformed and holy
Re-issued on ZYX Records .
Behjnd the wall of distortion, Amon Diiiil had two very beautiful
in Ella and Rainer Bauer, but nobody could hear them until now. As
i Peace" fades in, this massive Teutonic folk-groove, which lasts all
Many of these records will be unavailable in high street megastores. I, sounds like the 13th Floor Elevators' Easter Everywhere period.
I know people at both Tower and Virgin who are stocking the sll. "ner "S]jp Inside this House" that begins: "Once I got a hang up in the
claim that it is selling. If you have a problem, call Ultima Thule and -·-n,.r·hi.,P "and proceeds to narrate with some clarity and a great lyri-
send you a list plus, I'm qujte sure, tell you anything else you might auty about how we have all come to clock-watch and so let ]jfe sweep
know. Here is their address and phone number: before we know it. Spiky acoustic guitars eventually pick out a par-
THE ULTIMA THULE RECORD SHOP un-bluesy and major-chord version of the "Purple Haze" riff,
I , Conduit Street a key-change into the verse. Paradieswarts Diiiil was Amon Diiiil's
Leicester for Ohr Records, and their only recording other than the massive
LE20JN session that produced the three LPs Psychedelic Underground
(0 116) 285 4545 ) Collapsing: Singvogel Ruckwarts & Co. (1970) and the posthu-

94 95
mous double-LP Disaster. Paradieswarts Diiiil's packaging in one that merely approximated rock' n'roll (and with disregard for any
Records' rare single-sleeves suggests that this was not considered a curacy), operatic screeching female voice like a truly-achieving
release. But it is a fabulous record, and one which places Amon Dii Ono, plus violin, guitars and percussion percussion percussion all the
new level. Whilst "Love is Peace" often sounds like a never-endin_ Two drummers and Schrat the bongo-player were augmented by
plistic take on Traffic 's John Barleycorn Must Die, Side 2 of the albu l" Christian Burchard on vibraphone and Holger Trulzsch from
them descend to a mantric Velvetsy downer-trip called "Snow your Vuh on yet more bongos.
Sun your open mouth". And despite progressing so that they were sl fi rst the music is unfathomable . The chords are ill-defined and the
more able to keep time, they hadn't lost the whole commune thang.l is so cluttered as to present a jamming feel akin to their sister band
ious configurations, many different musicians contribute to the al Diilil I. But it was just this ramshackle quality which would see
three songs. The last song is "Paramechanische Welt (Paramech;.. Diiiilll into the '70s as one of the only true creators of improvised
World)", a long unchanging 17 verse weepy. A stone classic. If you lo. The LP opens with their now-standard "Kanaan", a spectacular slab
plaintive darkness of Amon DUtil Il's epic "Sandoz in the Rain" fro m high-magic replete with the daunting mass of percussionists
then I'm sure you will love this album. across the horizons and conjure instant images of D.W.
Other Records: Because Amon Diliil I were conceived as a pol' early movie epic Intolerance. The only reference could be the
musical commune, only PARADIESWARTS DUUL, their fourth "Colour Dreams", an ancient Cameo-Parkway 45 from 1967, but
attempted to even approximate contemporary rock idioms. Their surely coincidence. Phallus Dei follows deep into Side I with "Dem
releases were: PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND (Metronome I Schonen Wahren" and "Lucifers Ghilom", which occupy a strange
COLL4.PS!NG: SING VOGEL RUCKWARTS & CO. (Metronome) an Roxy Music mood, though pre-dating Roxy (and probably inspiring
DISASTER double album ( BASF 1972.) They are deadly rare and all too. Check this and Can's Monster Movie. No coincidence I'm sure).
quality freakout recordings with beautiful gatefold sleeves. the epic title track that most consumes the listener. "Phallus Dei"
IMPORTANT BEWARE NOTE: In the early '80s, Dave Anders the whole of Side 2 in great daubs of hoe-downs, freakouts and
John Weinzierl, both formerly of Amon Diiillli,Jormed a new Amon l brief pre-ambient soundscapes of sheer abandoned joy, as the
with no number after it. Remember that this is an entirely different . disappear for minutes on end only to re-surface as the engineer
based in North Wales(!) The LPs released were HAWK MEETS PENG and fights to clear up the sound. Though the recording of Phallus
AIRS ON A SHOESTRING (Compilation) & MEETINGS WITH M gets pretty lo-fi at times, the LP conjures an ancientness comparable
MACHINES ... to Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.

2. AMON DUUL II- Phallus Dei (Liberty)

JOHN WEINZIERL- guitar. bass & vocals
CHRIS KARRER - guitar, violin & vocals -bongos & vocals
FALK-ULRICH ROGNER - organ KNAUP- vocals & tambourine
DAVE ANDERSON - bass WEINZIERL- guitar & vocals
RENATE KNAUP-vocals S KARRER- guitar. violin & vocals
SHRAT- bongos & vocals ROGNER- organ
PETER LEOPOLD- drums ANDERSON- bass
DIETER SERFAS- drums
with BAUER lAmon DuO II)- guitar & vocals
HOLGER TRULZSCH (Popol Vuh)- percussion LEOPOLD (Amon DuO I I)- bass
CHRISTIAN BURCHARD (Embryo)- vibes MAS KEYSERLING (Amon DOOII)-flute

This first statement from Amon Diiiil II caused ripples around Europe, Tamworth, Yeti was such a big LP that longhairs actually called each
least in the Lad broke Grove offices of Clearwater Productions, a sirru "Yeti" as a greeting. It was only two years ago that my friend Doggen,
communal arts scene which supported the early Hawkwind. Phallus D~ a fellow Midland Man, told me that his Nottingham mates had also
packaging had a monolithic red and blue shimmering shake-appeal that 'to eac'n otner as "letts. Doggen 'ts 11) years younger fhan me but the
not been seen since the formidable packaging of the Texan Internati remains. Such is the make-up of this classic Double-Album,
Artists label, home of the 13th Floor Elevators and the Red Crayola. T the Ur-Kraut album of All. And as such, this LP deserves a long
music inside was a crazy mix of Middle-European rhythms, phonetic m. detailed sonic and psychic description:

96 97
a family, and Amon Diiiil ll is a happy commune again. The best, most lo ASH RA TEMPEL- First (Ohr)
ing song is "Tables Are Turned", a magical lilting percussive groo
'lTMUT ENKE- bass & electronics
copped from Traffic's "Vagabond Virgin" .lt's not until the last song of
.. us SCHULTZE- drums & electronics
album that Amon Diiiil II stretch into their usual electric trip out, and ev "JU EL GOTISCHING- guitar & electronics
"Hawknose Harlequin" is noticeably shortened. Rumours abound that
track was meant to cover the whole side of an album. Carnival In Babyh at-haze harmonics begin "Amboss", the opening
is a very mysterious and elusive album, especially in context with 1 Tempel. Intense cymbals and frenzied rumbling
muscular follow-up Wolf City. it, then it descends once more. It is the power-trio
a! force. When Klaus Schultze's drumming comes in
utes, the thunder is highly charged and superfit, right on The.,.,..._ '"""'n
5. AMON DUUL II- Wolf City (United Artists) h bash. Then it's off on the wildest 20 minutes of freakout bti
point, everything breaks down into a guitar blaze of feed
JOHN WEINZIERL- guitar & vocals
CHRIS KARRER- guitar, violin, soprano sax & vocals ugh FX for minutes on end, until the drums tear back in so crazil_ and
RENATE KNAUP- vocals ,omes Larry Graham bass playing of the Swoopingest kind. On fuck
FALK-ULRICH ROGNER- organ & synthesizer . this is the greatest Detroit-est trip of all time. Not a heavy metal
LOTHAR MElD'- bass & vocals ult but a methodical breaking down of all your senses until you are
PETER LEOPOLD- drums & FX hed and insensible. And if Side I has pulverised you , then the 25
DANNY FICHELSCHER- drums, guitar & vocals Ute "Traummaschine (Dream Machine)" lets you lie there in the after-
with w and never disturbs you beyond the slightest disruption of Vibrations.
JIMMY JACKSON- organ :Jercussionless dreamscape of sounds cascades around the room, and a
OLAF KUBLER- sax
AL GROMER- sitar ing woman-voiced beauty fills the air. Then, rising out of the peace
the guitar shimmer and finally the hollow congas of Klaus Schultze.
The fantasia of Amon Diiiil II was never so prevalent as on Wolf City. l l i the fuzz beauty of Manuel Gottsching's guitar scythed all down in the
swept out of Carnival in Babylon into intricate progressive rock with O\ ,;t rush through space. Then it's off into yet another inspiring dimension
tones of Pavlov 's Dog and the Who. Sounds horrendopus but it's tru h Ra Tempel fly around the universe ... Ash Ra Tempel is at its great-
beautiful. The openjng song, "Surrounded By The Scars" is sneer br when it's impossible to work out what instrument makes which sound.
liance, with Renate Knaup at her Yoko Ono operatic best Many fi t' s one of the greatest rock ' n 'roll LPs ever made.
Renate 's screech too much, but I still have a crush on her from the Carni•
in Babylon sleeve back in 1972, so I'm a goner already and well past
point of judgement. "Green Bubble Raincoated Man" is very Bowie-ish ASH RA TEMPEL- Schwingungen (Ohr)
the strident vocals and harmonies - though it soon slips into the fami l :-M UT "INDRA ROGER" ENKE- guitar, bass, electronics
wa-punk blitzo they were all so fond of. Especially the funny-boogi e ~ UEL GOTISCHING- guitar, organ, electronics, choir
with huge over-recorded bass. ~F GANG MULLER- drums & vibes
There's no point in going through the whole album because it's the iJe.
Amon Diiiil II songs album there is. "Jailhouse Frog" is a true classic. -"J L.- vocals, jaw-harp & percussion
1972, they were still using phasing and 1969 American garage riffs. Av. - HIAS WEHLER -alto sax
right! Man, mon Diiiil ll used to be so organic, but now they ' d become "O P-bongos
arranged and clever, all the stuff I should hate, but it's still fantastic. Th
'ware of Schwingungen! " That should be the large sticker on the front of
Faust piano bit on "Jailhouse Frog" is so cosmk, goes on so long and yet
copies of this record. For it is dangerous to be casually introduced to
doesn' t get boring because Amon Diiiil II were an experimental band an
m ething that is life-changing, as I found out to my cost when first listen-
had a remarkable sense of rhythm and time. The two epics of Side 2 are tl!
- to this record. It all starts fairly simply and without any cause for alarm
title track and "Deutsch Nepal", a huge sexy Krautrock Doo-wop wir
-Look at Your Sun" begins with a Doorsy lone groover guitar begins a
vocals by the Funny Fuehrer. Once more, the Amon Diiiil emphati.
destrian blues, beautifuL Then the most crushed voice, a cross between
Krautrock trip comes into operation. The riff is played by about 10 mu
hnny Rotten and Tiny Tim, preaches its way into the proceeds. God, it is
cians, all locked in to a "Stand By Me" kind of chord sequence, though it'
autiful- John L repeats over and over, "We are all one, we are all one",
no more soully than Faust's "It' s a Rainy Day". Remember, this is the fir-
1til a howling fuzztone solo guitar blows the whole one-chord "Signed
Amon Diiiil II album of all real songs.
C." ringing-cymbals torture to an end. And then the most far out track of

100 101
 all begins. This is called "Flower Must Die" and it is a free-rock giant !h ingers have squeezed every screwed-up sexual blech emotion out of them-
transcends everything else in its field (there are no contenders.) As r -elves. The result is an extreme gem, a flash of hysterical white lightning,
written before, PIL sounds like this. John L. was John Lydon in a previ .tnd a pre-punk Technicolour yawn in the grandest of traditions . In typical
incarnation. After a slow weird build, a frantic streamlined one-ch -\sh Ra Tempel style, the record is divided into two pieces, "Space" and
mantra kicks in and it's like the Stooges' Funhouse period but in "Time" . Within this, though, Timothy Leary 's ideas are allowed to free-
Righteous Vision Zone that fucks them right off. Phasing tears at the wh now and the two sides are therefore divided into mini-songs all segued
tracks as this Holy Racket crosses into Hyper-space and everything gets ·ogether. The highlight of Side I is "Power Drive", a West Coast burn-up
hyphenated just-for-the-sake-of-it. "Flowers Must Die", man, it's fuck that transcends any W. Coast music I ever did hear. Leary and Barritt pre-
up . Over on Side 2, the title-track ("Vibrations") begins poetically enoug ent the greatest twin-vocal of all time, coming on like Jagger and Morrison
with Wolfgang Muller 's epic and hugely reverbed vibraphone. Organ fad but too caught up in their own maelstrom to be anything less than Heralds
in and FX guitars, and time passes by. Finally, tom-toms roll and the deve of the Punk-future still five years away.
oping pace is built upon until that great eternal chord sequence finally mate
rialises- this is the one that Giittsching and Enke believed was the sound o
heaven. They may have been right. And Schwingungen was a gift from the 9. ASH RA TEMPEL- Join Inn (Ohr)
Gods .
HARTMUT ENKE- Gibson bass
MANUEL GOTISCHING- guitar
KLAUS SCHULTZE -drums, synthesizers & electronics
8. ASH RA TEMPEL & TIMOTHY LEARY- 7Up (Die Kosmische
ROSI MULLER- voice
Kuriere)
"Freak'n'roll" fades in like it never started- just was always there from the
TIMOTHY LEARY- voice
BRIAN BARRITI -voice beginning of time, a dry wa-guitar freerock riff-out unlike any of the other
LIZ ELLIOTI- voice Ash Ra Tempel LPs, and not much like any other music . Yes, there are
BETIINA HOHLS- voice bluesy riff but none of them have a blues context. Manuel Giittsching's gui-
PORTIA NKOMO -voice tar is so confident that he sometimes drops down to a simple major chord
MICKEY DUWE- voice & flute groove, whilst the Hawk pushes that round woody bass into strange over-
HARTMUT "HAWK'' ENKE- bass, guitar & electronics lapping rumbling melody. And it's the return of Klaus Schultze on drums
MANUEL GOTISCHING- guitar & electronics which propels "Freak' n' roll" to its height. No-one but Klaus has the abili-
STEVE A. SCHROYDER- organ & electronics ty to transcend rock' n' roll in such an on-the-beat non-groove-y way and
DIETMAR BURMEISTER- drums
still send sparks of light into the cosmos as he does it. "Freak'n'roll" is so
TOMMY ENGEL- drums
DIETER DIERKS- synthesizer & Radio Downtown egoless that it even works at a quiet volume as meditational music. Themes
rise from the high tempo pulse beat, then are carried along the muscles of
In chaos it was conceived and in chaos it was recorded. Yet Dieter Dierks. the song into the main area where the riff actually becomes real and expres-
the great Aural Architect of the Cosmic Couriers, turned 7Up into a per- sionist for just long enough before slipping back into the musical fabric of
sonal triumph and a Kosmische dream. Opening like some other worldly the song. As usual with Ash Ra Tempel, the other side is an enormous drift
Pere Ubu performance, the greatness of Ash Ra Tempel burned so brightly piece called "Jenseits (The Next World)", a beautiful Klaus Schultze med-
on 7Up that there is really nothing else like it. Hartmut Enke and Manuel itation of haunting synthesizer chords over which Rosi Muller tells the
Giittsching had begun in the Steeplechase Blues Band and here returned to story of the Cosmic Couriers' meeting with Timothy Leary. Gradually, the
their riffy roots . It can hardly be called a retro act, though, as the context of pulsing guitar becomes increasingly intense and turbulent, but Rosi never
music is everything. And with Dierks at the controls, even the New Kids on sounds less than freaked out. Essentially, "Jenseits" is a precursor to Klaus
the Block would have sounded psychedelic. 7Up is like a late night radio Schultze's later spacey minor-key grooves . Unfortunately, this was the last
show glimpsed through a shattered tuner where all but the most truly dan- Ash Ra Tempel album in its particular 'series'.
gerous sounds have been allowed to stay, to drift and to dance around the Other Records: After JOIN INN, Manuel Gottsching took over the Ash
performers. Ra Tempel mantle alone. The follow-up LP STARRING ROSI was an entire-
The charm of 7Up is the weird juxtaposition of Timothy Leary's Mob, ly different direction, more accessible and very commercially successful. I
and their desire to holler up a storm and the Kaiser's gang, who are clearly find it of no use at all after what Ash Ra Tempel had come to represent, but
there to celebrate Leary the guru and LSD magician. That the Kaiser's gang at least Gottsching was still alive. A multi-layered multi-tracked guitar
win is clear, but not before Leary, Brian Barritt and the countless other album called INVENTIONS FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR followed. This is

102 103
easy listening and of no great consequence, though it was probably som~ rhythm. "Tango Whiskyman" follows , another Deadlock piece with thun-
kind of achievement in the mid-'70s. derous rhythm propelling a sexy low-key groove as Damo sings the key-
board/guitar theme once more. Then the instrumental "Deadlock" theme
piles in, a huge Cecil B. De Mille organ and drums tour de force link-piece.
10. CAN- Monster Movie (Music Factory/UA) ··Don' t Turn the Light on, Leave Me Alone" was Damo Suzuki's first Can
recording, though he does not sound pissed off and freaked out as he really
MALCOLM MOONEY- vocals
was. The song is rhythmically and acoustically close to Ege Bamyasi, with
HOLGER CZUKAY- bass
MICHAEL KAROL! - guitar
the bluesy pulled acoustic of Michael Karoli. Side 1 finishes with Malcolm
JAKI LEIBEZEIT - drums Mooney's "Soul Desert". How different he is from Damo: a barely con-
IRMIN SCHMIDT- keyboards cealed on-the-edge freak, he grabs the music from the other members of
Can and directs it immediately into a blues strut like Syd Barrett's
Can's first LP opened like the Velvet's "European Son", all inverted bas.~ ··Maisie", chordless, insistent and utterly compulsive. Most of Side 2 is
riffs, fast strummed one chord rhythm guitar and tom-tom drumming over taken up by the 14-minute driving beauty of "Mother Sky", a Teutonic "LA
a blanket of single note organ noise. But "Father Cannot Yell" is a great Woman" in a Funhouse Stooges vein. The mantric raga melody is sung by
song and a structured well-arranged constant builder. It is their black vocal- Damo Suzuki over the droning bass of Holger Czukay. But there is plenty
ist Malcolm Mooney who imprinted himself most heavily on Monster of time for the most savage and howling guitar solos from Michael Karoli.
Movie , and from almost the first moment, he is in charge. Mooney sings in The late night urban-ness of "Mother Sky" is truly filmic and must have
a Hendrix style, announcing and making pronouncements in a cool spoken worked superbly in its intended place on the soundtrack of Jerzy
way and, most clearly, making no effort to be coherent as his is a German Skolimovsky's Deep End. "Mother Sky" is a long long moving thang, but
audience. Mooney 's vocals slide into Universal Man speak at times as he I' m still fascinated as to how it would have sounded with Malcolm Mooney
grunts, whinnies and beats the air to get the right effect. "Mary Mary, Quite on vocals. Mooney is back again for the last song on the LP, a standard
Contrary" follows next, a "Venus in Furs" meets Love's "Signed D.C.", the called "She Brings the Rain", a walking bass jazzer about a girl who brings
whole thing having a strange blues atmosphere, though the violin of ··magic mushrooms out of dreams. " No drums or dynamics, instead violin
Michael Karoli is Cale-ing to the Nth degree. Side I finishes with Can· and beautiful bell-tone bluesy guitar and the rarest of Can effects, dual-
greatest rock' n' roll song ever, "Outside Your Door". Two to three year vocals, brings this strange album to a close.
after this song, Roxy Music 's "Remake/Remodel" and "Editions of You··
were later cut from the very same rock . The whole of Side 2 is taken up b)
the live concert track " You Doo Right", an extremely devotional song in 12. CAN- Tago Mago (UA)
which Malcolm Mooney addresses his current living situation as a black
-iOLGER CZUKAY- bass, editor & engineer
American in Germany. It is the steady anchor of Holger Czukay's bas
',11CHAEL KAROL!- guitars
which keeps this whole song together over its 20 minute run, leaving space JAKI LEIBEZEIT- drums
for Michael Karoli and lrmin Schmidt to edge in and out of major and ::>AMO SUZUKI- vocals
minor keys as the vocal's lilt suggests. This is a masterful LP. liM IN SCHMIDT -keyboards

Once described as a kind of new Chamber Music, this Can allusion proba-
11. CAN- Soundtracks (United Artists) ly best befits the opening track of their Tago Mago. "Paperhouse" is beau-
uful, elegant ensemble playing, the kind of perfect soundtrack for the film
MALCOLM MOONEY or Don' t Look Now. Damo's melody is followed by Michael Karoli 's guitar,
DAMO SUZUKI- vocals
HOLGER CZUKAY- bass
.lild the driving watery drumming of Jaki Leibezeit is well to the fore. It is a
MICHAEL KAROLI-guitar torming and clear dual guitar blitz, even Television-like as Irmin Schmidt
JAKI LEIBEZEIT- drums eeps all keyboards out of the track and allows Michael Karoli the rare
IRMIN SCHMIDT- keyboards pportunity to imagine himself part of the Jefferson Airplane. There's a
oeautiful coda, an indescribably jagged and beautiful thing ... a rend in the
Though an unofficial second album, Soundtracks works extremely well ·ape and then it's off into the vocals and drums of "Mushroom (Head)''.
because of its refusal to attempt to bring rock'n'roll dynamics to the struc- Damo repeats one sullen phrase over and over, I think it's "One-eyed soul
ture of the record. The vocal theme from "Deadlock" opens Soundtracks. - Mushroom Head. One-eyed soul- Mushroom Head. I was born. And I
with its wailing crying howling guitar themes which Damo Suzuki follo w as dead." Over this repeats a beautiful guitar/organ motif as the drums get
melodically and melancholically, over a dramatic mid-tempo drum ay down low. Low and clattery and almost imperceptible. ''I'm gonna get

104 105
 my kicks there, I'm gonna get my fix there," the most brilliant rock'n'roll "Pinch", nine minutes of groove in which the whole group seems to stand
lyrics ever. The side ends with the storm breaking, the lightning flashin g around the direction of Jaki Leibezeit's fury of drumming. Only Damo's
and the fading in of one of the most mysterious tracks ever. Search it out. I 1 ocal monologue edges out of the taut melee and one of the group hangs a
can't describe it. Damo's vocals are backwards and beautiful. It's a fuckin g hook on his vocals with a retarded but ultra-catchy mechanical bird-whis-
gorgeous thing. All of Side 2 is taken up by the monumental "Hallelujah''. tle. "Sing Swan Song" follows in its devotional mid-tempo wake, like a fast
another heavy rhythmic thing where overdubbed percussion and sound- funeral barge rows by warriors, sculling to the music. Damo's vocals are
effects soon take over from Damo- and Can get as close to world music as breathily soaring and always his half-English sounding, half-unconscious
they can get. "Hallelujah" is not an organic freakout as such. It is full of lyrical pronouncements end in the words" ... Sing Swan Song" to give the
edits and of different parts, but the themes that begin will always return . ,trong impression of something divine being lost. "One More Night" com-
And the greatest theme of all is Damo's vocal refrain that kicks in midway pletes Side I ' s drum-led groove down a narrow alley where one chord is
through the track. It's a classic pop-hook and the guitar recognises the fact enough for Damo to coo "One more Saturday night, one more suck o' your
immediately. At that moment, Can could be playing "Sally Go Round the head," over and over and over. Behind him, the most sexual ethereality
Roses". The whole instrumental side of "Hallelujah" is so confident that it's enfolds the listener, as Suicidey distantness sends him to sleep. The bed-
like the Meters playing avant garde music. room mood continues on to Side 2 with the pleading chorus of "Hey you,
"Aumgn" is just plain weirdness, like the early I 969 experiments of you're losing, you ' re losing, you're losing, you ' re losing your Vitamin C."
Organisation, Amon Diiiil I and Kluster (sic .) It's in these kinds of tracks .-\gain the drums clatter and bounce as Holger Czukay's abrupt bass scatters
that all rock'n ' roll, by reducing itself to the sum of the physical attributes of hard low percussives into the arena. The album is then cut in half by the
the group, actually reaches heights of the group unconscious impossible by wild trance-funk of "Soup", a 10 minute freakout back in Tago Mago-land .
merely rocking out for three hours. Irmin Schmidt intones in a huge voice I didn't love it as a 14 year old except for its ability to empty rooms.
that just goes on & on & on, until a non-rhythmic drum bursts in, messes Harmonically, I wish now that it were at the end of the album, but what a
about and finally careers off into percussion a go-go, and we ' re into light- fucking carve-up. When Damo starts raving like Kevin Rowlands from
speed. Side 4 of this epic monsterpiece begins with the strange screamer Dexy ' s it gets really funny. Then it's into ''I'm So Green", my favourite
called "Peking 0", an organ and vocal ritual blast that slowly elevates itself ever Can song. This light breeze of a song is so flimsy that it threatens to
out of the mire into a bossanova from an early drum-machine as Damo and blow away at any minute. Here's where the David Cassidy comparisons
Irmin Schmidt freeform with vocal and e. piano craziness. The drum- compare most favourably. And then "Spoon" closes Ege Bamyasi with just
machine is switched off, speeds up, Damo speaks in streams of the most about the most unusual "Making love in the afternoon" hit song of all time.
humorous tongues. Oh, what the hell- it 's a gas. And all changes for the This was the first Can LP I bought brand new (Torquay, July 1972) and it is
wonderful album closer: "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" is a beautiful lilting, still my favourite.
ever building melodic groove- an amalgam of all Can ' s greatest attributes,
the woody almost marimba-like bass of Holger Czukay, the clatter of
Leibezeit's drums, the spindly Karoli guitar, the sexual devotion ofDamo, 14. CAN - Delay (Spoon)
even Irmin Schmidt's curiously egoless ability to not play a thing unless
HOLGER CZUKAY- bass
he's contributing. "Bring Me Coffee or Tea" is a song in which the forth-
MICHAEL KAROL!- gu itar
coming Ege Bamyasi sound is previewed, but still in its raw angry Tago JAKI LEIBEZEIT- drums
Mago state. This was their most ritually inspired album. MALCOLM MOONEY- vocals
lAM IN SCHMIDT- keyboards

13. CAN- Ege Bamyasi (United Artists) When Can 's Delay came out in 1982, it was a hell of a revelation. They ' d
sounded even more raw than Monster Movie . Whoa. Michael Karoli tore
DAMO SUZUKI-vocal
chords straight out of the Martin Bramah!Fall school of '78. I 0 years early.
HOLGER CZUKAY- e.bass
No wonder they thought it was too much in I 968. And it was a trip just to
MICHAEL KAROLI- e.guitar. acoustic guitar, 12-string & shenai
JAKI LIEBEZEIT- drums hear the obvious Mothers/Beefheart grunge-funk of "19th Century Man"
IRM\N SCI-\MID1- organ, e.piano, clav·lol'me & steel guitar and "Butterfly". Happily, Can kept the fartsqueekblurt to a minimum and
just punked it up on Delay. Malcolm Mooney is as brilliant as ever. Though
Ege Bamyasi was the closest to a pop LP that Can ever got. That 's not to say I was a Damo Suzuki nut, I feel that had Malcolm Mooney never gone
that it is pop, but there are at least clear cut songs with grooves of delightful crazy, they would have been as consistent as the Velvets, and would never
melody and moment, plus a teen-appeal that still leaves me gasping with have given way to the class-act tactic. Delay reveals Mooney to be a
love for Damo Suzuki. Ege Bamyasi opens with the percussive rush of stronger singer and narrator than ever, "Thief' especially is as mournful as

1\lo 107
his tracks on the Can Soundtracks. It's a real shame that Can's release style would increasingly develop over the years. Zuckerzeit means 'Sugartime',
was so bitty. They were forever putting classics next to those honible E.F.S. and the syrupy child's synthesizer music class ethic was suddenly out in
jerk-offs they obviously found so chortlingly successful, but which were force. Starting the LP with a drum-machine that most groups would not
really just irritating flotsam & jetsam. Never mind, buy Delay and lose your even consider was working, Cluster stormed into the opening
head. "Hollywood" mantra as though they had the balls-out rhythm section of
life. Gone were the long Velvets drones and the space-cake emittings and
bleeps, and in came the Clangers-on-a-toy-planet sound that Dieter
15. C/uster//(Brain) \1oebius seems to have inspired. In terms of audio retardation, this is
DIETER MOEBIUS- Guitars, keyboards, electronics. percussion & FX
Cluster's finest record. For they simplified everything so much that the
HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS- Guitars, keyboards, electronics. percussion & FX whole album seems like merely snatches of some passing car 's stereo
urned up full. On "Caramel", they managed to have three instruments
This was really Cluster 's first LP in terms of an available career that music playing the same sub-Troggs riff! Eno was mightily impressed by
fans could really buy into, yet it is musically as challenging as the previous Zucke rzeit and spent a great deal of time making his next album Another
three LPs that bore the Cluster name in its differently spelled guises. Dieter Green World full of similar short short vignettes. But compared to the
Moebius & Hans-Joachim Roedelius' previous incarnation as Kluster, with Cl uster technique, his muso-packed eulogy was stilted and unorganic. On
Conrad Schnitzler, had produced two sonic experiments that bore more Zuckerzeit, Cluster displayed a wisdom of sound that is utterly reconciled
allegiance to Schnitzler, whilst the Phillips released Cluster, though a fab- o the titles, delivery and entire trip. "Hollywood", "Caramel",
ulous record similar to drumless early Kraftwerk, has always been virtual- -·\1arzipan", "James", etc. There is no duffer title. On "Rote Riki", they
ly impossible to find. Again, Conny Plank is a mainstay of this recording Jeemed a burbling fizzy synth fart-attack worthy of jamming on for over
team, even receiving co-credits for the writing of Cluster II. The six minute ix minutes. It works splendidly, but who the hell genius thought of taking
opener "Pias" is reminiscent of the first Cluster LP with pounding echoes of •he risk needs a kiss and a slap with a wet fish at the same time. Zuckerzeit
sound reverberating around the cosmos. Cluster II has much in common ~·as produced by their Harmonia cohort, Michael Rother of Neu! Like
with early Suicide, indeed it is hard to imagine that Alan Vega & Martin Kraftwerk, Cluster seemed equally attracted and simultaneously repulsed
Rev did not base many of their sound experiments on this music. The 12- by anything rock'n'roll. The sleeve is good enough to eat, and Dieter
minute "Im Suden (In the South)" features slow cyclical fuzz guitar repeat- loebius is sitting on Joachim Roedelius' lap on the inner sleeve! It's hys-
ed over a fading ominous backing track, whilst a treated early erically compellingly brilliant on ALL levels.
drum-machine clatters in and out of the mix, creating an arid desert effect.
"Fur Die Katz" closes Side I, returning again to the same cosmic· FX
lunescape that so much of the early Cluster trip inhabits. Side 2 opens with . 7. CLUSTER- Sowiesoso (Sky)
the 14 minute "Live in der Fabrik", another huge vibrational landscape JrETER MOEBIUS & HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS -All instruments
where melody has no place and the unfolding of unworldy events is every-
thing. But Cluster get closest to a normal world on "George!" where the -\fter the brilliant artistic success but huge commercial failure of the 1975
identifiable organ makes a refreshing change, and the album closer is the Deluxe LP, Harmonia split up and Michael Rother went solo. But Rother's
percussive and surprisingly expressionist "Nabitte", on which pianos clang nput had changed Cluster forever and 1976's Sowiesoso was the first fruit
back and forth over the same two chords as artificially generated rhythm f that labour. The album opens with the eight minute title-track, a perfect
ebbs and flows in a tidal manner. There is a timelessness in this music which ne-chord marriage of the early mantric experimental style, and the curious
releases it from restrictions such as bars and beats per minute, though lting melodies that pervaded their music after Rother's involvement.
Tangerine Dream would take this to its logical conclusion on Zeit, and Halwa" follows in an obvious Eastern-styled synthesizer Arabesque with
Cluster would later meet Neu!'s Michael Rother, and discover melody in .Tassly beautiful monophonic synthesizers, and then it's off into the easy
music. ~oing cosmic schoolboy instrumental called "Dem Wanderer". The side
.loses with a psychedelic Charlie Brown-theme tune called "Umleitung
Diversion)" with its funny repeated piano motif and bouncy octave bass,
16. CLUSTER- Zuckerzeit (Brain) · a chorus of German ravers fades in almost against the beat. This tune
DIETER MOEBIUS & HANS JOACHIM ROEDELIUS- e. organ, piano, rhythm-
.specially lodges itself into the brain like few others, hooky like only
machine, Davoli & Farfisa synthesizers, Hawaii & e. guitar Cl uster can be. On Side 2, three long pieces of gentle atmosphere pervade:
'Zum Wohl" is a slow drive through the stars, "Es War Einmal" is another
After Cluster II, this bizarre follow-up took Cluster in a direction that they :larling Charlie Brown theme tune, sad and reeking of lost childhood, and

108 109
half-remembered nursery-rhymes. But the closing track, "In Ewigkeit", is 19. Cosmic Jokers (Kosmische Musik/Cosmic Couriers)
even more Charlie Brown-like: a beat generation late night-club hometime
MANUEL GOTISCHING- guitar
pedestrian jazzer played on electronic instruments over a heartbeat bass
KLAUS SCHULTZE- synthesizer
drum. Sowiesoso is candy pop music in the surreal world. DIETER DIERKS- bass & mixing
Other Records: Cluster continued to release albums for many years HAROLD GROSSKOPF- drums
after this, as well as recording many solo LPs and collaborations also: JURGEN DOLLASE- keyboards
RASTAKRAUTPASTA/Moebius & Plank, ZERO SET I Moebius, Plank &
Neumeier; the CLUSTER & ENO LP, AFTER THE HEAT/Cluster & Eno, This is Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's finest and most dubious hour. Probably con-
etc. Of their '80s albums, I am a fan of CURIOSUM but not a fan of ceived during the chaos of the Timothy Leary/Ash Ra Tempel 'festival' in
GROSSES WASSER. Moebius & Roedelius recently released a new CD Bern, Switzerland, 'The Kaiser' began to record cosmic jams using various
which I've not yet heard. Generally, I would advise you to check unrecom- configurations of musicians. Cosmic Jokers is easily the greatest of these
mended releases thoroughly as their output is always fabulously diverse. albums, possibly because it's the most archetypal Kosmische Krautrock
trip of all. Two long songs which build, erupt, decay, diminish, falter, re-
group, undulating all the time and rising and falling like a musical oil
18. TONY CONRAD w/ FAUST- Outside the Dream Syndicate wheel. It's astonishing organic free-rock of the highest standard of all time.
(Caroline) The album is credited to the five musicians, a peculiar Krautrock super-
group. Ash Ra Tempel's leader, Manuel Gottsching, plays extremely cos-
TONY CONRAD- violin mic rhythm guitars that falter and fade and get phased and fazed, whilst
RUDOLF SOSNA - electronics & guitar
Jurgen Dollase, leader and keyboard player of the heavy group
JEAN-HERVE PERON- bass
WERNER DIERMEIER -drums
Wallenstein, and his drummer, Harold Grosskopf, both add linear unfath-
omables quite at odds with the leaden arrangements of their full-time
The Faust billing on this actually breaks a few trade-descriptions acts. Only group. Klaus Schultze adds washes of yet more synthesizer, and the awe-
three of Faust's five members appear here with Tony Conrad and, for me. some mixing desk of Dieter Dierks effectively takes the lot into cosmic
just the missing sax of Gunter Wusthoff makes the Faust appellation debat- stew territory with an attitude that often renders individual instruments
able. But this is no place for pedantry, for Outside the Dream Syndicate is a indistinguishable from each other. It's a rolling dub mix where one instru-
supreme Krautrock record and is the Missing Link that explains German ment is always taking the lead but never for long before another rises to take
obsessions with the New York experimental scene and the Warhol scene. its place- an endless waxing and waning, a pure joy to trip out to.
The original LP was originally released on Virgin's mid-priced Caroline
label for £1.49, and was a big hit at parties. Outside the Dream Syndicate i_
just two long tracks called "The Side of the Machine" and "The Side of 20. COSMIC JOKERS- Galactic Supermarket (Kosmische
Man & Womankind". Both are 20 minute-plus mantras of a Groove-main- Musik)
tained. One track features a stilted straight ahead mid/slow beat, the other
KLAUS SCHULTZE- synthesizers
is a rippling torn-tom heavy roll. At all times, Tony Conrad's violin is an MANUEL GOTISCHING- guitars
unwavering and secure one note/one tone. When the album was re-issued JURGEN DOLLASE- mellotron & piano
recently on CD, there appeared a brand new 20 minute track called "The -IARALD GROSSKOPF- drums
Side of Woman & Mankind". Of course. The same stoic mantra was there JIETER DIERKS- bass & mixing
again. In the avant-garde, Conrad knows no peers. He is so fundamentalist 'lOS I MULLER- vocals
that his only rival in the whole of the Universal music scene could be Sk~ GILLE LETMANN - vocals
Saxon of the Seeds. No-one but Saxon and Conrad have ever shown suer
Starting with a heavy piano/drums groove like John Cale and Terry Riley's
commitment to repeating themselves over & over on the off chance that the
"The Protege" from their classic LP Church ofAnthrax, The Cosmic Jokers
Truth may just be a slightly different shade to the last one they tried.
return to their trip with an un-cosmic dub beginning, melodicas and guitars
Outside the Dream Syndicate is ideal for playing repeatedly until it take.
pinning off all over the place. Gille Letmann says a couple of words before
over the room and actively Becomes you.
he breakdown into Clangerland, a place where goofy synthesizers call to
each other over exquisite mellotrons and tinkling spacey grand piano.
Again, it's just two huge tracks -this time the ever shifting "Kinder Des
Als" and the title track "Galactic Supermarket". The female voices take a
while to assimilate after the austerity of the first Cosmic Jokers LP, and the

110 111
opening track wanders around for a while before ascending to its righteotr ng farting synthesizers and you can't tell whether it's "RaumschiffGalaxy
groove. The women scream "Schnell Schnell!" and the helicopter drums Ieite! im Sonnenwind" or "Interstellar Rock: Kosmische Musik".
Harald Grosskopf propel us once more into a hectic frantic major-chor ·hatever, it is beautiful and epic and I love it to death. Harald Grosskopf
trance out. It's the sheer unbalance that makes this record such a delight. A an insistence to his drumming that I've never recognised in anyone
times, Klaus Schultze's synthesizer is so loud that it swamps everything i I e. He hits fast snare rolls, many in rapid succession, as the rhythm is held
its path. gether by the thunderous bass/e.guitar crunch. More Dr. Who-ness from
The title track "Galactic Supermarket" begins like one of VanDer Ora Raumschiff Galaxy saust in die Lichtbahnen", then it's off to the "Planet
Generator's greatest and most drawn out riffs. A slow 6/4 bass licks ov s Sternmadchens", a kind of Galactic Supermarket female freakout
ominous Pawn Hearts-style shifting chords. Again, the piece is slow t Tair, with Gille gasping and cooing over heavy pulse drumming and the
begin, as though they are searching for harmony but each musician is con ligatory cosmic synthesizer.
fused and solitary. Manuel Gottsching freaks out in a fury of wa-guit
madness, forcing the others awake, but this is really a down-in-the-mou
scene and the whole Trip descends further and further until ... an inevitab 2. COSMIC JOKERS- Sci-Fi Party (Kosmische Musik)
slow burning groove gets itself together and the scene whips itself up into.
- -LE LET MANN- voice
Shake Appeal Flip-out. This LP takes a little longer to get into than Th ~ IAN BARRITI -voice
Cosmic Jokers, but give it time and it's in your head forever. Those pierc .~LTER WEGMULLER -voice
ingly loud Klaus Schultze synthesizers which sound so bizarre the fi OSI MULLER- voice
time? You'll be waking up with them in your head, whistling them in till JRGEN DOLLASE (Wallenstein)- keyboards
street, people will think you've lost your fucking mind. Right On. -:.RALD GROSSKOPF (Wallenstein)- drums
~~RY BEAKERS (Wallenstein)- bass
-~RTMUT ENKE (Ash Ra Tempel)- guitar

21. COSMIC JOKERS- Planeten Sit-In (Kosmische Musik) 'ANUEL GOTISCHING (Ash Ra Tempel)- guitar
..AUS SCHULTZE- synthesizers
FEATURES THE REGULAR COSMIC COURIERS CROWD .~LTER WE STRUPP- various
~TER DIERKS- bass
Billed as the Quadrosound Hobby Magazine sampler, I never noticed qui
how weird this LP was until I had to review it for this book. Planeten Sit-i i-Fi Party is the great Kosmische Musik sampler, an advert for Tarot,
starts with the ultra-farty "Raumschiff Galaxy Startet", a synthesizer ou Gilles Zeitschiff, The Cosmic Jokers' Galactic Supermarket, Ash Ra
burst of four dimensional interest which quickly segues into the drurr empel's Starring Rosi, the Plane ten Sit-in LP, and Wallenstein's Cosmic
phased maelstrom vocalled "The Planet of Communication- entury, one ofthe straws that broke the Cosmic Couriers' back but a great
"Elektronenzircus" kicks in another synthesizer freakout of half a minute· P nonetheless. The record begins with "Im Reich Der Magier (In the Land
length into "Der Narr im All', a Cosmic Jokers "Astronomy Dominie" trip i the Magician)", a spoken word piece by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and Gille
"Raumschiff Galaxy fliegt in die Sonne" is another Funkadelic-anglo. tmann over an edit from "Galactic Joke", the side long first track on the
"Free Your Mind & Your Ass Will Follow" trip-out. A deafening mono- Cosmic Jokers LP. It always reminded me of a weird take on The Doors'
lithic monophonic synthesizer cuts through everything in its wa~ Riders on the Storm", before flying off into deepest Space-rock territory.
"Intergalactic Nightclub" is a cross between John Cale and Terry Rile) ·s eight and a half minutes of re-mixed bliss. Next up is the most 'street'
"The Protege" and Irmin Schmidt's vocals on Soon Over Babaluma :utthe Cosmic Couriers ever did, the fabulous "Der Herrscher". If this was
"Come Sta, La Luna". The final track of the side is a synthesizer and tom modern 45, I reckon it would be a hit. The vocals shoot all over the place
tom psyche-out into a kind of Ivor Cutler mantra, and the beautiful recur hilst George Harrison on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" assaults a
ring Jurgen Dollase piano theme. Side 2 is a helicopter rotor bla.Jl' utant riff of Neil Young's "Lookout Joe" and the Wayne County band
synthesizer attack beginning with high frequencies spilling all over, all' aying "Sweet Jane". Then you have the true sick insanity of "The Cosmic
bass and drums loose grooving. The track is "Electronic News" and we·· ouriers Meet South Philly Willy", a nightmare guitar theme tune right out
back in Funkadelic territory, though they never got 2/1 OOO's as loose ·Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Yes, it's that sick and jaunty.
this. It's sheer throwaway catch-the-moment genius. This is where Wallenstein are at without someone to watch over them.
"Intergalactic Radio Guri Broadcasting" is a drum-led groove with sy Beware. Side 2 opens in a flurry of distorted junior synthesizers, then the
thestzers and beats coming in and out. Loads of echo, then totally dry atT g Daddy synthesizer shoos them all out of the room and it's an edit from
some chanting. More chanting and synthesizers. Bubbling, squealin.,. Kinder Des Als" from Galactic Supermarket. Re-shuffling these tracks in
below ll the rhythm perststs. More noise then a bass-led rhythm then sqwr new situation with introductions, etc. is a very cool idea and Sci-Fi Party

112 113
is just that. Next is Brian Barritt's "The Electronic Scene", in which phones, and an enormous 48" x 36" poster featuring all of the Cosmic
explains the extreme possibilities felt within the Leary camp on meetir. Couriers stars.
the Kosmische crew. Jurgen Dollase's beautiful mellotron descent fro
"Kinder Des Als" then returns and mixes serenely into Ash Ra Tempel
"Interplay of Forces". This is the most cosmic of their most commerc1 24. FAUST- Faust AKA Clear (Polydor)
Starring Rosi LP, which Manuel Gottsching chose to do after ~RNULF MEIFERT -drums
Kosmische overdose at Dierks' studio. "Interplay of Forces" become NERNER DIERMEIER- drums
classic psychedelic instrumental. Sci-Fi Party ends with "Planeten Sit-in '"iANS-JOACHIM IRMLER- organ
a re-mix from Tarot and a beautiful piano and synthesizer piece reminisce GUNTER WUSTHOFF- synthesizer & sax
of Songs for Drella by Lou Reed and John Cale. And so, gently and breez 'lUDOLF SOSNA- guitar & keyboards
ly, ends the gaudily jacketed, havoc-causing record they called Sci-r JEAN-H ERVE PERON- bass
Party.
Four years ago, I had dinner with a very successful journalist who told me
that he'd had to review Love's Forever Changes for Q Magazine now that
11 was available on CD. Wow, I shouted. You lucky fucker! Yes, he said. But
23. STERNMADCHEN (ASH RA TEMPEL, COSMIC JOKERS &
I know it so well I couldn't summon up any real energy, so I just gave it
GILLE LETMANN)- Gilles Zeitschifi(Die Kosmische Kuriere)
110. Forever Changes is a dark achievement. Were it an ancient text on a
GILLE LETMANN- spoken word document it would be hidden from view and spoken of in obscure circles.
TIMOTHY LEARY- spoken word But because it operates through the medium of Pop Music, it gets tarts like
WALTER WEGMULLER- spoken word 'aid Journalist giving it 8/10. This is a classic case of a man Sleepwalking
R-U KAISER- spoken word & producer through life. So now I have to set to and tell you about the first Faust album,
BRIAN BARR ITI- spoken word
Jlld I will not let you down. For a start, it's a big 10110. No, make that 11/10.
LIZ ELLIOTI- spoken word
It defies categories. It's a horrible noise. It's cut-ups to the Nth degree. Part
KLAUS SCHULTZE (Ash Ra Tempel)- synthesizers
MANUEL GOTISCHING (Ash Ra Tempel)- guitar f it is just like Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy (a funny bit, thank the
HARTMUT ENKE (Ash Ra Tempel)- bass, guitar & FX Goddess.) It is super-gimmicky, syrupy in the weirdest places, and never
JURGEN DOLLASE (Wallenstein)- keyboards outstays its welcome. But probably the strangest thing of all is just how
HARALD GROSSKOPF (Wallenstein) -drums good Faust sound when they are creating on the spot moments of rock-
TOMMY ENGEL (Ash Ra Tempel)- drums ·n· roll on the epic "Miss Fortune". Here they transcend all studio trickery,
DIETMAR BURMEISTER (Ash Ra Tempel)- drums Jlld here they come alive. Listen to the Mothers of Invention's concert
DIETER DIERKS- synthesizer & mix
recordings from 1966 onwards and it's just trash. Musical bollocks of the
A monumental space-rock magazine, Gilles Zeitschiff is a long spa most merely capable variety. Faust live? This is a different thing entirely.
word Tripout apologia in which The Kaiser and Gille Letmann used Like all the greatest Teutonic groups, Faust were brought up with middle-
Starmaiden guise to explain/further mythologise and generally eulogise European dances and a staple of folk and tradition which was not 4/4. As a
whole Cosmic Couriers trip. Using tracks from previous Cosntic Cou ·cnsequence, German bands could get far more complex than U.S. and
LPs remixed by Dieter Dierks, and overlaid with Gille's spoken words. British bands would ever dare and it still sounds rocking and crazy, rather
record was very was successful and deeply trippy- it is a real classic. 1' than a bunch of Twee Smug Gits. Find an old Caravan, Man or Henry Cow
best two tracks are Brian Barritt's "Cosmic Courier Bon Chance", in wh LP for SOp somewhere and compare it with this. I'm joking of course.
he explains the psychic aspects of making Sci-Fi/Psi-Phi music work,
the greatest of all, "Electronic Zeitalter". This is Ash Ra Tempel at t
most Kosmische and with Klaus Schultze. It's a jewelled mantric pie 25. FAUST- So Far (Polydor)
fabulously level all the way through and again using the same ch. .VERN ER DERMAIER- drums
sequence previously heard on the Schwingungen epic "S uche & Liebe'· -ANS-JOACHIM IRMLER- organ
the 7Upepic "Time". The voices of Tim Leary and Brian Barritt waft in • EAN-H ERVE PERON- bass
out over a timeless Dark Star spacescape. And Gilles Zeitschiff has 'lUDOLF SOSNA- guitar & keyboards
greatest cover of all the Cosmic Couriers' LPs. It is Peter Geitner's fi SUNTER WUSTHOFF- synthesizer & sax
moment in the bizarre tackiness of '70s gameshows, huge glitter h As classic rock' n'roll album openers go, few beat So Far's "It's a Rainy
Day (Sunshine Girl)". Tom-toms born-born-born-born for a few bars, then

114 115
a low bass piano copies it in the thud-thud-thud-thud, then the Krautrock been details of one larger work ensured in advance that The Faust Tapes
Temptations coo to each other: "It's a Rainy day, sunshine girl, it's a rainy would look great.
day, sunshine baby." Talk about a smart bloody opening. The best sax solo The album fades in slowly in a cacophony of rainy city blues, droning
in the world chases the fade. It's my favourite ever Faust song. Have I said synthesizers and tonelessness. An abrupt edit cuts suddenly to a call and
that enough times, yet? I'll be honest about it. I really like Krautrock. Faust answer vocal and drum groove and ... bang! A savage edit into ... a ballad.
So Far was released in an all black sleeve. The album has a shiny blackness Piano, drums, acoustic guitar, Eno-ish synthesizer and voice. A ballad.
to the music. There's an ominousness in the gross image that depicts the Except that the vocals were intriguingly trans-Atlantic and sounded
song "No Harm", a small woman being attacked by a gargantuan man , insightfully psychedelic in a badly-translated way. It was charming:
which is disgusting and questionable. But I'm sure that it was intended to "When you leave your place and walk in someone other's garden,
displease, though I can't say that is any great reason for an artist to do such Suddenly you see, it's a woman colour in your mind to be."
a thing. Elements of the Velvet Underground acoustic third album scene is Most surprising about The Faust Tapes is the number of truly wonderful
picked out by Faust around this time. Also, the brass fanfare of the title pop and rock songs hidden within the cut-ups and experiments of the
track has a tough instrumental skank, pre-dating Can 's Teutonic reggae album's tangled grooves. And halfway through Side I is their most defining
excursions. "Mamie is Blue" is yet another rip of the Soft Machine's "We Krautrock riff of all. It's another of Faust's Krautrock/Family Stone/
Did it Again", but the drumming/synthesizer playing duel is truly astonish- Temptations trips in the tradition of "It's a Rainy Day". A scientific
ing music, especially those electric drill funk noises. Side 2 also contains German-American voice makes pronouncements over the groove and
more of the typical Faust semi-cut-up-threatening-to-be-a-song any- Gunter Wusthoff's sax tears along over a loopy breakneck driving beat,
moment trip. I think they intended to record a Typical Rock Album as a as the call and answer of life kicks in:
basic standpoint, but they tried not to make the songs typical at all. "Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz
Certainly, "It's a Rainy day (Sunshine Girl)" is the classic opener, and "In Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz
the Spirit" closes So Far the same way "America Drinks and Goes Home·· Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz
ends the Mothers' Absolutely Free, the same way "Jugband Blues" ends A Chet-vah Buddha, Cherra-loopiz."
Saucerful ofSecrets, the way "Something Happened to me Yesterday" ends 50,000 copies of The Faust Tapes were sold in 1973 and the night they
the Rolling Stones' Between the Buttons. Maybe I need a couple more played at Birmingham Town Hall, it seemed as though those words could
examples. This is a great album. Search it out. become a football anthem. The Heads were taking over. Soon after, as we
lay in my friend Cott's caravan listening to The John Peel Show, out of
nowhere the DJ began to read out the names of the 20 or more songs from
26. FAUST- The Faust Tapes (Virgin) The Faust Tapes. The sleeve and label of the LPhad showed no titles to any
of the songs and Cott raced around trying to find a pen. It was all over in
ARNULF MEIFERT -drums
half-a-minute and all I could remember was some title about Humphrey
WERNER DIERMEIER -drums
RUDOLF SOSNA - guitar & keyboard
Bogart. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that John Peel was
HANS JOACHIM IRMLER- organ non Faust's intended wind-up of its audience- that we were only meant to
JEAN HERVE PERON- bass ear the titles fleetingly and race around like half-wits. And Faust were
GUNTER WUSTHOFF - synthesizer & sax right. .. it was their persistence in the Entirety of their trip that makes them
legendary now. Even better, The Faust Tapes was the social phenome-
It well befits the Myth ofKrautrock that what became the figurehead of tlk non of 1973, and it finally brought the true avant garde into everyone's liv-
genre originally bailed out of the shops at 49p! And even more incredible i ng room, for a short while at least. But most of all this LP revealed just
the recent revelation that Virgin Records lost no money on the campaig hich side of the fence everyone was really standing. In April 1980, Jim
Steve Lewis, the man behind the scam, claims to have taken very few ris -err, leader of dinosaurs Simple Minds, gleefully told me how he and his
for what appeared at the time as an Heroic release. Whilst the mastertape . ates had all chucked their copies of The Faust Tapes off the roof of a
Faust's home-recordings was bought cheaply from Uwe Nettlebeck, :.ilasgow tenement. Enough Said? I'm sure that's the phrase.
album sleeve was a glorious Warhol ian pre-punk mess. One side was pre
clippings that revealed just how freaked-out their home country had be
when the clear Faust LP had first appeared in 1971. The other side w
Bridgit Riley's monochrome op-art trip called 'Crest'. And even this w
an obvious and risk-free winner. Five or so years earlier, Leon
Bernstein's out there Music for our Time LP had employed Rile)
'Current' to fabulous effect. That the two different paintings could ha'

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27. FAUST -/V(Virgin) ith such limited funds ever again. Which is a shame because UFO is what
,·ery psychedelic power trio should have sounded like. In fact many of
WERNER DIERME IER -drums
HANS-JOACHIM IRMLER- organ
:hem did until record companies dismissed it as jamming and said, "All
GU NTER WUSTHOFF- synthesizer, sax & sleeve art .,ell and good but where 's the song?" On UFO, riffs grind out like Kraut-
RUDOLF SOSNA- guitar & keyboards .Jbbath and remedial solos are sustained whilst the drums, at times, move
JEAN-HERVE PERON- bass nro free-jazz territory so totally at odds with everyone else that it's a
c.erserk and head-detuning moment. There 's no point in describing each
This was Faust's oddity. No one got it at the time (apart from the few wll ·rack as they exist on a planet of their own making, but I'll try in any case.
are right now saying, "Hold on, I got it!" Yeah, well I never saw you mak For instance, "Stone-In" opens the album, a spacious moan at mid-tempo,
ing too much fuss.) Faust left their beloved schoolhouse in Wumme for th.. "hilst Mani Neumeier wails low and jazzy, like Oscar Peterson used to do.
plush art-hippy surroundings of Virgin 's Manor Studios in OxfordshiR: Girl Call" follows in noise-rock territory until a riff gradually emerges and
The difference is large, though sonically not at all. They opened Faust I ,oogies the brain for a while, whilst Ax Genrich's wa-vibrato peals like
with "Krautrock", a raging 12 minute Velvets inspired E-major wa-evef) "'t!ll s and pulls at you from all sides, before the most horrible edit into
thing instrumental. It's an acid meditation of the highest Theta-in-a-roc~ Retard ville and the genius of "Next Time See You at the Dalai Lama" . The
' n' roll-style as you ever would wish to conceive of. 12 minutes is a Ion: ·itle-track covers half of Side 2, a Dark Star mass of becalmed deep-space.
while. I don' t think the drums come in for about six minutes, though l' \ Th is is my favourite side of Guru Guru. There's a 12-minute track of equal
never timed it. And though I say Velvets-inspired, only John Cale/Terr ntensity on the second LP, Hinten , called "Spaceship". The album ends
Riley 's Academy in Peril is a true comparison. But "Krautrock" is just ith "Der LSD-Marsch", which sounds as though it was recorded in a
FUZZY. "The Sad Skinhead" follows, an unlikely bluebeat skank. There· hool rehearsal hall after listening to the Troggs- over-recorded recorders
a crap Kim Powley single from the mid- ' 70s that opens, "Here comes z nd space-whispers give way to Joy Division intensity that will not give up.
Vest German reggae music!" Well, this is truly it. "The Sad Skinhead'' But simple fuzz-themes and co-exist with the resident free-bass and jazz
also like very early Television, bitty and psychotically twee. "Jennifer·· '11 msonUFO.
seven minutes of Barrett-ised dream psychedelia, low "A Day in the Li fe Other Records: Though I've only put one Guru Guru LP in my Top 50, I
tom-toms behind the song give it its phenomenal atmosphere. Side 2 is j lwuld mention that their first four LPs are remarkable and charming in a
as good - another semi-medley like Side 2 of So Far. There's some raw a 1rious and inspiring way. I'd recommend you listen to HJNTEN, KAN-
guitar-rock into their classic "Giggy Smile". This is in the top five of ·uRU and GURU GURU but I personally get less into them as they
Faust songs. Imagine the Mothers oflnvention if they ' d coerced Zappa int come more quirky and feature more rock elements.
taking LSD. Faust mix a boogie with a Bavarian on-the beat and get a ki
of (yet again) Syd Barrett, "Honey Love You, Honey little Sunday momi~
love" feeling. Psychotic and jaunty. Faust IV finished quite sadly. "It's a 9. SERGI US GOLDWIN- Lord Krishna Von Go/oka (Cosmic
of a Pain to be where I am" is the lyric. Back on their "Jesus/Some Kin ou riers KK 55002)
Love" trip, and they say goodbye- it was the last studio album together.
tragedy, really. But as I was one of Faust TV's teen detractors, it's possib E'IGI US GOLOWIN- spoken word
best to just regret that their moment did arrive, did pass, and has now tak ERRY BERKERS (Wallenstein)- bass & guitars, bongos & vocals
JRG EN DOLLASE (Wallenstein)- piano, mellotron , vibraphone , triangle & guitar
its foothold in rock' n' roll history.
')RG MIERKE- e. guitar, organ , percussion, spoken word & vocals, flute,
ectron ics & congas
..AU S SCHULTZE (Ash Ra Tempel)- drums & percussion, organ, Mellotron,
28. GURU GURU- U.F.O. (Ohr) _tars & electronics
.>,LTER WE STRUPP- acoustic guitar, flute, mouth-organ, South Cambodian
MAN I NEUMEIER- drums, percussion, e. drums, gongs, voice, tape &
'1dchimes, psalter, tablas & percussion
Contactrn ike
ERN D WITIHUSER -acoustic guitar
ULI TREPTE- bass, microphone, transistor radio, intercom & mixer
AX GENRICH- guitar, echo-units & pedals
which Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser offered us the second of his great Mage
Guru Guru had no vi be whatsoever in Britain and I remember seeing a cop ecordin~s. After Timothy Leary (KK55001) had so moved the producer
of this album in Mercer 's Record Shop, in Tamworth, when I was 14, th 7Up , 'The Kaiser' and his Starmaiden Gille Letmann decided to stay
the same copy again when I was 20 during the punk thing. It never s Switzerland and record some more of the wise old men. As with Leary,
because we all thought it was a hard rock LP like Jane or Birth Contrr recording of Sergius Golowin, the middle-aged ex-MP, was nothing
Once you spend your money on that stuff, you get scared to experim s than a full-on Vision-saga. Six musicians accompanied Golowin 's pro-

118 119
 nouncements throughout the LP, and it's most remarkable of all that the of the heat haze in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia". It is difficull
speaker showed such restraint, often letting the band fly off into Ash Ra explain these pieces. They are vignettes of a sort, but far more than that.
Tempel-land at any opportunity. It makes the most sensational combination ing up vast areas of sound and then disappearing back into the cosmic flo'"
and a long Kosmische-epic of high magic proportions. Opening with the I: ""Dino" is an uplifting Neu! groove under a sibilant and all-pervading drum-
minute plus "Der Reigen", the LP announces its occultural intention with machine. Michael Rother's guitar is prominent and tragic on this trae
sombre pre-Christian keyboards then softly softly into the ritual ... a build- preparing us for the pure Cluster of "Ohrwurm (Earworm)", a static melod-
ing slow amoeba production, at first scouting but soon positive in its hoi) ically challenged slob-piece with Dieter Moebius' guitar showing a
direction. This music is a life, but then "Der Reigen" means the dance and delightfully slack and underachieving sound. "Ahoi!" is becalmed on a
these performers are whipping it out. There is one very different song on river, a half-speed messing about in boats trip with no percussion and a
this LP, called "Die Weisee Aim". It's a piece of Jurgen Dollase music and rhythm that has all the urgency of a fat man in a kid's paddling pool, whilst
it is very beautiful indeed. The chords are mawkishly Cosmically senti- ··veterano" returns to the "Dino" fast4/4 drum-machine dominated sound.
mental, in a huge AI pen Euro-keyboard way as Golowin tells us of the over which typical Cluster/Harmonia pretty prettiness plays alongside a
Edelweiss blooming. It sounds unlike any other song I've heard before. curiously Ege Bamyasi-period Michael Karoli-styled guitar lick. Again.
conjuring up the same daft but nevertheless true feelings as something like the loud drum-machine trips over itself and virtually consigns the rest of the
David Ackles' heroic "Montana Song" from American Gothic. music to the back of the hall. The whole album is one of caught moods, like
The huge unfolding driving thing called "Die Hoch-Zeit" covers the catching the little people playing on a remote VHS camera but knowin g
whole of Side 2, in which Klaus Schultze's drums are combine harvester that they'd have run a mile had you been there. Musik Von Harmonia is
in a Canadian wheat field 50 miles across. Massive choirs of mellotron hold very much like that- it hardly seems to be the product of modern musi-
the distant horizon and the machine that is the music covers the land like cians, existing in a different period of the world. And with the strange toy-
locusts. Dry dry music. Arid heavy tragedy - Side 2 of Joy Division 's like electric piano of "Hausmusik", Harmonia are gone. Their second LP
Closer. Golowin doesn't even say a word for about the first eight minutes. was nothing like as curious sounding, far more confident and upfront. But
Then he's off on a long intense psychic bloodletting of indescribable beau- this LP is meditational despite the shortness of its tracks, and each mood-
ty. Underneath, the music rages off sometimes inaudible, sometimes unlis- piece of long snippets of feel and vibration sends the listener into a delight-
tenable, sometimes so holy, so righteous that the listener lifts into fully whacked-out state.
hyper-space and clarity is approaching. There is no doubt this is the very
highest magic- believe me. The Ur-klang of Mesolithic Man. No intellec-
tual ever made music such as this . Golowin has three wives and lives in the 31. HARMONIA- Deluxe (Brain)
mountains still. His voice and that music. A righteous vision. MICHAEL ROTHER- guitars, keyboards, vocals
.-IANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS- keyboards. vocals
DIETER MOEBIUS- synthesizer. Nagoya harp & vocals
30. HARMONIA- Musik von Harmonia (Brain) .vith
VIANI NEUMEIER !Guru Guru)- drums
J. ROEDELIUS-organ, piano, guitar & e. percussion
MICHAEL ROTHER- guitar, piano. organ & e. percussion Even in general Krautrock terms, Deluxe is an unknown and often dis-
DIETER MOEBIUS- synthesizer, guitar & e. percussion
missed record. That it is a classic will soon be recognised, for it is disturb-
Like eternal music that has briefly surfaced into the real world, "Watussi'" ing to hear "Monza" the same way as Neu !'s "Hero" or La Dusseldorf's "La
fades in tripping over itself, its drum-machine rhythm as unlikely and flat- Dusseldorf' is disturbing. It's just too goddamn early! But I digress. Deluxe
footed as anything on the trio's collaborations on Cluster's Zuckerzeit. opens with the beautiful melody of the titletrack, a vocal and synthesizer
Indeed, it is this otherworldy quality courses throughout the debut low gallop close to mid-'70s Kraftwerk in atmosphere. The beautiful
Harmonia album; melodies are both child-like and cosmically eternal at the choral melody repeats over & over and the song cycles around and around.
same time. The next track "Sehr Kosmisch (Very Cosmic)" (!)also fades in. There is a timelessness about the music which, despite its crass sounds, is
a distant 11-minute mood piece propelled by h~artbeat bass drum and the pacey and utterly charming. Next up and clear to the end of Side 2 is the
synthesizers of another cosmos calling to us. Eventually, huge hothouse pulsing and formidable "Walky-Talky", at which point Mani Neumeier is
drum rhythms come pulsing out of nowhere, similar in general attitude to introduced. Had Jaki Leibezeit played the part, he would have rendered it
the low-key side of Eno's Another Green World. And then it's off on the as Neu! would have played it- see the early Rother albums as proof. But
electronic horse-ride of "Sonnenschein", a beautiful electric snare-drum Y!ani Neumeier renders the beat far more into a horseride than a drive, and
march that reminds me of Omar Sharrif's dramatic and encless arrival out he keeps the organic-ness of the track intact over its 10 minutes of pulse
existence. And then it's on to Side 2, where "Monza" presents Step 2 of the

120 121
punk road from Neu '75's "Hero" and "After Eight" . The funny repeated electric storm from hell they called "Yom Himmel Hoch". Ha. What a
vocals are back over a sibilant drum beat and the most intense guitar play- ·rack. Doodlebugs, VI and V2 missiles, Hying bombs, call them whatever.
ing. Words cannot describe this. Then it's on to the low-key fades of "Notre They just keep flying over the horizon, only to be destroyed by enormous
Dame" - a synthesizer drone piece with percussion effects and the tacky - xplosions. It's a late blitz on Kraftwerk's horne town. The song begins to
Bavarian string synthesizers that La Dusseldorf later became so fond of. pick up, and Kraftwerk actually begin to groove, turbulently, flailingly,
"Gollum" could be from Sowiesoso (at this time only one year away from Jrums and synthesizer farts vying for the most grooove. It's the inevitable
recording) with its film theme melody and unfamiliar Neumeier drum- Kraftwerk stumble-riff which speeds up/slows down as usual with wild
ming. Likewise, the last track "Kekse" is a Sowiesoso-type song of primi- ynthesizer "conversations" and clanky-ness of an industrial East German
tive programming and wistful child's keyboards. Deluxe is hard to write · ariety. Wild farty music that slips into ambience only to wrench off your
about, but it is a classic Krautrock LP. rotum the next moment. A synth-bass comes in, the whole thing picks up
peed and it's the Stooges at Toys R Us. Neu! and the Muppets join in and
·· Truly a classic record. Of course, Ralf & Florian end it all with a fuck-
32. Krahwerk (Vertigo) .g huge bomb.
God knows where Ralf & Florian were at during this first LP. They con-
structed grooves out of laboured bricklayer riffs which truly have no 3. La Dusseldorl(Decca)
groove at all. It's so tight-assed you want to prise it apart with a hammer.
Kraftwerk opens with the monster Krautrock epic "Ruckzack". The open- --'US DINGER- guitar & vocals
ing eternal synthesizer chord is peculiarly like a garage version of the -OMAS DINGER- percussion. vocals & light
"Autobahn" beginning. Then it's off into the strangest mix ofNeu! rhythm ..Ns LAMPE- percussion & electronics
·n
and a horrible jaunty Jethro Tull flute groove with no melody. Yet the whole
·GLAUS VAN RHEIN- keyboards & synthesizer
thing also reminds me of something off the second Suicide album. Anywa). .;RALD KONIETZKO - bass
there's all these references Hying at you at once, and then it gets weird a<
only Krautrock can get. A big foul atonal organ comes in, followed b~ aus Dinger 's finest moment lasts for the whole of the first Dusseldorf
spacey Moog synthe'&iler, then the whole song speeds up, not gradually, but burn. From the moment the needle touches down, it's a sonic speed trip
out of nowhere. It speeds up and slows down as though one person playe.. cough every street in Dusseldorf city. Klaus Dinger and his two drurn-
every instrument and is in perfect non-harmony with himself. So it's ·r/cohorts came up with such a stunning album here that punk rock hap-
remarkable feat which can only have been achieved by either Ralf ed and Bowie copped a feel. We all know this, but why was it so good as
Florian conducting everyone. Then this great motorik groove becomes ..:ause these effects? Because underneath the dumb-dumb exterior is a
horrid rhythmless noise, which fades out and back in a kind of phased p . .11 songwriter and Mr. Hookline of all time. Dinger pulls a chorus out of
chedelic early VanDer Graaf Generator way. This continues for some ti!Tl<. ngle synthesizer line, he gives his whole manifesto in one word chants.
It is extremely epic and cosmic like a roller-coaster on magic mushroow the whole record, there are four songs, three with words (the other being
Whoa! And thisjustcarries on continuing ... phasing ... disappearing .. . rt .r intrurnental monster hit "Silver Cloud"). The words are "Dusseldorf'
appearing ... phasing again. It predates Neu! and it is very Neu! And it' · m the opening song "Dusseldorf'), "Dusseldorf' (again, from the fol-
remarkably rocking start to the first ever Kraftwerk album. ing song, "La Dusseldorf'), and "Time" (From the song "Time".) Yet
The other song on Side 1 is the far more experimental but similar .us Dinger's melodies and sense of rhythm and build are masterful. They
berserk "Stratovarious". At 12 minutes, this song starts as a meditati ••eak rhythm guitar, like Neu ',and a powerful drum-led sound full of
though a very squealing one, then develops into a many headed mon mic surf-punk synthesizers. It's like no-one, but shares a similar spirit to
efficiently playing four instruments at once extremely accurately in te .... e Sigue Sputnik. Uncool and cool. Masterful and arrogant. This is
of timing and power of thrashout, but playing none of those instrum ·mionally and wilfully amateurish genius.
technically well in any virtuoso sense. When it finally can' t get any fa,
it gives up and falls in on itself. Then the song picks up an "L.A. Wol11'-
groove that can't help getting a bit faster all the time. And the groove is\
cranky and un-oiled. There's creaking wa-wa pedals and a very
Machine fuzztone organ, Hamfisted and furious. It's brilliant.
Side 2's "Megaherz" is a Deep-space grill-out. We seem to get the m
cal information at delayed intervals. It is quite beautiful. Rich tones s
the music in thick heady stew of sound, especially in the light of the cl

122 123
 34. LA DUSSELDORF- Viva (Nova/Radar) MOEBIUS & PLANK- Rastakrautpasta (Sky Records)
KLAUS DINGER- vocals. percussion & guitars -;:R MOEBIUS & CONNY PLANK-all instruments
THOMAS DINGER- drums & vocals 3ER CZUKAY -bass
HANS LAMPE- drums & percussion
with is an album of slobbering and drooling genius. Seven pieces of empty
ANDREAS SCHELL- piano . .certeauon-the-beat Krautfunk. The album opens with "News", samples
NIKOLAUS VAN RHEIN- keyboards & synthesizers · news over a heavy bass slide-trombone groove . Actually, there's no
HARALD KONIETZKO- occasionai bass
!ide-trombone at all but that's the effect created. The title track is the
Viva was Klaus Dinger's most hopeful album of all, coming in !at dude-ingest track since the grooves on Lou Reed's 1978 album
after the negative aspects of punk had finally kicked in. Here was~ r Hassle, another curve-ball out of nowhere. This inner-city Bavarian
whose sound had been the architectural blueprint on which Britis loads Lee Perry absurdities on top of Faust absurdities and com-
was based, yet now he was singing of life and love over all. Viva ope them all with the New York of Dillinger's Cocaine in my Brain. Huge
the French sung title-track, a post-Heroes two minutes 30 seconu hesizer melodies with catchy-as-hell harmonies, some of which make
beauty, which segues into the funny Roxy/Mott the Hoople piano d ,rit your teeth, over a garagey white There :r a Riot Go in ' On rhythm
"White Overalls". "New style hit the city," wails Klaus. "It's white . The classic rock'n 'roller monster is "Feedback 66", the title alone
ails," repeating "Overall overall overall" in a funny Bavarian pi d have made Suicide cream. The track itself growls along like electro-
way. Many people cannot take this - the sheer Germanness of it ges, similar to the machine sounds of Suicide's second album. And
encoded in synthesizer sounds that evoke the lost days of Grimm· : feedback (mike feedback ... not even guitar feedback) all-the-way. If
Tales and Kindergarten . The long instrumental "Rheini ta" is like ·· bius & Plank were not geniuses of the Teutonic-kind, they could not
Cloud", the hit single from La Dusseldorf's first LP, motorik hassle attempted such a speculative foray as Rastakrautpasta. But when it
ble-drums beating the synthesizers and pianos along an autobahn on its ass it doesn't matter because, success or failure, it's always
there are no cars, no people, only the forms of civilisation with the pe Ha, they had no World Music aspirations, thank fuck .
was built for long gone. The short garden recording of the sound FX
"Vogel (Bird)" leads us into the ultra-singalong "Gelt (Gold)'' whict.
es Side I . The double-drums again propel us into the most serene and Neu ! (United Artists/Brain)
ous melodic land where string synthesizers and the wobbly funny an -uS DINGER- percussion, guitar, vocals & Japanese banjo,
sounds are then repeated as vocal melodies. It is this singing of ke~ -~E L ROTHER- guitar. deliguitar, bass & double-bass
tunes that makes the whole trip so charming. Especially as Klaus I>
sings of the Beatles' "All You Need is Love" over the candy sweet fuz.. . ears ago, I lay in a caravan in Tamworth in Staffordshire and had my
tars and phased rhythms. Side one finishes with the repeated chorus: - to ALL music changed. The piece, which was playing on the John
Love, Make Love, Make Love, Make Love Not War." Right on .. . Show, was called "Ha\logallo" and was the opening track from the first
Side 2 returns to the epic Kosmische territory of Hope with the si<k "~ Neu! Nothing ever sounded so different to me, and still nothing has
20 minute of "Cha Cha 2000". Here, Dinger takes us into a land in "Hallogallo" for its sheer bravery of sound. Whilst most
by Walter Carlos' A Clockwork Orange soundtrack and the anna a:m• rm:• groups layered their sounds in epic sheets of impressionism, the

agreeable sounds of Kraftwerk' s Autobahn. Dinger sings "The fuf: ' sound was a dry and upfront expressionism. It's mystery was in i~
calling" and tells us that we all need to change, to start looking deep - l to be mysterious- everything could be heard on first listen and thi
ourselves. It's charming and naive yet utterly believable in the cont "most beguiling quality. A bass-less motorik beat leads "Hallogallo"
the whole Dusseldorf trip. I guess you ' ll have to listen to this to deci a long fade into straight ahead E-major riffless grooving. Behind it.
know Krautfans who find this side of Dinger's muse too mawki_ backward guitars punctuate like seagulls on echo-less cliff .
gooey. Me? Itrust the guy all the way and I cry when I'm caught in its is no melody. There is no vocaL There is nothing to tell you where
holding-pattern. in this seamless corridor with no end. IfNeu! had split right after the
Other Records: Though the third La Dusse/doif LP JNDIVID UB. track of their first LP they would still have changed rock' n ' rol L
is not in my Top 50, it would certainly be in my Top 60. Dinger to; But Neu! was a blueprint for a new kind of rock'n'roll with no past and
funny Bavarian sound to its logical conclusion on this final album, e mmediate future, and it was to be seven years before the world caught
recording a classic song from Neu! as "Leiber Honig '81 ". if they ever truly did. On the rest of Side l, "Sonderangebot" explore;.
about to take off but never doing so, hanging in mid-air- its slov.cd
n backward cymbals billowing like speeded up clouds before final!~

124 ":.>5
exploding into the watery wa-guitar/dry drum beauty of the now Neu-stw written over in pen. The photos of Rother & Dinger are actually photo-
dard "Weissensee". Side 2 continues in this low low-key manner. .. , copies of passport photobooth shots, and Dinger 's face is painted like a
Gluck (In Luck)'' retains the suspension of rhythm and the characteri t glam superhero.
Michael Rother wa-guitar, whilst the album closer "Lieber Honig" is agat
drumless , led only by Klaus Dinger's fragmented Japanese banjo an
breathy Damo Suzuki soundalike vocal. In the background is Rother 38. NEU! - Neu 75 (UA/Brain)
awesomely low bowed double-bass. Indeed, the entire first Neu! LP cou
<LAUS DINGER- voice, percussion, guitar. piano & organ
have been a mantra supreme had they rejected one specific song. But th..
\AI CHAEL ROTHER- guitar, piano, synthorchestra, electronics & voice
song is almost I 0 minutes long and opens up wounds on Side 2 that br "'H OMAS DINGER- drums
the listener out of any stupor- clearly the aim of the musicians. The track -lANS LAMPE-drums
"Negativland", now another Neu! standard. With its shrieking drill oper
ing, "Negativland" is a studious non-groove which speeds up and slo This is Neu! 's perfect album. The reunion that transcended all their previ-
down at will, the drums and bass louder than anything yet merely funct i ous history. Perhaps the lack of pressure brought everything into clarity for
al as seven years early post-punk Keith Levene/John McGeoch gui JUSt long enough. Neu '75 begins with the totally typical motorik driving-
howl hideous chordless and distorted. Neu! is never a disappointment e\ ness of "lsi", but all the guitars have been substituted with a schoolroom
after 23 years. It is never a beauty to get used-to. piano of remedial efficiency and beautiful oboe-like synthesizers that bil-
low and coo like Eddie Jobson, when he was still trying to sound like Eno
hadn't left Roxy Music on Stranded. "Seeland" follows , a floating drifting
37. NEU!- Neu2(Brain/UA) ' unset of a song with weeping dual lead guitars like an awesomely slowed
down New-age version of Thin Lizzy around "The Boys are Back in
MICHAEL ROTHER - guitar. bass, piano, fiddle. zither, percussion & electronics
KLAUS DINGER -Japanese banJO, 11-string guitar, percussion, Farfisa piano.
Town" . Okay, that's exaggerating, but the guitar is between that first
Bandon ion, speaking, electronic & record-player description and Bowie's Heroes title-track. But then , this LP and La
Dusseldorf were the two blueprints for Big Dave's Berliner period. The
Aha, N eu! 's great mistake/misj udgement- the one they fucked up the 'ide finishes with the Damo Suzuki-type space vocal of "Leb' Wohl",
get on and had to finish in a hurry. So what's it really like? It's a classic another schoolroom piano from another kindergarten- drifting, wistful and
course. Like all true experimentalists, Klaus Dinger and Michael Ro charming with its obvious tapes of waves lapping on a beach.
fell on their ass from time to time. But what's an experiment for if the Side 2 begins the transformation with the classic Ur-punk of "Hero", in
never a failure? And this failure is undoubtedly one of the most succe which every proto-punk device is thrown into its six heavenly screamed
ever. Neu 2 begins with "Fur Immer (Forever)", an 11-minutecover vel" minutes. Klaus Dinger sings like a man possessed (though not possessed
of"Hallogallo" , opener on Neu!. But this is a more lush and fertile, gra ·\·ith a singing voice) over banked Steve Jones massed guitars and the dou-
er landscape than the short-grassed plains of the Neu' LP. "Fur Immer ~le drumming oflife. This is followed by the 10 minute Krautgroove of"E-
less experimental, warmer and more accessible, more driving too . But f~ \lusik" - a kind of mantric Bavarian shuffle that subtly pulverises the flesh
then on in it's a pop-art blitz of jagged off-the-beat edits and repeats ver a long time . Then it's back to "Hero" again, here re-named " After
something from Amon DUtil 's Psychedelic Underground. It's a so~> Eight", and a much wilder version. Klaus Dinger has by now given up even
effects record of endless churchbells and wind, of the classic Dinger · attempting to be coherent and just drools the words out. It's the end of the
threatening from time to time, until "Lila Engel (Lilac Angel)" bursts -.est Neu! LP of all. Buy it and find out.
end Side 1 with bassless clatterdrum-groove, machine-gun stutter
chord guitar and howled hollered vocals that always sound like:
"Oh, dee der dat dut dat duh-dah, Oh, dee der dat dut dat duh-d 39. POPOL VUH- Affenstunde (Liberty)
Oh, dee der dat dut dat duh-dah, Oh, dee der dat dut dat duh-dah "LORI AN FR ICKE- Moog synthesizer
Side 2 is the real fuck off. There is no cohesion at all. "Neuschnee" at "IOLGER TRULZSCH- percussion
proper speed and also at 78 rpm, "Super" at correct speed but also at 78 =R ANK FIEDLER- synthesizer-mixdown
'd'l\~ \(:, ~?ID . "\h\\<J c'1..1:~'1\\~\.;:<JI." ;.., .;:~~-..l.~<l.l.b.ll"&'. "F11t lmme~" \s teco
with Klaus Dinger putting his fingers on the tape-machine whilst 1 ginning with the Splashing of Time' s pool, Affenstunde (Monkey Hour)
Rother and Conny Plank have a conversation in the control room . A 10n pulses off into the cosmos with its curious Dr. Who meets the Clangers
Neu 2 vi be is extended right over into the sleeve where all photogra unds. Here, the big Moog was in its non-classical setting and setting the
stuck down by large blqbs of tape and the whole of Side 2 is crossed ant-garde on its head. That this is 1970 seems extremely early, but

126 127
 erranean channels long ago cut into the still forming earth. The congas
Florian Fricke was never so much ahead of time as out of time: that low and blow until , after many minutes, the beautiful Fender piano cuts
appeared as an avant-gardist but was really a traditionalist-he through like a clear cool pond of lilies, frogs and a wild flute player s1ttmg
Visionary. The rhythm on the unwieldy-titled opening track "Ich :0.1 >n the bank. This is divine heal ing music- a wondrous elegtac Adam and
Einen Speigel - Dream Part 4" is all generated from the synthesizer Eve trip. The theme reminds me of something from that classic Elektra LP
distant planets signalling to each other. Occasionally, a blip and a bee Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac. It is soothing in a familiar way, traditiOnal
there 's a whole new cosmic messenger ready to make contact. "Drearr nits musicality but unorthodox in its context. There are only two tracks on
5" is wholly percussive, a mass of rhythms and contra-rhythms recor ·his album and each could not be more different. Amidst roarmg cymbals
the listeners face . The humorously titled "Dream Part 49" is a claustr J.lld cathedral organ, like the death of a great statesman, "Yuh" opens Its
bic dense affair where an other worldly synthesizer checks out an unir. _ates to a great flood of energy, a coursing nutritious sound that cooks the
ited planet. Side 2 features the 18 and a half minute title-track, which be. istener in their own aura and delivers their soul to the heavens. I have men-
with weird hollow percussion, an endlessly galloping exhilarating rh. tioned earlier that this piece of High-energy is a little beyond the norm. L1ke
which is Crusader-like, conjuring up images of the Saracens, and e "Fly & Collision of Comas Sola" on T. Dream's Alpha Centau~i, "Yuh" is
Islam. Voices, real and synthesized, appear in the background, awe a mantra to lose your mind to. Florian Fricke recorded th~s p1ece on the
synthesizer screeches and then more hollow percussion. Finally, the" e:reat medieval organ at Skiftskirche Baumburg. Whoa, thiS Ideal combma-
thing breaks down to a single synthesizer voice and what appears to tion of High Christian Tools and the Master Magician is all too obvious.
road sweeper passing slowly outside. It is not that but another of Fri And by the time the Turkish Chimes begin their fury, it IS all to obvious that
tricks. A low tone begins, a hanging bouncing pulse behind it, the bell- one of thee great meditational Holy works has been captured on tape .
dips and melodically forms into a Keltic mantra of some great beauty-
Cutler's " Life in a Scotch Sitting-Room" is the mood that springs to m
There are also correlations with the "Telstar" theme, a kind of archet. 41. POPOL VUH- Einjager & Seibenjager (Kosmische Musik)
stellamess. It's the use of early Moog which sounds similar to "Tels
monophonic clavioline - a 1950s fore-runner to the synthesizer wh icr "LO RIAN FRICKE- piano & spinette
DANNY FICHELSCHER- e. & acoustic guitar. drums & percussion
similarly sharp tones. As the developing Kelt piece unfolds, hollo\\
)J ONG YUN- vocal
cussion invades and Fricke fools around with the modulation to get rid
Nith
lous but effective hooting sounds. Affenstunde is a marvel of atmosp OLAF KUBLER -flute
and innocence.*
*It's hard to imagine that this first album would be merely a shadow c Danny Fichelscher's spindly vibrating one-minute guitar opus "Kleiner
pared to the impending IN DEM GARTEN PHAROAS. Indeed, the r Kreiger" opens this bizarrely light and airy album . Then it' s pretty much
track of that record is very similar to most of AFFENSTUNDE. Only Florian Fricke's trip the rest of the way. I can only descnbe the strange beat
" Vuh " kicks in does the High Authority of A Greater Life truly kick iTL of "King Minos" as Hip-Bland music , so inspiring yet usmg almost
following review. Carpenters chords. Fricke's piano is supported only by Danny
Fichelscher's heavenly guitar and his crashing cymbal-led drummmg.
"Morgengruss" continues the Hip-Bland edge with its ultra-melodtc lead
40. PO POL VUH -In Den Garten Pharoas (Pilz) guitars and 12-strings. But Fricke is a past .master of sruling close to the
wind and he never fails to drag some emotton or other out of the listener
FLORIAN FRICKE- Moog synthesizer, organ & Fender piano
that the listener has forgotten he ever had inside him. "Wurfelspeil" returns
HOLGER TRULZSCH- African & Turkish percussion
FRANK FIEDLER- Moog synthesizer mixdown to the "King Minos" place, this time supported by the flute of Olaf Kubler,
Amon Diiiil IT's producer. It is a dramatically uplifting mustc, espectally
The title-track of In Den Garten Pharoas is the natural harmony of anc with the bass-less rock' n' roll drums. "Gutes Land" closes Stde I wtth Its
everyday life. Fast drumming in an underground cave, t\\e sc\llh"'b Cl{ iano and cymbals peaceful piece, the theme consciously echoing the main
and a waterfall where women are crouched at their daily washi ng theme from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, then movmg mto
artificial Star Trek voice of a woman, a priestess, calling the fai th: kind of Television area where Danny Fichelscher's rapturous gmtars
prayer. The sound of water rushing by a community of endless ce mind me of "Venus" from Marquee Moon. The whole of Side 2 is occu-
souls, this track is more evocative of the damp Northern Europe of an pied by the epic title-track "One Soldier & Seven So~diers" . The sleev~ of
times than the Pharoah 's fertile but hot garden of 5000 years ago. H the album is one of Peter Geitner's Kosmische Mustk greats- a classtcal
Trulzsch's congas are soon beating the tribes down, welcoming them Chinese print of a soldier pursued across water by flotillas of enemies,
the ritual as Florian Fricke's moog courses its way down the endles

129
128
 surrounded by gematriac designs of suns and planets in gold and sa. 43. TANGERINE DREAM- Electronic Meditation (Ohr)
yellow.
The tragic voice ofDyong Yun soars over a gentle piano theme, um. EDGAR FROESE- 6 & 12-string guitars, organ. piano, broken glass
now familiar guitar and drum themes of Danny Fichelscher crash i KLAUS SCHULTZE- drums, metalstick, whip
CONRAD SCHNITZLER- cello, violin, guitar
mtrude most gorgeously and ethereally. The music builds gradually u
Without becommg aware of it, it is flooding the room, Fichelscher's g~o As pure experimentation goes, Electronic Meditation was a wild success.
IS strangulated and desperate, until all falls and the gentle introduc The cello of Conrad Schnitzler dominates the opening moments of "Geburt
theme returns.lt is a truly unexpected and magical music. I cannot ima_ (Genesis)", swooping high up the neck then down down down to the low-
any but the German artists of this period getting away with this . In any - est notes, as Edgar Froese's guitar begins to beat out a clanky non-rhythm
hands, it could be horribly produced and ruined. As it is, the degree of and Klaus Schultze's furious tom-toms hesitate at first then burst through
VIrtuosity JS always overwhelmed by the minimal low-key production the sound to establish a huge tribal beat. Flute dances around the track as
the deep and obvious transcendence of the players. ugly crash guitar chords build ... but it all falls to pieces. And noise,
rhythmless and annoying, is the only thing left. Gradually, an organ shape
develops, but "Genesis" is never more than a strung-out beginning to a very
42. POPOL VUH- Hosianna Mantra (Kosmische Musik) wild record. And it's only on the comparatively standard weirdness of the
POPOL VUH (FLORIAN FRICKE)- piano & cembalo 13 minute "Journey Through a Burning Brain" that any kind ofrock'n'roll
CONNY VEIT -12-string & e.guitar is achieved. Here, one rhythm guitar and drums support one of the most
ROBERT ELISCU -oboe bitty acidy fried solo guitar excursions of all time . Klaus Schultze's drums
DYONG YUN- vocals are stupendous: a blur of thunderous toms that shatter the VU meters whilst
KLAUS WEISE- tamboura the guitars, goaded by the drumming, begin to do battle in a way that no
with
American bands ever attempted. It's a fucking riot that even the Texan
FRITZ SONNLEITNER- violin
bands never came close to. If you think you've heard rock'n'roll without
This is the record on which Florian Fricke actually appeared as Popol V hearing this LP, you are crazy. Side 2 opens with the experiments of "Cold
Th1s IS where he tried to combine the newness of his eastern musical d Smoke", a kind of organ based feel-piece which slowly builds into a recog-
coveries with the traditional church music he grew up with. It is specta, nisable musical performance. The pounding drums eventually give up,
larly~ beautifully timeless. The opening track, "Ah", features lilting o then try again, then ... after what seems like ages, another furious jam
playmg the Tmy Tears melody, but whose classical name I've forgone builds - the guitars are bitty bitty, feeding back constantly. Pure manic
The occasiOnally featured Japanese female singer, Djong Yun, makes eth inspiration. It's as if Conrad Schnitzler's guitar has to be struck constantly
real contribution to the album, especially on the second track "Kyrie". A just to curse the fucker from its annoying but fitting microphonic feedback.
the then 17-year old Connie Veit is the other star of the record, his gu i1 The track cuts off at its height, horribly edited into the next free-rock piece.
rangmg through eloquent restrained accompanying 12-string to stupe "Asche zu Asche (Ashes to Ashes)" again features the feedback guitar as
dous gone magical lead guitar. It's hard to explain the devotional qualil) Froese returns to his earthbound organ-playing. The drums still fuss and
this record. It sounds like a recording made on a retreat, perhaps at so freak out, but no-one goes with them for a while until, again, all hell breaks
cosm1c convalescent home. And the low-key epic 10-minute title-tra loose. Finally, a hymnal organ and backward spoken words announce the
wh1ch closes Side 1 is truly healing music which treads a divine li last track of the LP "Auferstehung (Resurrection)" and we are back in the
between the obvious eastern exploration of the times and the utterly une same territory as the opening track "Geburt".
plored world (m the rock field certainly) of Christian Spirituality. Side:
opens with my t':o favourite tracks of all. Firstly, "Abshied" is a rippl in~
teetenng and falhng p1ano piece, reminiscent of parts of John Cale's Th 44. TANGERINE DREAM- Alpha Centauri (Ohr)
Academy in Peril, but that is really wide of the mark and I'm struggling l CHRIS FRANKE- percussion. lotos flute, pianoharp, zither & synthesizer
find a context to descnbe Jt. "Segnung" follows, another divine seagull gu EDGAR FROESE- guitar. gliss bass, organ, voice & coffee machine
tared soar above the rippling piano waves and Robert Eliscu's oboe an STEVE SCHROYDER- organ, voice. several echo machines. iron stick
vocals of Djong Yun. The last beautiful dream song is "Nicht Hoch i with
H1mmel (Not High in Heaven)", strangely titled as the ever-upward La UDO DENNEBOURG- flute & words
Underwood jazzy belltone guitar combines with Djong Yun's vocals an.. ROLAND PAULYCK- synthesizer
the piano to sound utterly ascending, devotional and heavenly. Hosiann. It was at this time that I loved, feared and was in awe ofT. Dream. My older
Mantra sounds like nothing else I've heard. friend, Cott, he of the Revox reel-to-reel and the money of one who was 17,
130 131
 walked into Diskery in Birmingham and bought a white label
my favourite T. Dream LP, it is by far the most played and the one I would
AlphaCentauri. To me it invoked times both beyond the apocalypse rux.
before the flood . kiss Edgar Froese hardest for creating. 80 minutes of utter Kosm1sche
beauty. Music that hangs in Deep-space. Songs the size of planets w1th
. Klang! Another organ and harmonic guitar beginning, wailing synthe-
titles the size of cities: "The Birth of Liquid Piejades", "Nebulous Dawn",
SIZer, stop-start rhythms and a building frequency of yet more synthesizer
"Origin of Supernatural Probabilities" and the title track "Zeit". Released
announces the start of Alpha C~ntauri. Flute dances over the grunge_
on one CD, Zeit is a perfect riot. I spin it over & over for hours on end. L1ke
organ, more . rhythmless synthesizer, a gradual opening up of this awe-
the Tony Conrad CD, its remarkable unchanging unfoldmg near-static
somely restncted sound, the organ becomes stereo and the perspecti ve
barely-shifting vegetable organic-ness takes over the room and permeates
Widen. The false start of "Sunrise in the Third System" is over, and the
the whole house. If you leave to pee or make tea, the room in which Zeit is
mtroducti?n IS complete. And then the slow build begins again into one of
T. Dream s greatest ever tracks, "Fly & Collision of Comas Sola". Thi playing becomes that room. You know that anyone calling in the middle ~f
its playing will never see that room in the same hght ever agam. And that s
huge 13-m.mute epic is not rock' n' roll, though it has some of the ingredi-
about all I can say. Look at the line-up of musicians above. It sounds like
ents. But the vast sweeps of cosmic synthesizer and the flatfooted church
that. Imagine tripping and seeing the testcard moving on TV. Zeit is quite
organ act as special grounders on which the main aspect of freak out, the
like a planet-sized version.
drums and flute , can be hung. It's as though the musicians feel each others·
VIbratiOns but cannot hear the notes the others are playing, similar to the
relatwnsh:p between the backing tracks and the vocals on Captain 46. TANGERINE DREAM- A tern (Ohr)
Beefheart s ~r~utmask Repilca. And as the intensity reaches its height,
Chns Franke s jazz based tom-tom blitzouts is as crazy as Klaus Schultze's EDGAR FROESE- mellotron. guitar, organ, voice
contnbution to _"Journey Through a Burning Brain" on Electronic PETER BAUMANN - organ, VCS3 synthesizer, piano
Medltat~on: On S1de 2, the title-track is a vast 22-minute Kosmische mood- CHRIS FRANKE- organ, VC S3 synthesizer. percussion & voice
piece utJhsmg synthesizers, flutes , and the first leanings towards the huge
Tangerine Dream's fourth LP Atem was recorded in the wake of their
follow-up, Zell. Steve Schroyder's echoed organ has the greatest sound
Kosmische double masterpiece Zeit and its aberrant Barrett Floyd-hke 45
here, a precursor to the forthcoming T. Dream sound, and also mirroring the
"Ultima Thule". Here, they managed to cross-pollinate the two ideals to
Conrad Schmtzler cello sound from the first LP. But Schroyder would have
dramatic and often violent effect. But I'll tell you this: Atem is as glorious
no part m T. Dream's future after this record, being booted out by Edgar as a Cecil B. De Mille movie and about as cinematic. The pounding tom-
Froese and relocating to Ash Ra Tempel, the other greatest Kosmische tom drums and the fanfare of mellotron on the opening bars of the title-
Group m Germany. The album finishes with a beautiful Teutonic chorale. track is like background music for building the pyramids to. A huge slab of
T. Dream have always been great with atmosphere voices and never afraid pounding meditational rock that eventually subsides into a mass1ve groovy
to brmg It all out- belching or farting , it would be no problem to them if it meditation. This takes up all of S1de I, wh1lst S1de 2 opens With the won-
meant getting the right effect.
derful flutey "Fauni-gena", whose melody I always suspect the Fall ripped
off for their early classic "Repetition". The mellotron agam totally domi-
45. TANGERINE DREAM- Zeit (Ohr) nates the soundscape, and when "Circulation of Events" drifts in, there's
barely any way of noticing that a new track has appeare~. A g~owing gen-
CHRIS FRANKE- VCS3 synthesizer, cymbals & keyboard erating Kosmische breathing life-of-its-own monster, 1t mhab1ts the same
EDGAR FROESE- gliss guitar & generator territory as Cluster, but could also be a throwback to the s?unds of Zeu.
PETER BAUMANN- VCS3 synthesizer, organ & vibraphon
with "Wahn" finishes the album: it's that track r told you about earlier where they
STEVE SCHROYDER (Ash Ra Tempel)- organ get all chimpy and start primal-screaming their heads off. I so admire T.
FLORIAN FRICKE (Popol Vuh)- moog synthesizer Dream at these times. Art must be achieved any fuckmg possible way and
JOCHEN VON GRUMBCOW (Holderlinl- cello here it is in Top-gear. Drums and mellotron again punctuate the scene and
HANS JOACHIM BRUNE -cello turn it into a garagey groove of truly unlikely effects. For me, this was the
JOHANNES LUCKE- cello last of the classic releases. After this, they fell into the 'easy listening ' of
CHRISTIAN VA LLBRACHT- cello Phaedra, Rubicon and so on. But this was their beginning- six long years
of experimentation and a roaring spectacular success.
Aaaaaah: .. the harm?ny of Zeit is the greatest of any rock'n'roll lullabies.
Its soothmg med1catmg soporific tones are an exquisite flying carpet that
takes you ever so gently up into the Land of Hyper-nod. Though Zeit is not

132
 47. KLAUS SCHULTZE -lrrlicht (Ohr)
KLAUS SCHULTZE h · though he had recorded the as yet unreleased Picture Music but was with-
- synt esrzer, organ. gu itar, voice, choral vocals, percussion out a record deal at the time of that album's recording. Black Dance is a
Man, this is the one where the orchestra mainly drum-machine and acoustic guitar led record, all the instruments
fucking was! And what a star' What all t?ought Klaus was crazy. He conspiring to make the music far more tangible than previous recordings.
Rumbling out of him? · stellar VISIOn pulled this bit of Ancient Two very long pieces form the backbone of Black Dance : the 18 minute
The orchestral rush at the be · . . "Ways of Change" , with its fast picked 12-string, congas and bongos; and
Gewitter: energy rise-energ colf~n~.~ng of the 29 ITilnute "Ebene and the huge 22 minute "Voices of Syn", a phased-drumbox led synthesizer
sweeps the listener clean in~o th p
moment and ... wahhhhhhhhhhhh ~hair..
J: ~so fuckmg exhilarating that it
ew stabs of strings, a hesitant
groove that begins in a soup of bass voice and organ. This last piece occu-
pies all of Side 2 and features Klaus ' typical jamming over a slightly de-
orchestral ascent begins Th . ' e air all around is cleaved in half as the tuned and unvarying minor chord organ. As a 17 year old, this record was
· en It s an abrupt t0 d '
Zzzzzzzzzz of Klaus ' synthe . ak s P an the now familiar my seduction LP, the only one I had . The final piece, "Some Velvet
0 ne a midrange large engines1zershiss
t e over 0 1 1 .
f · ne a ow ow aircraft drone. Phasing", is more standard Klaus - a rhythmless synthesizer shift, yet still
tra, a cheap unmysterious kind of ·r 0 ut bo nowhere c 0 rnes Ice-nng· ·
arches- operating in the same atmospheric territory of the rest of the album . Black
And melodies are to the rear, all fo:::r that takes you back to childhood. Dance works peculiarly well as a complete package, and is ideal for repeat-
synthesizer. And so· it is that the orchestr~emg on the dnftmg WeJght-lagen ed plays. It is unlike his other albums of the period, and is closer in style to
strange ugly tone-less synthe . comes m and out throughout this the later Dune. It's easy to spend a whole evening just flipping Black Dance
SIZer mantra almo t St kh .
t h at the orchestra punctuates th ' s oc ausen m the way back and starting again.
around the synthesizer. But fina~l sp~~::s~ther than harmonising the air
phased berserk thing 1·n what· y,h organ begms to take over a
. IS now t e typic 1Kl S ' 49. WALTER WEGMULLER- Tarot (Kosmische Musik)
chunter. But this grumbling bu .ld a aus chultze minor chord
1 1
wild minor chords and full-votce~ sT~:r y to a full-scale complainathon, the
WALTER WEGMULLER -text & voice
the height of power It's a . .. onic aaaaaaaaaaaahs coming out at
JERRY BEAKERS (Wallenstein)- bass
d eep down resolve. · All thisn mspmng performa
tl d . h
f 11 f .
nee, u o physicality and JURGEN DOLLASE (Wallenstein)- mellotron, organ & piano
magical transference of ideas o~ ~ r~ t out on to the tape with a highly HARTMUT ENKE (Ash Ra Tempel) - w a-gu itar
vamping it up, switching the ;on n d. aus always goes too far. He starts MANUEL GOTISCHING (Ash Ra Tempel) - wa-guitar
chords for who-knows-how-ion :n~ JUsters full-on, catching you on two KLAUS OUADRO SCHULTZE- synthesizers & voice
Noogies. And just when you thint it'd~:t keepmg m there with the psychic HARALD GROSSKOPF (Wallenstein) - drums
and caught in all kinds of w . d ver end, It does. Crashmg to a stop WALTER W ESTRUPP- acoustic guitars, mandolin, pipes. voice. etc.
e1r repeated we· d A BERND WITIHUSER- spoken word
so of crashes in comes the 1 k Ir ness. nd after a minute or
ROSI M ULLER & DIETER DIERKS -choir
next onslaught In stark conotw- teyS?drgan coda, revitalising itself for the
beammg . . ··· ras , 1 e 2 IS a sp· ·t 1 d .
VIbrations of both sound d I" h m ua an cosiTIJc planet This huge double-LP is as all-encompassing as rock' n' roll gets , proving
caught in an asteroid storm of than Jg t to the listener. It is like being that Krautrock's greatest strength was its ability to consume all American
threatening but it is not only e purely non-physical variety. It feels and British music, assimilate it, and then regurgitate it all as though the
constancy of the assault: massagmg and kneading the mind with the Mothers, the Velvets, the Doors, the Stones, the Fugs, the freerock and free-
jazz of Detroit, and the experimentalism of Germany could all be thrown
into some Kosmische Pot. They trul y proved that it could. Beginning like
48. KLAUS SCHULTZE- Black Dance (Brain) the Hendrix-y side of early Funkadelic, "The Narr" is tearing jagged old-
fashioned funk like Detroit loved to make. Jurgen Dollase 's piano is cock-
KLAUS SCHULTZE- synthesizer, or an i .
strrng acoustic, orchestra g , P ana. percuss ron, phase-trumpet, 12- tail-mayhem- really the Funkade lic LP is the best comparison.ln contrast,
ERNST WALTER SIMON- bass voice "Der Magier'' comes on like some Kos mi sche night-rally, all screaming
synths and freaky keyboards before jumping in with both feet to a one-

rB
I will always feel a special affinit ~ .
Schultze LP I ever bought In 9~~ Black D~nce as It was the first Klaus
released Black Dance in its.ori ina! Vrrgm s mid-price label Caroline
chord driving blues that barely establishes itself before breaking down
again as Walter Wegmuller makes hi s proclamations. But explaining the
diversity of this aJbum should not blind anyone to its obvious total cohe-
Urs Amann Dali-esque nightscag ram Records artwork, with typical sion, for there is a unified theme and manner of playing which pushes this
over the record sleeve. And all f~:~~~~h~~trange limbless stickpeople all music out of the reach of other rock ' n' roll musicians. It is the performance
· · IS was Klaus ' third LP release, -the confidence and the sheer ability to make decisions on the spur of the
134
135
 moment which transcends all other scenes. On Tarot, the commitment is to
the project. At no point does the ego of rock musicians become an issue, all · & T.rau meI came
Firing on all cylinders at once, T.nps I on nd
like some Jerry
freewheeling
are subordinate to the main Trip. I cannot drudge endlessly through the y roduced monster sesswn, an audacwus y oose a
record with detailed descriptions. They would be boring and facile, and no ester-pi t al fact it was the multi-instrumentalist talents of Walt
muse. n ac u . d 11 ner of
way could I explain individual pieces which are intended to work as a Westrupp which gave this impression- Zithers, psalters an a . manb .
whole. The mix of the music is so unbalanced that even an Elton John bal- traditional instruments contributing to the s~e;: ~ips ~ ~::.:rz: b::~~~
lad would sound extreme in such surroundings. "Die Herrscherin" is pretl) with the Thomas Rother poem "Lasst Uns Au Je eJse e '
pretty cosmic bongo based island music, but it is followed with the New ful reflection on the journey of a man 's life over a mystic~! drummerle:~
York Lou Reed riffing of "Der Herrscher", as un-Kosmische as it gets. The groove. The spindly free-jazz guitar onbthe emp~ a~eey~~c sJ:;Px;,;~;on
strength of the Cosmic Couriers is their individual ability and their lack of . ure Lee Underwood, somewhere etween uc .
need to impress this at all times. R-U Kaiser also shows incredible judge- :n~ Happy Sad. I'm using any reference I can to explain these songs, -~ut~t
ment for recording these magic men. Like Golowin, Walter Wegmuller Ould be Unfair to suggest that the trip is in any way borrowed. On SI e. '
grabs the attention with the same bollocks as Jim Morrison, and imparts w usion I" is an instrumental verswn
"Ill . of Tim · B uc kl ey •s ''Phantasmagona
.
meaning without the need to be constantly in the face of the listener. In in Two" but that in no way lessens the LP. Trips & Traun:e is tru 1y \ts own
other words, he says his bit and lets the music take you out there. On "Der . ' master, mspire
. . d by the American scene but achievmg exc usive-
Teutomc · of sound and
Wagen/Die Gerechtigkeit, we could be in the middle of an Ash Ra Tempel ly European results, using voices as a constantd hbonzon FX The eight
blitz. I would guess that we are really, there's just more people to contribute
~'0tr~Ienta~
. h son s with ftute-dnven melodies an Izarre ·
to it and they all reveal the same high level of Unification of Intuition. The fuellitn is one of the most beautiful Kosmische pieces ever, work-
ritual and performance is awesome, the sounds bizarre, threatening, com- mmu e . , "D' w · Aim" A repeat-
ing in the same territory as Sergi us Golowm s "Ie . eiss~oi" v~cals over
forting, inspiring and often excruciating all at the same time.
ed cyclical mandolin and Fiddler odn the_ Roo; D~~~o~hole thing builds
So wide are the parameters of Tarot that Klaus Schultze even narrates which Witthuser speaks clearly an onunous Y a . an
"Der Weise" in a delicate boy 's tone which is extremely touching, espe- faster and faster to a fabulous mass of male and:emale si;ge•~i:~~c~en '~
cially at the end when Klaus, his text all finished, apparently unconscious-
dolin tumbling and dancing. On Si?e '~G· t~~ spoH:~.~~: :r non-German
ly begins to hum along with the track. Man, I'm listening to the album as I h s in mid-air like Syd Barrett s o en : . d
write this and I have to tell you Tarot is the whole of rock'n'roll in one dou- s;;~er, the female voice immediately sen~s me off mto Ia~ ch:;~~~-~an­
ble-LP. Now "Die Kraft" sounds like Funkadelic again, wild solo guitars any spoken German is a mysterious magical mcantatwn to a au Ti . &
over tribal drumming and bizarre deep spoken words. Later on, they ' ll I ·ust wish the LP was much lopger; it's all over far too soon;, nps
launch into a Theresa Riot Coin' On-period Sly drum-machine piece that ,raume en ds in the J. aunty "Nimm doch einen..joint, mem freund ' a Euro-
rJ
still sound so uplifting - I have to admire the sheer Poetic Greed of the folk Que Sera Sera singalong advocating mariJUana: . . t "Right On
Cosmic Couriers. They wanted to do it all, and they fucking Achieved!!' "Some people say Hash makes lush, but give me a JOin . .
There's no point in carrying on this ridiculous attempt. BUY THE
ALBUM: IT'S THE SOUND OF THE COSMOS. By Side 4 (CD2).
they've given up on the structure and gone for an early Afterburn. But that 's
cool as well, because it's the greatest craze-out of all. I'll leave now, I'm
gibbering.

50. WITTHUSER & WESTRUPP- Trips & Traume (Ohr 56016)

BERND WITIHUSER- acoustic & e. guitar, vocals
WALTER "WALT" WESTRUPP- guitar. zither, e. mandolin, psalter, percussion,
flute, trombone & trumpet, vocals
BERND "CURNY" ROLAND- bass & vocals
RENEE ZUCKER- drums, percussion, flute & vocals

In March 1971, Rolf-Uirich Kaiser applied his Kosmische rules to the

Witthuser & Westrupp muse with remarkable success. As I wrote earlier,
the atmosphere of the record was steeped in the same vibes as ESP-Disk,
Straight Records and, most of all, the Elektra recordings of Tim Buckley.
136

137
 Bibl iography
nowledgements
Bangs, Lester- Psychotic Reactions & Carbure ,
:hanks must go to the following people without whom this book
Barritt, Brian - The Road of Excess Unpublished "ave been much ha rd er to write:
Bussy, Pascal- The Can Book SA F.
FRE EMAN- These two musicologist brothers have probably forgot-
Ehnert, Gunter- Rock In Deutschland Taurus Boo<s ·e about Krautrock than I'll ever know. They have kept me
Elliot, David- Black Forest Gateau Neu ! comp1a ed of all CD re-issues and rare vinyl coming up for grabs and
-~tly illuminated my sometimes apparently dimmed pathway, both
Fallowell, Duncan- The Can Melody Ma ker
untless articles from their fine magazine Audion and also under
Freeman, A -Faust Breaking all the Rules Aud ·"e phone with numerous snippets of Krautmyth & Kosm ische
Freeman, A- Classic Labels 3: Ohr Records H1srory oora. Thanks again.

Freeman, A - The Many Faces of Amon Duul Auo RICHARD GRAVEn - A chance meeting with Richard's girl·
Nho works at the Poland Street branch of Reckless Records in
Freeman, A- Klaus Schultze, Beyond Recall Auoo00
~ 1ed me to Richard, who sold me all the Cosm ic Courier & Amon
Freeman, S.- The Enigma of Florian Fricke Audion • 'lyl, then proceeded to find and send me all kinds of cassettes,
Kaiser, Rolf-Uirich- Das Buch Der Neuen Po,rmus ecords and transparencies of all the sleeves I could not get hold
r<s very much, man.
Kaiser, Rolf-Uirich & Staff writers- " Die Deutschen
Stone Magazine photo-article 1971 . BAR RITI - I was introduced to Brian Barritt by our mutual friend
Kurtz, Michael- Stockhausen, A Biography Faber & f Chalk, who had told me that Brian's book about the Neolithic
c' Loughcrew, in Ireland, was a stoned gas of epic proportions .
Miles, C -A Short History ofT Dream: Stratosphere- Bnan gave me permission to use portions of his unpublished
Nettlebeck, Uwe- Faust Manifesto Free Leaflet Issued scr,pt The Road of Excess ("It's all information, Julian"), including
Schober, lngeborg- Tanz Der Lemminge RoRoRo 1979 :er on the Cosmic Couriers called "The Kaiser", my joy was
e:e . Thank you, Brian.
Whitwort~; Armstrong - Deutsch Nepal (A Fleeting D
1967-75) Strange Thmgs Are Happening " Magazu'e LAUDER - I sat in Andrew's office and discussed how, in 1969,
·a•,m, then manager of Can and an international pop-star himself
~e •ell a/Rockerfella"). walked into the then teenage Andrew's
. Records office in Ladbroke Grove, London, and gave him No.
· ''le limited first pressing of Can's first LP Monster Movie. Specia l
s 'or the Neu! and Amon Duulll stories, and extra thanks for
~:he foresight to sign them in the first place.

DEUTSCH - I'd like to thank the former Gavin Wall, now one half of
up Tabhunter, for kick-starting me back into Krautrock mode in
er 1991 (C. E.). Had I not hea rd the strains of Neu 2coming f rom
~.,t of the tour bus, this all may never have happened. Then

... An awesome devotion & love to my darling 'A(ife, who

":his book with unbelievable fastidiousness . Though, as she says
' " I am an Ash Ra Tempel groupie ... so I had motivation."

138
139
VlR6JR PRESS RELEASE

~ t!Natlora

In P"'P«otlon; a piece to be perfonned In time, durlne Faust's Forth~omlng to!Jr of Englond .

not so much on uptrlene• as o sltuotlon. to which one h highly tubjecl .

lnflu.nee

o lbt colltd 'thiJt' on which you & faJrt appear aho Include• the Holterherg ptlnclplo,
onli·motttr , relotiYlty , Hitler, reh:rtlvlty, cybtr,.tla , 0 N.A . , game theory, etc.
•sorr..thlng'tln tM olr" ,

thlt Is the tiN we en In love with . the Ab1111rd wot uaher.d in & sooted In tht pi~ of honour ,
thh wos on ofttl'l'lpt to rendtr tn. AbPJrd lmpot.nt . It foiled. tho Abwrd , It It r.aw decided,
h~ medletnal propetrtlet ~ thtt Abatrd, It Ia new dlKOV.,..d, docfdlla ~
bvt that wos f)(NI, learning to eel time with on.'• eon. Wtouflng eac::h moment- didiN:t os o
dot of bfollle . how loccrted the yW you •• you .,. I•'· h thot locotlott «C~Wn towt:rds
O.flnltlon by ottendi'Ai10iltls ouftogt~OI.n cocopf'\ony?

thh h tn. ttme we are In love with . In the mldlt of Fovd-mouzlk time ticks like o bonlb,
In It$ rnlcbt thtl toW fv. of love h lllUffed ovt & relit ogoln & again~ why all thh strongeneu 1
the answ., I• totMthlng to do with polithlng lnlrron to AI fleet time & love, o rtflectlon hen
no IMiftCII'Y . that 1• the ttr~neu of it . but It moons notklng.

Foust hfl'l• m.ntlon.d thGt wcrklnq at th.y do In the tpau b.tw..n concept & ... oll1atlon
::::~: .!'!!:'.!!":o':~!:'!;..~st would !lice to plcry fer you the toUnd of yourself lht•nlftg ,
then we could tolk about altering that CONCiousnea.
then we could fQrv-t ~t mulle ~

"'hollowing cgyes or beau with rnolleh of wool they played .

lefl'llng tn. treble shriek to eel In o silt In the moon they p!uy.ci•,

Detail from the centr e-

opening gimmick sleeve
of Ash Ra Tempel's
eponymous 1st LP.

Ash Ra Tempel: Manuel,

Klaus & Hartmut could
play fo r up to 5 hours at a
time without looking at
each other.

Left: This is Mani

Neumeier of Guru Guru,
a musical giant of a man
who records naked in
Thailand today. He also
played with Harmonia .
 l<lil\H\1\fEiiiC

-~JI

GURU
GURU

Moebius & Plank Rastakrautpasta Kosmische Musik Ohr Records Cluster Cluster l(gatefold)
Sampler
Po pol Vuh In Oen Amon Diiiilll
Klaus Schultze lrrlicht Kraftwerk Kraftwerk Garten Pharoas Phallus Oeilreissue)

Guru Guru U.F.O. Po pol Vuh Hosianna Mantra The Can Soul Amon Diiiil
Oesert45 Paramechanical
World45lback
sleeve)
STOP PRESS. 2ND EDITION NEWS
Go & listen to Agitation Free's Last album. Their 23 minute epic "looping '" is a Witthiiser&
transcendental Faust/Ash Ra Tempel burn-up. Horribly rare and unavailable until Westrupp
now (January 1996 C. E.). Spa lax Records released this sucker just for you. Trips & Traume