Here's an extended edit of one of Can's crown jewels, complete with an intro, outro and some extended breaks. Only the intro & outro are quantized. Download it from the Soundcloud player or the Mediafire links below:
Here is a nice slab of incredibly rare cosmic disco provided by the obscure Krautrock unit, Methusalem. As far as I can tell, the band released one album called Journey Into The Unknown and a couple of singles. Of those, "Robotism" was their only 12" release. Good luck finding an OG copy of either.
I am always blown away by the 1970's view of the future and/or outer space. For the most part, Dexter Wansel had that shit on lock. But don't sleep on Methusalem's Dali-inspired airbrushed vision of robot insanity:
If you absolutely must have this track on vinyl (which is obviously the case), it was reissued on the excellent third volume of the Disco Galaxia compilation series and was also on the tenth installment of the Automan Edit 12"es.
Speaking of robots, Mike Tee and I return to the Medusa Lounge turntables tonight for the June edition of Robotique. It's the first day of summer, so come sweat with us.
Time for some twisted German sounds that start in the bottom of your gut and camp out in your cerebellum. For this, you can thank Kraut keyboard impresario Florian Fricke. This is the first track on the first Popol Vuh album, Affenstunde.
I'm no DJ, like some of the other good folks posting on this blog, but I do know a slammin' beat when I hear one. It may not surprise you that the band behind this monstrosity is German, but you will be surprised to know that it's from 1968... at least until the sitars come in. But hey, who cares if a little patchouli wafts onto the dance floor?
Little info--let alone an LP still in print--exists about Motherhood. But thanks to the compilation Kraut! Demons! Kraut! we can still enjoy their literally groundbreaking (blast the base if you want to know what I mean) psychedelic rock.
With my inaugural post on Dollar Bin Jams I wanted to kick things off right, in the true spirit of For-Nerds-By-Nerds that this blog was founded upon. That being said, what could be more nerd-core than Krautrock, the Dungeons & Dragons of music?
And I'll start by cheating a bit. This first band, Magical Ring, isn't German at all; they're French, which I suppose makes them the direct opposite of German. Still, this track from their 1977 release Light Flight/More and More is a creeping psychedelic guitar workout that definitely wears a Krautrock influence on its sleeve. Plus, I thought it would sound great as a kind of overture to the rest of this post.
There's next to nothing about Magical Ring on the interweb, but I did find a copy of the record on sale for $266, so grab this like Paris in 1940.
One of the most mythical bands off all time, Faust is nonetheless distinguished for being one of the first signed to rebel billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Records. Between their breakup in 1975 and their reunion in 1990 the whereabouts of the group remain unknown. "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" is the lead track off their sophomore release, So Far, and sounds something like a deconstructed '70s pop song, albeit a little more repetitive.
Cluster was probably the most innovative group in German space rock, also known as kosmische, and featured guest artists from Neu!'s Michael Rother to Brian Eno. 1974's Zuckerzeit was a departure, in that it came down from outer space in favor of a sound approaching electronic pop, which narrowly predated Kraftwerk's Autobahn.
This would be in the opening credits to Werner Herzog's adaptation of Pulp Fiction.
Back into the cosmos. I don't know what else to say about this except "freaking epic." And eerie, good Halloween mood music if that's your thing. My girlfriend loves Tangerine Dream but doesn't much care for electronic dance music. Figure that one out. This is a 320kbps CD rip, and it's almost 18 minutes long, so serious nerds only.
In the 1980s, Harald Grosskopf was the drummer for Ash Ra Tempel, the other big kosmische band and the primary vehicle for Manuel Göttsching (whose landmark E2-E4 I would absolutely love to post in its righteous entirety, pending a discussion with my colleagues on possible legal ramifications). Grosskopf also pursued a decent solo career in his own right, expanding on Ash Ra's flirtation with New Age; here's a less cheesy example from his 1980 LP, Synthesist. For Echoes, I'm John Diliberto.
Harmonia was a veritable Krautrock supergroup, comprised of key players in the scene, and was arguably an ideal representation of its signature motorik chug. Brian Eno called them "the world's most important rock group" and would later collaborate in several sessions. Although Kraftwerk would ultimately become the most widely influential band of that era, Harmonia is often considered the flagship Krautrock band, a perfect encapsulation of its time and place. This track is off their 1974 debut, Musik von Harmonia.
We've come full circle here because I'm cheating again. Davey Jones isn't German, but he moved to Berlin in the late 1970s to produce a trilogy of groundbreaking, Krautfluenced albums with help from, you guessed it, fellow ex-pat Brian Eno. Heroes was the middle child of the three, released 30 years ago this month in fact (see, I knew what I was doing). The title track is still my all-time favorite Bowie song. Amazing guitar solo from Robert Fripp, great use of oscillators, but Bowie's vocal is unreal. The lyric about a couple embracing against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, defying that symbol of overwhelming oppression with such a visceral display of emotion, chokes me up every time. Critic Ned Raggett put it best: "Not even ending up as a Microsoft commercial theme could quench the sheer power and beauty of 'Heroes.'"
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