WOEBOT

I'll try and brief because these things can be boring. You've got all the famous Krautrock records, where do you go from there? I started researching this about six months ago, on a mission to show how German Prog was indivisible from what we know as "Krautrock" but I ended up confirming to myself the value of that seemingly arbitrary category.

Can, Faust, Neu!, Amon Duul, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, The Cosmic Jokers; these bands really do embody what is most special about German music of the 1970s. All I've been able to do is discover how some tendencies, the influence of Folk music and crucially of Jazz are more important to the picture than the traditionally Rock-ist view would allow.

AR Machines: IV

AR Machines is the vehicle of Achim Reichel, who used to be in Germany's Beatles clones "The Rattles". This is probably his finest record. There's a similar tone on this to the muzzy-folk big-beat of Faust on "So Far". Indispensable.

Broselmaschine: Broselmaschine

Peter Bursch has a reputation as an excellent acoustic guitarist. He's written a famous teach-yourself book for the instrument. This was his band's debut, and along with Emtidi's "Saat" and Hölderlin's "Hölderlins Traum" is one of the "legendary" Kraut-folk LPs on the Pilz label. This record does get a tiny bit blanched-out, a bit derivative of the British Folk Revival, but something like "Gedanken" has enough in the way of bad-tripping on the Rhine, of wilting flowers, to fascinate. Nice.

Brainticket: Cottonwoodhill/Psychonaut

I'd been put off this for years by assuming it was that essentially unavoidable thing: German Prog (Triumvirat, Passport, Wallenstein). Actually it's deranged blues-rock; heavy without ever rocking-out, intensely structured, never devolving into improvisational whimsy. If it wasn't cloaked in Gong-like garb it'd be a front-runner for inclusion into the premier league. Great.

Floh De Cologne: Fliessbandbaby's Beat-Show

I've always wanted a Floh De Cologne record! Thanks to Gareth Cherrystone's excellent wide-ranging Krautrock article at FACT, I got my pointer. Gareth nails its attraction with a description of their "great repetitive riffs", clearly a bunch of politicos seizing guitars for propagandist aims, they nevertheless churn out great bierkeller pfunk. Groovy.

Kosmische Sampler

Bit of a cheat seeing as how it's a sampler of famous Kosmic stuff on the Ohr label: Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream. But it's this archival concision of having just these "top boys" (so many Krautrock compilations are sullied by the addition of crap rock like Jane), and the ability to hear the Kosmic music manifesto spun out across the work of these four bands that makes this such an exquisite document. The packaging is an utterly beguiling re-tool of Escher as well, the gatefold sleeve opening out into a four page booklet. Yum.

Agitation Free: Malesch

Michael Hoenig and the boys' Egyptian road-trip. I've remarked before how the budget travel industry grew out of the expanded horizons of hippy culture, anyway the Germans have always been prodigious travelers. In India, besides the natives, I mainly came across Germans and Australians. There's but the very slightest influence of Egyptian music on this though, some snatches of ethnographic recordings, a smidgen of percussion. It's headphone tourism I suppose. Some lovely riffs here though, like it's successor "2nd" it's at its best when the band is in Quicksilver Messenger mode, like on the fab title track for instance. Nice.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Durch Die Wuste

The Roedelius cult, honorable initiates being electronic music guru Jon Leidecker and label boss Seb Morlu, have it that this is one of the man's greatest solo efforts. It's a mixed-bag of driving rock, synth and drum work-outs and ambient interludes, that perhaps hasn't quite arrived at the low-key as modus-operandi of his later stuff. On the plus-side the variety is engaging. Not bad.

Xhol Caravan: Electrip

If you skirt the origins of Krautrock, more often than not you'll find practitioners involved in Jazz. Jaki Liebezeit was a member of Manfred Schoof Free-Jazz quintent, and Mani Neumeier and Uli Trepte (the square root of Guru Guru) were in swiss pianist Irene Schweizer's Trio. This excellent Xhol Caravan LP, often described as Proto-Kraut, comes on like an electrified version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", all weird shuffling near-Chamber-Jazz riddims. Brill.

Yatha Sidhra: A Meditation Mass

This is a revelation, I was stoked to be able to score an original vinyl copy with the LP's name die-cut from out of the gatefold cover, revealing an illustration from the Tibetan Book of The Dead, right there a delicious mash-up of Pop Art and hippy spirituality. On first few listenings this glid right past my ears, but slowly the tom-toms acquire a totemic weight, the flute (again from within the Jazz idiom) becomes grave. It slowly dawned on me that this melancholic, metronomic music is precisely the sound Neu! would have made had they not been fired up on amphetamines. Fantastic.

Embryo: Rocksession

My LP doesn't have its cover unfortunately. I don't have any other Embryo LPs, there's a good history at Gnosis and a nice fan's perspective at this guy's site. What one's listening to is the interface between the heavyweight German Jazz/Fusion label MPS/Saba and German rock. Like Embryo, characters such as Niagara's Klaus Weiss and Wolfgang Dauner (who would probably be in here if I liked his stuff) also straddle the divide between German Jazz and Rock. I suppose the equivalent axis in Britain is the Keith Tippett/Soft Machine nexus. To be honest I don't know what all the fuss is about with this band. OK they have chops, and I'm sure there are breaks to be sampled here, but unlike something like Hatfield and The North who really made electric Jazz their own, this doesn't have any atmosphere. Pleasant enough, I suppose.

So, yeah, there it is.