Krautrock #20: Cluster - Cluster II

This is all of side one of the album and the last track is the first piece of Cluster music I heard back in ’78 or so crammed at the end of one side of a Brain Records sampler (£2.99 though over the years that damn record must have cost me hundreds of squiddlies). Things have developed from the ’71 album but we’re still a long way from the pastoral sounds of the mid-late ‘70’s.
Plas sounds like the music is a 3-D entity, a plastic form that is hovering in the air being moulded by the laboratory technicians tweaking the tone generators. Yes it’s all gone a bit Jon Pertwee around here. Im Süden changes things by having a loop of an insistent guitar phrase that nags at you while more machines hum in the background. Bizarrely enough another machine is making cicada type noises, is this the island of Dr. Moreau?
Fur Dïe Katz I won’t say anything more about other than its lovely and at 3 minutes makes my idea of a perfect pop song.
Plas
Im Süden
Fur Dïe Katz
Mega 320 powerissimo
djh

Krautrock #19: Cluster - Cluster '71

15:33 Yup that’s the track name. If I said that Cluster (and the earlier Kluster to be found later in the list) pre-dated Industrial Music buy a goodly number of years- I hope I’m not putting people off. You might also mention mad Mr. L. Russolo and his “intonarumori “ noise making machines. Although the guitars can occasionally be heard in the mix it’s the fog of electronic noise a disorientating swirl that really grabs you. It’s not in anyway threatening like alpha-male posturing of far too much industrial music.
This is the more Kosmiche musik side of the Krautrock Coin (the other is more prog meets R ‘n’ B) and is where I got on the bus and where I’m happiest most of the time. Makes sense if my point of entry was Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Klaus Schulze.
15:33
feel the everlovin' power of the mighty 320
djh

Krautrock #18: Can - Unlimited Edition

Why put an odds and sods compilation, even if it is a re-issued expanded odds and sods compilation in a must have top 100? Well we’re talking about Can here. Legendarily right from the outset having their own recording studio meant that they could tape everything (though I’m sure I read that much tape was re-used, i.e. recorded over). In any event it’s left hundreds of hours of music that includes much that is first rate if not exactly what was needed for whatever project was currently on the boil.
In a sense I’m cheating here as I first came across Can in 1981 with a Virgin compilation called Incandescence. Gomorrha, Empress.. and Mother Upduff all feature there. It was a wonderful comp of latter day material albeit including early material re-worked. Coming as it did many years before the re-issue boom it was a complete eye opener. I guess though that I was one of only 6 people who bought it.
Gomorrha, from December ’73 making it from either the same sessions as Future Days or immediately afterwards, it continues that wonderful drifting / floating feeling I mentioned in the previous post. Is that a touch of Hawaiian guitar? The piano lends it a more Satie-esque nocturnal fee. Gorgeous.
E.F.S. no 7 Well we had to have at least one example of the groups famous Ethnological Forgery Series on here. It’s an idea copped by those Sun City Girls, see even their stealing isn’t original, never mind we love them anyhow. I chose this short example as I love the sound of a keyboard imitating a saz or similar.
The Empress and the Ukraine King It’s a song! It’s early Can with this and the next track featuring Malcolm Mooney on vocals (and why does his English have such a strong German accent, given he was an ex-US serviceman based in West Germany?) Slightly more sprightly and featuring Jaki Liebezeit on an unknown reed instrument.
What should I say about Mother Upduff? Can in Can telling Urban Legend stories shocker. Long time readers of my zine splurges could easily have guessed that this crazy tale was going to turn up. I’m still not sure how the octopus killed the old lady. Enjoy! It’s been pointed out elsewhere that absurdist humour, frequently Zappa inspired, is a mainstay of so-called Krautrock... well here’s The Can, as they were probably known at the time, sticking their big toe in the water.
Cutaway is another track added at the last minute, far and away the longest on this collection at nearly 19 minutes. Again I thought that to include it was a bit of a piss-take but I enjoyed the tune so much when I was trying to select what to put up. Off-kilter rhythms and a melodica making an appearance, everything sounds de-tuned maybe they're playing in some eastern scale I what not of. Oh and Cutaway because the track is made of fragments originating from some very different improvisions, bits of studio chat etc. You even get the sound of someone fooling around inside a piano and if that doesn’t make your gravy lumpy I don’t know what will. It’s another piece from ’69, so we get a nice balance with the late sixties, early seventies and mid seventies. Can may have used the same blueprint through these years but the sound they achieved has grown markedly in the different periods. Of course there’s nothing from the later period on this comp which is a damn shame (see Can Anthology for that), but if we get through this project I’m thinking of a cunning plan to sort out all manner of lost classics that didn’t make the 100 cut
Transcendental Express - Reasons for inclusion is that perhaps only Can would dare to have a banjo substituting for a balalaika, makes it all sound very Morricone in a weird fashion. I think it was a fairly regular thing to let Michael Karoli stretch himself a bit on different instruments, he was after all a hell of a player who (thankfully) didn’t get the chance to solo, Can being Can. Anyway this ’75 track is here as a reminder that the ethnic influences grew more pronounced in later years. Obviously something they’d always been interested in, it put 'ahem' a bit of extra spice in the stew to keep things fresh.
One last point about all the Can tracks, just after I’d finished these notes I came across a web piece by Simon Reynolds that notes that Can’s working method is exactly that employed by Miles Davis and Teo Macero. It’s included in a history of Krautrock page that also includes a bit of Lester Bangs. No in depth insight but a good read. Find it here:

Gomorrha
E.F.S. #7
The Empress & The Ukraine King
Mother Upduff
Cutaway
Transcendental Express
ripped @ 320 you know you love it
djh

Krautrock #17: Can - Future Days

I was going to be a total meany here and only offer the title track; it takes up half of what would have been side one of the lp. For me it’s one of the groups finest moments. In contrast the end of the side Spray and Moonshake feel like codas. The monster track which almost didn’t make the cut is the twenty minute Bel Air which is more a suite of numbers, though it flows together in that unique Can style. Although the drumming is still propelling things along with some urgency, echoed by Karoli’s high guitar notes it still feels as if its grounded in some pastoral stasis. Maybe even floating in a lagoon. It approaches beauty for me in a way that surprises every time I listen. Anyway as long as you lot promise to buy the album I’m sure we can get away with a little more research material.
Two years on from Tago Mago and the sound has changed. I think this was the groups first use of a sixteen track studio (previously wonder-kid Czukay had had made do with only two tracks). The sound is consequently fuller without being slick. It could be down to a sheen of string synth type keyboards from Irmin Schmit, anyway it adds atmosphere without being intrusive
I’d say that this was a fully integrated album, the quintet are working as a cohesive unit and Damo has started singing actual English phrases, even if they still don’t mean anything.
Future Days was Suzuki’s last outing which hasn’t stopped him from trading on his reputation for the last 34 years, not bad for a vocalist (and more successfully than the only other similar singer that comes to mind Arthur Brown). If you like this album (and you’d better) then I’d point you to the mighty Vernal Equinox, two albums down the line on Landed - as being something of a lost masterpiece.
Future Days
Bel Air
ripped at 320 feel the force
djh

Krautrock #16: Can - Tago Mago

Well what do you say about one of the most cited albums of all time? I guess Tago Mago rates up there with Trout Mask Replica as being the most famous work of a group and also one of the most difficult. Certainly I recall MW saying what a mind fuck he found Aumgn compared with the rest of the album. It’s certainly the “darker” side of Can and for that reason I nearly chose the track; however there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s Halleluhwah that most often gets cited and seeing as it’s also the longest track…
Then again I chose the one / two punch of Paperhouse and Mushroom that start the album off. On vinyl or cd there is a deliberately clunky 0 second edit between the two tracks, to my mind it foreshadows the edits you get today on digital players when you select no gap between tracks when one continuous piece of music has been arbitrarily split. Always makes me think of a dj lining up the a and b side of a single but the drums don’t quite match up. For me these relatively compact tracks are a sort of distilled essence of the band at this time and to me show that it was the rhythm section of Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming and Damo Suzuki’s vocals that are at the centre of things driving the improv / freak out along. That’s right I’m putting Damo in the rhythm section here. Give it a spin and think about it. There’s more to vocals than rhyming moon / June and fire / desire! The set is more or less live in the studio and I’m guessing Holger Czukay spent more time editing for length and getting the interesting bits than actually polishing up the sound.
There’s a somewhat enthusiastic review on AMG here
Paperhouse
Mushroom
Halleluhwah
Ripped at 320 feel the force!
djh

Krautrock #15: Brave New World - Impressions on Reading Aldous Huxley

As one digs deeper beyond your usual Can/Faust/Neu/TD starting points, there's a whole new layer of little musical gems to be found and this is one of the best, from a short-lived Hamburg group. Mix of crunchy rock jamming with serious prog overtones -- mostly those duelling flutes... always very prog, a flute -- but also some more medieval touches and a genuinely groovy Stylophone-through-fuzzbox interlude. We've had a few side-long tracks recently so I eschewed posting "The End" from side two, but if you like all three of these imagine them all being played at once.

Sample tracks (one download):
02. Alpha Beta Gamma Delta
03. Lenina
04. Soma
(mp3, 31.6 mb)


As always, more background at Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Gnosis has a good piece on this particular record.

Krautrock #14: Between - And the Waters Opened

Always mentioned in the same breath as the Third Ear Band, Between were a less dark but equally intriguing mix of sometimes magical arrangements and traditional instruments flung together in new combinations. This is their second and most acclaimed record; later discs got very bland, but here the tense pull between (arf) the four elements works quiet wonders. Robert Eliscu's oboe, often the lead, makes for an unusual tonal palette; he also gave great value on some early/mid Popol Vuh discs.

Sample tracks (one download):
01. And the Waters Opened
03. Syn
04. Devotion
(mp3, 28.4 mb)


Crack in the Cosmic Egg has a little more on the band, and also on the increasingly austere and aescetic further works of sole surviving band member Peter Michael Hamel (no relation to Peter Hammill, of course).

Krautrock No. 13: Ash Ra Tempel - Join Inn

Bit of a tricky decision, here, especially given that I've had this album for two or three years now and never particularly liked it. The influence of the untrammeled ambient magnificence of Agitation Frei's "Looping IV" pushes me towards the "cosmic drifting Schulze synthesizer-dominated" b-side of the lp, even though Schulze's Timewind is another platter that never did much for me over the years. More drifting than kosmiche says this jury.

Ash Ra Tempel - "Jenseits"

The Jimmy Cake in Dub

Here's a pair of dubby miniatures I stumbled across in my Jimmy Cake remix files...

Jim Cake Dub

Hey, have you seen the Red Planet mp3s posted a few days ago on the other Frank's blog ?

The Jimmy Cake Meet the Gagaku Rockers Uptown

This ain't Krautrock...

...it's something I've been toying with for the past year, on and off...

...a remix fusing two Jimmy Cake tracks (the Opposite of Addiction and This Used to be the Future) with one from the Japanese Imperial Household Performers in the Gagaku style, named Etenraku.

The Jimmy Cake Meet the Gagaku Rockers Uptown

Thanks to Scott for providing the Etenraku part!

Enjoy,
Rory.

Krautrock #12: Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen

A year later and Schulze is gone, but now there are vocals, courtesy of a totally wird gent known as John L. A distinctly acquired taste, he sounds in parts on side one's "Darkness & Light" like he's paving the way for the ultimate acid freak vocals on Brainticket's Cottonwoodhill. As is becoming traditional, the comedown on the other side is far more sedate, with "Suche & Liebe" sounding distinctly like "Echeos"-era Pink Floyd, all floaty synths and stretched out Gilmour guitar. But before that, this thunders out...

2. Darkness: Flowers Must Die

EDIT TO INCLUDE LINK TO THE RIGHT BLOODY FILE: Download here (mp3, 11.1 mb)
(Well, it is called Div Share for a reason.)

Manuel Göttsching's website remains useful, but again our friends at Progweed have some things to say, as does the somewhat intense fellow whose fansite is extraordinarily exhaustive.

Krautrock #11: Ash Ra Tempel - Ash Ra Tempel

Ah, Manuel Göttsching. Yes, all the groovy fuckers know him for his early 80s solo trance epic, E2-E4, much beloved of ealy 90s Italian house producers and that Carl Craig chap. Back at the start, though, he was another longhair with his power trio, originally called the Steeple Chase Bluesband (mm, catchy) and also featuring a gent called Klaus Schulze on, erm, drums. Klaus, late of the first line-up of Tangerine Dream with Edgar Froese and Conrad Schnitzler, and soon to pioneer classic German trip-out synth stuff. Here, though, the freak flag flies high on two side-long workouts housed in another wacky cover, this time a central fold-out thing. The flip's "Traummaschine" is trancey and pacey but this rocks like a good 'un.

1. Amboss

Download here (mp3, 18.3 mb)

Manuel Göttsching's website focuses more on current work solo and as part of the shortened Ashra, but again our friends at Progweed have some things to say.