Krautrock
Can: The Can: Monster Movie (United Artists)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, May 1970
THINGS ARE certainly beginning to happen in Germany. ...
Amon Düül: Amon Düül: A Science Fiction Rock Spectacle
Sleevenotes by Lester Bangs, unpublished, for Dance of the Lemmings, 1971
Part One: The Aluminium Revolution IT HAD TO HAPPEN! It's been some seven years now since the impact of American popular ...
Interview by James Johnson, NME, February 1972
OF ALL the heavy German bands Can are perhaps the most interesting and could prove the most influential. Next month they tour Britain and, judging ...
Kraftwerk, Nektar, Amon Düül, Can, Faust: Krautrock: Germany Calling
Overview by Ian MacDonald, NME, December 1972
The first in-depth examination of the strangest rock scene in the world ...
Overview by Ian MacDonald, NME, December 1972
BOMB BLASTS AND THE BEAT: PART TWO OF IAN MACDONALD'S DEFINITIVE SURVEY OF GERMAN ROCK ...
Popol Vuh, Amon Düül, Faust: Krautrock: Germany Calling #3
Overview by Ian MacDonald, NME, December 1972
From Amon Düül to Faust's new sound-world ...
Profile and Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, March 1973
IT IS TWELVE noon, and in the smoky sunshine of a London afternoon a group of German longhairs are unloading a huge Mercedes truck full ...
Faust: The Sound of the Eighties
Comment by Ian MacDonald, NME, March 1973
A LOW buzzing sound, at first almost subliminal, emanates from a position somewhere between the twin stereo speakers. It wavers, hesitantly, from side to side ...
Faust: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, June 1973
LONDON'S RAINBOW looked like a Berliner Ensemble production of a rock musical version of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. The stage backdrop had been raised, revealing ...
Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, October 1973
FAUST IV is the chronological successor of So Far (The Faust Tapes being from the period of the transparent album) and, as such, represents the ...
Live Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, November 1973
Faust: The Guildhall, Plymouth ...
Faust: We're Just Trying To Be Here Now
Live Review by Ian MacDonald, NME, November 1973
Faust: Rainbow Theatre, London ...
Interview by Nick Kent, NME, February 1974
NICK KENT slinks unobtrusively into the back-room for something a little stronger ...
Amon Düül: Amon Duul: Vive La Trance
Review by Gary Sperrazza!, Shakin' Street Gazette, April 1974
GERMANY IS HARDLY the center of the rock universe. So the only rock and roll that seeped in during the late 60's were from those ...
Can: They Have Ways Of Making You Listen…
Profile by Ian MacDonald, NME, November 1974
ONE NIGHT IN NOVEMBER 1969 the phone rang in Irmin Schmidt's Cologne home. Schmidt got out of bed to answer it and found himself talking ...
Tangerine Dream: Is This The End Of Rock As We Know It?
Interview by Max Bell, NME, November 1974
EVER HEARD of a group who would rather not be visible to their audience and let the music work on its own? Seems peculiar even ...
Tangerine Dream: Rubycon and Alpha Centauri
Review by Chris Salewicz, NME, April 1975
IF I'VE ASSESSED the vibe correctly, it would seem that the appropriate critical response to Tangerine Dream is to dismiss Edgar Froose, Chris Franke and ...
Tangerine Dream: 1983 — A Synthesiser I Will Be
Interview by Chris Salewicz, NME, April 1975
Do TANGERINE DREAM, wizzkids of organic electronic rock, play their instruments?Or do the instruments play them? ...
Review by John Mendelsohn, Rolling Stone, June 1975
NOT TO TAKE anything away from Ralf, Florian, Klaus or even Wolfgang – who are probably real nice geezers once you get to know them ...
Kraftwerk: The Final Solution To The Music Problem?
Interview by Lester Bangs, NME, September 1975
In the beginning there was feedback: the machines speaking on their own, answering their supposed masters with shrieks of misalliance. In the music of KRAFTWERK we ...
Interview by Miles, NME, November 1975
YOU WON'T GET all sweaty or break a leg while listening to Tangerine Dream, but you will not be unmoved. You see, they haf vays ...
Tangerine Dream: Ricochet (Virgin) 38 min*****
Review by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, November 1975
THE TANGS RULE. Jamie had seen it spray painted on walls all over town. In underpasses. On the back walls of railway sidings – 20 ...
Can: Tales of the Supernatural
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, December 1975
I WAS SITTING in a standard hotel bedroom the other day, chewing the fat with a citizen by the name of Irmin Schmidt. ...
Kraftwerk: Exceller-8, Radio-Activity
Review by Miles, NME, January 1976
EXCELLER 8 IS a 'best of album taken from the three Vertigo albums that Kraftwerk have released in this country and it's a good selection ...
Review by Kris Needs, ZigZag, July 1976
THIS IS ONE for hardened Can-atics, being basically a collection of snippets which haven't made it onto past Can albums. ...
Review by Miles, NME, September 1976
CAPITOL RADIO are blitzing Can's top-40 commercial rock number 'I Want More' right now; it is typical that the band would choose to issue it ...
Kraftwerk: 2 a.m. Newcastle Hotel
Interview by Geoff Barton, Sounds, September 1976
'We not only try to brainwash people... we succeed' ...
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, October 1976
"IRMIN Schmidt was transporting a washing machine down the stairs, and it fell on top of him." ...
Tangerine Dream: Singalongatangs
Report and Interview by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, November 1976
YOU WANT a picture of prosperity?Take a gander over there, then. Yeah, that guy sitting on the floor at the back of the audience. That's ...
Tangerine Dream: Twilight of the Dream
Report and Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, December 1976
TANGERINE DREAM seem to have strange ideas about off-duty entertainment. ...
Tangerine Dream: Palais Des Sports, Paris
Live Review by Miles, NME, December 1976
T-DREAM had no support and so they started cold, but soon as the lights dimmed the Palais Des Sports audience roared and cheered and lit ...
Live Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, December 1976
DOWN THE stairs and into the hall... and into a time warp. With the powerful aroma of smouldering illicit substances and the subdued, attentive audience, ...
Can: Free Trade Hall, Manchester
Live Review by Andy Gill, NME, December 1976
IN ONE OF the most glorious cases of mismatching ever seen on a British stage, Can are preceded tonight by an agonisingly kitsch comedy jug-band ...
Interview by Glenn O'Brien, Interview, 1977
KRAFTWERK is Germany's top pop group, and that's saying something because plenty of original sounds have been amanating from Deutschland since the psychedelic era. But ...
Peter Baumann, Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream: The 120 Decibel Dream - Warning: This Page is Heavy
Interview by Miles, NME, July 1977
TANGERINE DREAM have released an album — Stratosfear — written a movie score for Friedkin, completed a successful American tour and two members have released ...
Guru Guru, Uli Trepte: Uli Trepte
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, September 1977
"Making music in the long run is a matter of character, not talent" – U.T. ...
Kraftwerk: Terminal Weirdness à Paris
Report by Andy Gill, NME, April 1978
(Airport terminal, that is. Meanwhile somewhere up in some posey skyscraper, KRAFTWERK are boring everyone stiff...) ...
Kraftwerk: The Man Machine (Capitol)
Review by Andy Gill, NME, April 1978
IT IS RATHER unfortunate that Kraftwerk's current popularity is based, to a large extent, on the chic appeal of David Bowie's favour. True, such favour ...
Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, April 1978
SEE THE record cover. See the four men in red shirts and black ties. See them stand in line. See them in profile in the ...
Interview by Paul Morley, NME, May 1978
EDGAR FROESE reflects on days of hope and dissipation, and wonders why the photographer's hiding behind a pillar. ...
Review by Ian Penman, NME, July 1978
Reach Out, We'll Be There (Ha, Ha – Fooled You) ...
Overview by Jeff Walker, Waxpaper, September 1978
IN JAPAN, LOCAL bands copy both the look and sound of Western rockers – an imitative art form which thrives while the fans wait for ...
Popol Vuh: Nosferatu (Egg)****
Review by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, April 1979
SHROUDED IN mystique since their inception in the early 70's, Popol Vuh are arguably the least known exponents of Teutonic 'rock' music in this country. ...
Popol Vuh, 10,000 Maniacs: Popol Vuh: Nosferatu
Review by Max Bell, NME, May 1979
POPOL VUH'S extended title for this soundtrack to Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu is 'On The Way To A Little Way'. That says a lot ...
Interview by Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, June 1979
Can Nina Hagen become Germany's most important contribution to radical pop culture since Brecht? CHRIS BOHN learns about growing up on the wrong side of ...
Review by Andy Gill, NME, July 1979
IF I WERE to tell you that a record you've probably never heard of was the album that David Bowie's been trying to make these ...
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 1980
Can's first singer Malcolm Mooney talks about joining Can, the writing and recording process, gigging with Stockhausen, and the decline of his mental health and ultimate breakdown.
File format: mp3; file size: 56.1mb, interview length: 1h 01' 40" sound quality: ***
Interview by Mark Cooper, Record Mirror, February 1982
"I'm not nuts," says RALF HÜTTER of mighty Germanic megastars KRAFTWERK. "Blimey," gasps MARK COOPER (PHD Engineering and Knitting) in disbelief. Well, is he or ...
Profile and Interview by Garry Bushell, Sounds, July 1982
AHA AHA AHA...Video didn't kill any radio star who wasn't already tottering dodo-like on the edge of extinction anyway. The best and brightest radio stars ...
Holger Czukay, Can, Neu!, Irmin Schmidt: A Trance In Tatters: Krautrock und Beyond
Review by Richard Cook, NME, November 1982
Can: Delay 1968 (Spoon); Holger Czukay: Canaxis (Spoon); Irmin Schmidt: Filmmusik Vol 2 (Spoon); Neu!: Black Forest Gateau (Cherry Red) ...
Can: Malcolm R. Mooney: An Interview
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 1983
WITHOUT A DOUBT Germany's Can was one of the pioneering groups of what has become known today as EuroRock. Malcolm Mooney, a black American, was ...
Einstürzende Neubauten: Einsturzende Neubauten: Acklam Hall, Notting Hill
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
IT IS THE professed aim of Einsturzende Neubauten to exhaust music, to drain it until it implodes into a single catastrophic moment. This, however, is ...
Holger Czukay: The Lunatic Has Taken Over The Asylum
Interview by Biba Kopf, NME, May 1984
"WHEN I WAS 39 it was a very special year for me," reminisces Holger Czukay. ...
Live Review by Biba Kopf, NME, November 1986
IT BEGINS with a word that sounds like BOING! The BOING! Triggers a controlled BOOM!, blanketed by a downbeat TSCHAK! In case you didn't catch ...
Faust: Return of a Legend: Munic & Elsewhere
Review by Biba Kopf, NME, January 1987
MEPHISTO CALLING. Good news – Faust are back. Released from a devil's pact with silence, they're noisily celebrating the repossession of their souls. A new ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Dery, New York Times, June 1991
WHEN VOLUNTEERS are needed for the first brain chips – surgically inserted microcircuits that, the theory goes, will boost brainpower – Kraftwerk will be first ...
Interview by Mark Dery, Keyboard, October 1991
Keyboard: THIS IS your first tour in almost a decade. Why now? ...
Julian Cope: Krautrocksampler: One Head’s Guide To The Great Kosmiche Musik - 1968 Onwards
Review by Simon Reynolds, MOJO, December 1995
Since it deals with that most fetishised of genres, Krautrocksampler is appropriately enough an intensely fetishisable object. Purportedly the first of a whole line of ...
Amon Düül: Communing With Chaos: Amon Düül II
Retrospective and Interview by Edwin Pouncey, Wire, The, February 1996
WHEN THE GERMAN rock explosion (now recognised as Krautrock) first hit these shores in the early 70s, the temptation to label it as a thriving ...
Neu!, Amon Düül, Faust: Welcome To The Machine: Kraut Rock
Overview by John McCready, Face, The, November 1996
Julian Cope has championed it, new Nineties bands are ransacking it and the ageing German hippies that first created it are now packing in techno ...
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
Chilly symphonies and misty synth-scapes: the Gothic revival starts here ...
Retrospective by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
IT'S SOMETIME IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER OF 1973-4, and Faust are playing Sheffield City Hall. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
Do the men play the machines? Or the machines play the men? How four humanoids with one vision revolutionised pop. ...
Can: Art Terrorism! Sensory Derangement! Holistic Vomiting! Available Weekends…
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
CAN ALWAYS added to more than the sum of their experience and influences. When the group made the seminal Monster Movie in 1968, three of ...
Faust: Deconstructing the nuts, bolts and girders of rock - or simply having a smashing time?
Interview by Andy Gill, MOJO, April 1997
A DAY OR TWO after their Queen Elizabeth Hall concert, my ears are still ringing when I go to interview Jean-Hervé Peron, one of the ...
Profile by John McCready, Independent, The, May 1997
IT IS inevitable and happens to everyone. James Brown's new bag is now full of holes. David Bowie, a former ideas factory, is reduced to ...
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, August 1997
A considerable portion of the German experimentalists’ output re-released on CD and limited issue vinyl: 24 albums spanning 1968-1994, including original issues, anthologies, compilations, and ...
Can: Automation For The People
Guide by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 1997
A DEEP DISTANT DETONATION ECHOED by an aftershock and a seething high-frequency fallout of fire and rain. Out of this drizzle rises a robotic one-bar ...
Holger Czukay: No Borders Here: Holger Czukay’s Movies and On The Way To Peak Of Normal
Review and Interview by Rob Chapman, MOJO, March 1998
Mute’s admirable disinterring of the entire Can-related catalogue reaches Holger The Bassman’s first two solo albums. ...
Ash Ra Tempel, Can: Krautrock Revisited: Life After Can and Ash Ra Tempel
Essay by Richard Gehr, Spin, July 1998
EVEN BEFORE KRAFTWERK'S great mid-'70s cars, trains, and airwaves trilogy, Krautrock was largely about getting away – especially from Germany itself. The band Can in ...
Rammstein: Nude Power Generation
Report and Interview by Ian Fortnam, Kerrang!, November 1998
Last month, German shock metallers RAMMSTEIN were branded Nazis by the British press. We have flown to America to uncover the truth. We will subsequently ...
Can: Hildegard Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann: Can Box: Book
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, February 1999
IN 1968 CAN walled themselves up in a Cologne studio and, give or take the odd defection, stayed there for the next nine years making ...
Irmin Schmidt, Can, Holger Czukay: The Can Founders: Columbiahalle, Berlin
Live Review by Richard Cook, MOJO, May 1999
Running order: Holger Czukay/Michael Karoli's Sofortkontakt/Irmin Schmidt & Kumo/Jaki Liebezeit's Club Off Chaos ...
Uli Trepte, Guru Guru: The Beat Has Gone: Thoughts and Opinions 'bout a Long Forgotten Scene
Retrospective by Uli Trepte, Eurock, 2000
IN 1968 A mutated kind of mindset emerged in then West Germany to form a scene that turned the tide of times, after the war ...
Amon Düül: Hallucination on Sustain: 25 Years of Amon Düül II
Retrospective by Scott Fischer, Eurock, 2000
AS AN ESTABLISHED trend of musical non-adventurism became the keynote of the early '70s, an alternative motif of sonic exploration became necessary and was provided ...
Faust: The Faust Tapes: Faust Epiphany
Retrospective by Don Watson, Wire, The, September 2000
ONE OF THE EFFECTS of the rabid reissue programs that accompanied the CD revolution was to offer shrinkwrapped package tours into your teenage bedrom. Music, ...
Faust: Nosferatu Soundtrack, Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, October 2000
Interludes With A Vampire ...
Faust: The Wumme Years 1970-1973
Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, November 2000
A 5-CD BOX SET comprising the band’s first two Polydor LPs, Faust and So Far, and two further compilations of rarely heard material, BBC Sessions ...
Review by Simon Reynolds, Uncut, May 2001
Krautrock revisited and remastered: Bowie, Eno, Thorn Yorke, Damon Albarn, Stereolab and Sonic Youth pay sleevenote homage to the Lennon And McCartney of Teutonic boogaloo ...
Faust: The Wumme Years 1971-73
Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, May 2001
THERE'S STILL nothing quite like the first side of Faust's eponymous debut album, recorded in 1971 and released by a bemused Polydor in 1972. These ...
Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, 2002
DURING THE MONTH of October Damo Suzuki and band made a short tour of the US in support of the excellent new album Odyssey. They ...
Kraftwerk: Triumph Of The Machines
Comment by Nick Hasted, Independent, The, March 2004
KRAFTWERK'S MOST recent record, the long-waited Tour de France Soundtracks – their first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café, and a variation on ...
Interview by Stephen Dalton, Times, The, June 2005
FEW BANDS in pop history are quite as mysterious, elusive and maddeningly eccentric as Kraftwerk. But few remain as enduringly influential either. In 2005, even ...
Retrospective and Interview by Simon Witter, MOJO, September 2005
2009 NOTE: This is a 9000-word "Director's Cut" version of a 5000-word piece written for MOJO in September 2005. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, May 2006
Among the great German bands of the '60s and '70s – kosmiche avatars Amon Düül and Ash Ra Tempel, motorik pioneer Neu!, synth wunderkind Tangerine ...
Kraftwerk: Ralf Hütter – He's More 'Aaaaaah'
Interview by Simon Witter, Dummy, Spring 2006
2008 Note: When I met Ralf Hütter in London in early 2006, it was ostensibly to hear about the release plans Kraftwerk had for that ...
Live Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, April 2009
IN A YEAR in which it would be almost easier to count the bands not reforming, and in which a startling percentage of pop newcomers ...
Tortoise, Cluster: Tortoise / Cluster: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Stephen Dalton, Times, The, November 2009
CURRENT DEFINITIONS of jazz are clearly somewhat flexible, judging by the avant-rock double bill that closed this year's London Jazz Festival on Sunday night. The ...
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