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Sleevenotes by Lester Bangs, unpublished, for Dance of the Lemmings, 1971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 music ...

Faust and Foremost
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 of ...

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 the ...

Faust: Sturm und Drang
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 ...

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 who ...

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 to ...

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 in ...

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 Peter ...

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? ...

Kraftwerk: Autobahn
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 – ...

Tangerine Dream
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 of ...

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 I ...

Can: Unlimited Edition
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. ...

Can Laundered
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 right, ...

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. ...

Can: New Victoria, London
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, I ...

Kraftwerk: Deutsche Disko
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 Kraftwerk ...

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 solo ...

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 helps ...

Kraftwerk: The Man Machine
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 inner ...

Techno-Rock: Six Teutons And What Do You Get — A Programmed Sequencer And The Doppler Effect
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 the ...

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 ...

Nina Hagen: West Is Best
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 the ...

Trio: Three's Company
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 simply ...

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 ...

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 the ...

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 not ...

Kraftwerk: Electric Café
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 it, ...

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 LP ...

Kraftwerk: Ralf Hütter
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 Head ...

Communing With Chaos: Amon Düül II
Retrospective and Interview by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, 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 and ...

Welcome To The Machine: Kraut Rock
Overview by John McCready, The Face, 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 and ...

Krautrock
Retrospective by Andy Gill, Mojo, April 1997
IT'S SOMETIME IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER OF 1973-4, and Faust are playing Sheffield City Hall. ...

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 founder-members ...

Kraftwerk
Profile by John McCready, The Independent, 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 shoplifting ...

Can: The Albums
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 a ...

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 drum ...

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 ...

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 particular ...

Rammstein hit Virginia
Report and Interview by Ian Fortnam, Kerrang!, November 1998
AS A BOILING sonic cauldron of dark metal power-riffing and soul-stripping synthesis hammers home a relentless blitzkrieg strop, former East German Olympic swimmer Till Lindemann prepares ...

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 music ...

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 in ...

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 in ...

The Faust Tapes: Faust Epiphany
Retrospective by Don Watson, The Wire, 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, as ...

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 and ...

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 20 ...

D.A.M.O. Interview
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 played ...

Kraftwerk: Triumph Of The Machines
Comment by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 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 their ...

Kraftwerk
Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 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 after ...

Kraftwerk: Paranoid Android
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. ...

Can: Recycled Cans
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 Dream ...

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 summer. ...

DAF: 02 Academy, London
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 take ...