Info: “Ah, Space Rock. As one of the tracks on this very fine album suggests, don’t be afraid, and don’t panic either! If you think this much-maligned genre reeks of stale patchouli, un-washed hair and trips to free festivals to see Ozric Tentacles whilst gorging on mushroom sarnies and cider then you’re missing the point. Early Lemmy-era Hawkwind was radical street fighting punk rock! The heads-down motorik fuzzed-out elements of Amon Duul II and Can were a huge kosmiche fuck you to the safe early 70s singer-songwriter status quo. Marry all of this to a righteous fist in the air stoner-punk spirit and you have the essence of what we’re dealing with here. (Drowned in Sound)

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Info: San Francisco’s enigmatically named Wooden Shjips play a minimal, droning brand of garage-styled psychedelia with a noticeable ’60s Krautrock influence. The band’s vocals slip beneath waves of throbbing minimal rhythms, while fuzz tone guitar and shrieking organs jump to the foreground. The idea was that untrained players would have a brand new outlook on music and could bring something fresh to the table, perhaps a blend of the often noisy trance rock of the Velvet Underground and the frenetic mania of the one-hit wonder garage punks of the early ’60s. Bassman Dusty Jermier, for example, was originally recruited to play sax, an instrument he’d never picked up before. Other members from that first incarnation often had such a lack of interest in playing live, the band hardly bothered looking for gigs.

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Info: Baïkonour is the brainchild of one man, Jean-Emmanuel Krieger. Named after a town in Khazakstan, Krieger’s project combines electronic and post-rock elements with a deep appreciation for the versatility of the guitar. Krieger, who hails from France, currently resides in Brighton. His roots, however, have inevitably led to comparisons with groups like Air and Super Discount. Krieger draws on a variety of inspirations, which manifest themselves in his music in different ways. These inspirations include a diverse group, ranging from Marvin Gaye to My Bloody Valentine to Alice Coltrane. Upon the release of his debut album, For The Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, in 2005, Baïkonour received positive reviews from critics. Matthew Murphy, a writer for Pitchfork Media, said of the Lonely Hearts, “Throughout the album, Krieger consistently astonishes with the daring breadth of his playing, as he embellishes several otherwise straightforward pop hooks with as much florid ornamentation as good taste will allow… And this he does with such an addictively melodic flair that it should be easy for listeners to find space for this album within their lonely hearts.” (indiepassion)

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Info: Edgar Froese is a great musician and a shrewd businessman. Realizing that he and his associates would need money to fund the progress of Tangerine Dream, he took advantage of both of those qualities and launched his solo career while Tangerine Dream was still in their infancy. That solo career has contributed many gems and classics to the e-music community. Ages is one of those classics. This album has all of Froese’s virtuosity and something that his listeners rarely hear — a sense of humor. Froese does not show that side of himself to his listeners very often, so it is a treat. Putting that positive energy into play does much for this album; it makes it a classic. This CD will appeal to fans of Paul Ellis, Ian Boddy, Ron Boots, and Mark Dwane. It is an e-music essential. (allmusic)

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Info: The debut album by Agitation Free followed a somewhat different path than your average Krautrock band, veering unexpectedly toward the Middle East, specifically Egypt, in search of atmosphere and material. Underneath the dueling guitars and spacy synth work, desert rhythms and taped sounds of dusky cities percolate, adding depth and spice to the otherwise smooth, Teutonic grooves. It’s a tribute to the apparent sincerity of the band that the use of these motifs does not sound at all contrived, instead integrating quite well. The delicate, intricate percussion that concludes “Ala Tul,” for instance, sounds as lively as anything by Steve Reich from around the same period. Tapes of street songs emerge surprisingly and effectively toward the end of the otherwise stately march “Khan El Khalili,” providing a bridge to the Terry Riley-ish organ trills that begin the title track. “Malesch,” like many of the tracks, spins off into a leisurely stroll, sounding unexpectedly close to some Grateful Dead jams. Even when it picks up pace, there’s an unhurried quality that fits in nicely with the Saharan undertones of the album. Malesch is a solid, even inspired recording that stands somewhat apart from the usual clichés of the genre. Fans of German progressive rock from this period will certainly want to hear and enjoy it. (review by allmusic)

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Info: Lesson No. 1 was Branca’s first release in which he delved more fully into instrumental sounds that melded the dissonant rock of his former outfits with the heavy, massed sounds that he would later explore with groups of anywhere between ten and a hundred guitarists. Originally issued on 99 Records in 12” format, Lesson No. 1 contained two songs, one on each side.

This cd reissue contains those tracks, “Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar” and “Dissonance,” as well as “Bad Smells,” a dance score previously available on a split LP with poet John Giorno. In “Lesson No. 1…,” Branca first exhibits the formula that would serve as the basis of his next LP, The Ascension, a combination of heavy, repetitive, rhythmic statements overlaid with a chorus of guitars that begins in an almost stately mode before rising into a celestial frenzy.

The more aggressive “Dissonance” also builds on a straightforward, repetitive rhythm, though the clangy interjections from the guitars and percussion, and the mechanical yet furious strumming that follows take the track in a new direction in which the different parts of the piece hurtle along together like a locomotive, then battle in and out of rhythmic phase with one another. The twitching rhythms suggest Was (Not Was) and James Blood Ulmer, but the five guitarists, including Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, revel in the darker side of the naked city, sinister and slashing. (dustedmagazine review)

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Info: Klaus Schulze had always wanted to compose “Picture Music”: Sounds like oil on a private canvas, journeys into foreign, emotional landscapes. Which is why you can consider the title of this record as a credo, which made its appearance during a period of change.

While the two debut albums (“Irrlicht” and “Cyborg”) were mostly made up of static layers of noise and seemed to stem from a crass avantgarde mentality, the drummer in Schulze slowly found his way back into the music with “Black Dance” and “Picture Music”. This becomes clearest on Side B of the original record, the 23-minute long “Mental Door”. While synthesizers take bizarre twists and turns to form melody-like structures, a clanking percussion track decidedly cleaves its way through empty space. In its radical approach, this piece is still unrivaled today und should appeal to all those who find even the most daring and eccentric ELP-keyboard solo too radio-friendly. Still, the first composition here, “Totem”, is even better: A threedimensional musical vision full of truth and madness. A fragile pattern of bell-tones is the rhythmical pulse, which guides the listener through swathes of harmonic fog and constantly evolving motifs

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Info: The second album by Amon Düül II (not to be confused with the more anarchic radicals Amon Düül), 1970′s Yeti, is their first masterpiece, one of the defining early albums of Krautrock. A double album on vinyl, Yeti consists of a set of structured songs and a second disc of improvisations. It’s testament to the group’s fluidity and improvisational grace that the two albums don’t actually sound that different from each other, and that the improvisational disc may actually be even better than the composed disc. The first disc opens with “Soap Shop Rock,” a 12-minute suite that recalls King Crimson’s early work in the way it switches easily between lyrical, contemplative passages and a more violent, charging sound, and continues through a series of six more songs in the two- to six-minute range, from the ominous, threatening “Archangels Thunderbird” (featuring a great doomy vocal by mono-named female singer Renate) to the delicate, almost folky acoustic tune “Cerberus.” The improvisational disc contains only three tracks, closing with a nine-minute stunner called “Sandoz in the Rain” that’s considered by many to be the birth of the entire space rock subgenre. A delicate, almost ambient wash of sound featuring delicately strummed phased acoustic guitars and a meandering flute, it’s possibly the high point of Amon Düül II’s entire career.

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Info: In his solo career Michael Rother exactly reproduced the most meditative and floating textures of Neu! music. His colleague Klaus Dinger launched L.A Düsseldorf for radical, abrasive pop electronic projections. “Flammende Herzen” directly announces Rother typical guitar instrumentation with all these elegant repetitions and evocative, almost romantic ambient melodies. This album is a collection of various slow moving guitar inventions. The title track introduces a nostalgic and mellow theme for guitar. After 3 minutes the main melody is took back in a much more punchy instrumentation, featuring almost metronomic drum parts and distortion; a very pleasant and accessible song. “Zyklodrom” contains a rather similar introspect and light repetitive melody but includes some synth arrangements. “Karussel” is an other floating track, featuring a mechanical pulse some very light keyboard sounds with a pop, simple melodic line. The less consistent song of the album. “Feuerland” is a dense, dramatic, moody composition with slide fuzzy guitars, hypnotic pulses. The last piece is made of electronic gadgets, rolling drums and tranquil synthetic ambiences. A colourful album and a good start to Michael Rother’s intimate work. (http://www.progarchives.com)

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Info: Eroc (Joachim Heinz Ehrig) started his solo career in 1975 while he was currently the drummer of Grobschnitt. His self titled album can be considered as a cross between Gorbschnitt’s typical symphonic amazing music and electronic/ synthscapes dominated by numerous original sound manipulations. Despite that he was originally recognised as a drummer, here Eroc is the man behind the machines, controlling solid essays in synth experimentations and electronic collages. His first album is an absolute must in Kraut/ electronic genre, very abstract, emotional and a mix of different moods. This album is an opponent worthy of Klaus Schulze’s first realisations in space/ “kosmische” electronic music. His following album (“Zwei” published by “Brain” in 1976) continues to process by a combination between rock and electronic but focused on short, efficient sketches. Humour and derision are clearly exposed in the lyrics and recitations. “Zwei” is a reminiscence of Grobschnitt’s theatrical universe with lot of “gags” but the atmosphere is much more introspective, sometimes delivering deliciously melancholic melodies. After this two first very recommended efforts, Eroc pursues his solo career notably providing a kind of reunion, family album (“Eroc 3″) with others Grobschnitt members. In parallel he also started a professional career as musical producer, recently published albums of Das Scheitas (among others).

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