German Progressive and Krautrock Recommendations?

Faust IV and So Far are ther only ones I really like, more music and less "art"....I also highly recommend La Dusseldorf, you can hear where Bowie coped a lot of his music...as for Jane, their 1st LP is my least favorite (besides Lady) of their seventies output....Jane off-shoot Harlis is also interesting...

 

There is an opposite view that Can are so funky and repetitive that they barely qualify as prog rock. I got the impression that the OP is indeed chasing the motorik stuff, which is really only a small subset of the 70s German psych scene. There are some modern bands which probably deserve a mention, kraut or no kraut:

Stereolab. Transient Random Noisebursts is the one that first made people sit up and take notice. It rips off Neu a little. Emperor Tomatoe Ketchup develops more of their own voice.

Massive Attack. A lot of trip-hop and industrial may be traced back influence-wise to bands like Faust. I prefer 99th Window, but no-one else seem to.

 

I agree with you. I don't think of Can or Neu! as prog (in the sense of bands like Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, etc). I DO think of them as progressive in the sence of being very experimental. I think Eloy falls in the prog camp.

 

I recommend Guru guru´s first two albums (Guru guru and Hinten).

 

Can anyone tell me if Zarathustra's s/t record is available as a reissue (on CD or vinyl) - and if it is currently available anywhere?

I haven't had much luck finding a reissue, and would rather not shell out the several hundred dollars an original will cost:



Thanks!

 

It's on CD on the Second Battle label.

Sounds poorly remastered to me, but about 15-20 bucks should likely secure a copy.

 

Another shout-out for Schicke Fuhrs Froehling (SFF)....

 

There's a quite remarkable studio project from Germany called Poor Genetic Material. Their first four albums (Summerland, Leap into fall, Winter's edge and Spring tidings) are really worth recommending for any fan of progressive rock combined with flowing musical landscapes.

www.poorgeneticmaterial.de


They share their singer, Phillip Griffiths (the son of Beggars Opera's legendary singer Martin Grifftith) with the German Band Alias Eye who are quite popular in Germany's Progressive Music scene. This band is more rock-orientated but also very nice to listen to.

www.aliaseye.com

Enjoy !

 

Thanks for the info. I see Second Battle also did a reissue on vinyl in 1989 - I wonder how that compares to the original?

 

Tago Mago is an incredible record and a great place to start, I think.

 

It's a bit of an acquired taste but the CAN SACDs are very good. TommyTunes turned me on to these. I really like Saw Delight.

 

Hi, I can also recommend CAN on SACD. I`ve got Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasy and Soundtracks. Mother Sky on the latter has some breathtaking crazy rythmic drumming and evil guitar...........

 

let's not forget the harder electronics of Kluster, and Conrad Schnitzler

 

I haven't heard it but even that reissue can go for $100+.

Some of Second Battle's really early LP reissues are great. Light Of Darkness, for example, crushes the CD they released in 1992 (which was super bright) or the digipack CD version they released in 1998, which corrected the brightness but was then remastered with a boatload of compression. I almost gave up on having a decent version of that one until I scored their vinyl repress, which was fantastic.

Be careful of SB's later vinyl repressings because those I've heard seem to just use the same mastering as the CDs they issued, but there may be an exceptions or two.

 

I think the last way most here would want to hear Can is on SACD, but of course, there are exceptions, as evidenced by these recommendations.

They've been criticized quite heavily here for extreme use of no-noise. The Spoon CDs are generally felt to be the vastly superior option, and those were apparently transferred flat from the tapes by Holger Czuckay.

Ege Bamyasi, in particular, sounds downright beautiful on Spoon (or Spoon/Mute -- the same), while the SACD suffers greatly from no-noise.

 

Conrad is, to my mind, the father of them all. Not so much Krautrock per se, but European electronic music in general. He keeps on producing new and interesting material. In my opinion he does the best non-keyboard and impressionistic electronic music out there, among other things. He has a really wide range of approaches. He founded both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, and pushed those groups in the direction of improvising and using synthesizers. The whole history unfolded from that push, IMO. His discs are a little obscure but worth the effort to track down. Lots of nice limited-edition reissues on Japan's Captain Trips label in recent years for his classic recordings.

 

Faust and Amun Duul. Great recommendations

Another great band I haven't seen mentioned in this thread- Necronomicon.

 

+1 on Conrad

Have not heard the recent Captain Trip cds yet-hope they
are not remastered to the max !

 

I would add the third "Kanguru" as essential

 

As far as I can tell, the Captain Trips for the Schnitzler solo albums and the Klusters are the exact same audio as previous editions, just with MUCH better packaging and bonus tracks added. They CLAIM that they're remastered, but I've seen no evidence to support that. Rumor has it that the Cluster and Moebius discs are no different than the Sky CDs either.

That being said, the Schnitzler albums probably didn't need to be remastered - they got it right the first time, IMO - and the Kluster albums were already transferred from a good-sounding vinyl source. Anyone know if the new 3CD Kluster reissue on Water is yet another copy of the same transfers?

 

i've heard a cut of this band, Panta Rhei, that was very funky prog rock. great production. this seems to be the only release on cd for them.
http://www.amazon.com/Das-Beste-Pan...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1222885647&sr=1-2

 

Future Days by Can

 

Sounds like good news

They (the CT boxes ) are currently sitting on the shelf in the "to listen to" section- I must crack them open

 

Necronomicon album that I meant to add is "Tips Zum Selbstmord"





There is a copy on Ebay now. I suggest someone grab it, it isn't that easy to find (even the reissue) from the usual online stores that I check they come and go out of stock fairly regularly.

Progarchives.com has some reviews, but unfortunately no stream like they usually do: http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=9958